A Better Course

Chris writes about using marketing and advertising techniques in the design process – starting from the point that ‘a lot of “experience design” is actually just designers doing people-grounded marketing’. This is interesting to me, considering that I’ve got a post to write about how good design is good marketing, and how they two can play into each other.

Part of the reason I’ve been thinking about this has been as a result of reading Simply Better, the premise of which is, unsurprisingly enough, that better service and better products are (in the long run) the only way to acquire and maintain customers. One thing that the authors stress throughout the book is the importance of experiential data – that you don’t know how angry your product makes your customers until you watch your customers using it, and you don’t really know what’s wrong with your product until you yourself have to live through the full cycle of buying it and using it for its natural lifespan. An example used was Persil Power – which over a short period of time damaged the clothes it intended to clean – and the conversations following its unsuccesful launch, in which it became clear that none of the relevant upper management had used the product or even knew anyone who had.

The most recent example (that I’ve been aware of) of a company thinking about the full cycle of a customer’s interaction with a product is the activation on the iPhone – rather than the inconvenience of standing in the store filling out forms, it is activated via iTunes. The experience is at the point of sale, as well as in the use of the product.

It’s likely that this data is exactly the kind of ‘woolly’ research that Chris wants to get away from. At the same time, I’d agree that agility is the only way to resolve this kind of problem – a product needs to be used, and designers need to watch a product being used so they can respond to the problems they see. Fundamentally, it’s part of the interaction between good information and good marketing; I’d be interested to hear how other people have seen design play a part in this.

Another interesting post from Neuromarketing, this time about subliminal branding – how one’s positive feelings towards a brand increase after viewing the logo a number of times at a millisecond level. It’s interesting in terms of Free Rice, another site that’s been doing the rounds – there’s a really uncluttered interface, but once you’ve answered the first question (once you’ve engaged with the game) there are three unintrusive adverts across the bottom of the screen. It would be interesting to see the results, not in terms of click-through for those advertisers (which I would imagine to be minimal) but in terms of positive feelings towards the brands advertised.

• Devoted Moviegoers Show Up Early – New York Times
  Frequent moviegoers tend to arrive at the theater 16 percent earlier than the average moviegoer, according to a survey by Arbitron, the audience research firm.
  (tags: nytimes advertising movie)
• Brand Autopsy: To Win, You Must be Willing to Lose
  Don’t worry if some customers hate your brand. That’s actually a good sign. Starbucks has haters, but they also have fans. When your brand has a strong point of view, it will attract some and repel some.
  (tags: brandautopsy branding marketing)

• The New Advertising Outlet: Your Life – New York Times
  Last year, Nike spent just 33 percent of its $678 million United States advertising budget on ads with television networks and other traditional media companies. That’s down from 55 percent 10 years ago.
  (tags: nike advertising online web2.0 nytimes)
• 73 and Loaded With Friends on Facebook – New York Times
  Facebook can avoid its “there goes the neighborhood moment” as long as it allows people to stay in their silos and gives them control over who can peek at their profiles.
  (tags: facebook nytimes web2.0)
• Unilever Shuns Stereotypes of Women (Unless Talking to Men) – New York Times
  “Unilever is a large global company with many brands in our portfolio,” she said. “Each brand effort is tailored to reflect the unique interests and needs of its audience.” Brand inconsistency between Dove and Axe.
  (tags: unilever dove axe advertising nytimes)

• Nintendo: Calling All Players | Business Week
  “I have… the utmost respect for Nintendo’s marketing strategy,” says the CEO of Tokyo-based developer Tecmo. Analysts praise Nintendo, too, using the kind of superlatives… fitting for a company that has the 2nd-largest market capitalization in Japan b
  (tags: nintendo computergames marketing strategy businessweek)
• The Sales/Marketing Dance | Business Week
  Sales reps follow the “selling an aspirin” approach because their experience tells them that it’s easier to get budget dollars from prospects in pain. Marketers’ experiences tell them that senior decision makers are looking to grow, not just to ease pain.
  (tags: businessweek sales marketing)

• Relationships: What’s the Problem? > davidmaister.com > Passion, People and Principles
  It’s not enough to argue that relationships are a good thing, or even prove that they are economic. We must understand why they are difficult to pull off.
  (tags: strategy business leadership davidmaister)

• Education-Based Marketing Sells | Business Week
  Your credibility is increased significantly when you begin meetings with data that is of value to the prospect. Launch all your meetings by teaching your prospect something or by offering data that establishes that you’ve done your homework.
  (tags: businessweek marketing sales)
• This Is Your Brain on Advertising | Business Week
  Using brain scans, she says, “We can see the discrepancy between what you say and what your brain says, and reduce the margin of error.”
  (tags: neuromarketing businessweek marketing)
• Some New and Better Information on How to Make an Ad Work – New York Times
  “The failure of an ad to deliver the goods is most often — though not by any means always — due to a failure of the creative to gain attention, to enhance the brand and to answer the reader’s most pressing question, ‘What’s in it for me?’”
  (tags: advertising analytics nytimes marketing)
• Gunning for Google | Business Week
  Blended results, which in Yahoo’s case pull content from its other Web properties like Flickr and social calendar site Upcoming, can help avoid multiple searches, he says, by providing in one place content that would otherwise be spread across multiple pa
  (tags: google search technology online businessweek yahoo ask.com)
• Google Plans Service to Allow Advertisers to Use Material From YouTube Videos – New York Times
  Google is expected to introduce a service on Tuesday to allow Web sites in its ad network to embed relevant videos from some YouTube content creators.
  (tags: google youtube advertising video nytimes)

• 3 Ingredients for Success – New York Times
  “Only 15 years ago, a person who changed jobs every three years or so was looked at as professionally unstable. Today, it’s the guy nestled on his lily pad whom the H.R. pro looks at with a critical eye,” wondering why the employee isn’t more ambi
  (tags: nytimes career)
• For Google, Advertising and Phones Go Together – New York Times
  It hopes to persuade wireless carriers and mobile phone makers to offer phones based on its software, according to people briefed on the project. The cost of those phones may be partly subsidized by advertising that appears on their screens.
  (tags: google advertising mobile nytimes)
• B-School Profs Want to Know | Business Week
  3 professors at the University of Toronto’s School of Management came up with a complex algorithm to help planners determine how many facilities are needed, where they should be located, and how large they should be to balance consumer wait time with budg
  (tags: businessweek businesseducation waiting algorithm)
• Toyota’s Latest Commercial Is Not on TV. Try the Xbox Console. – New York Times
  Advertisers are also increasingly buying product placement space within games rather than creating their own. Advertisers in the United States will spend $502 million on video game advertising this year, up from $346 million last year
  (tags: computergames advertising productplacement nytimes)
• Coffee: The Generation Gap | Business Week
  Only 37% of young adults between 18 to 24 drink coffee, compared with 60% for those between 40 and 59 and 74% for Americans over 60.
  (tags: businessweek retail branding coffee)
• How To Handle a Crisis | Business Week
  At minimum, clear and immediate communication is an antidote. If stakeholders know you’re aware that there’s a problem, that may be enough in the short run to maintain goodwill until the problem is fixed or at least dealt with.
  (tags: crisis management businessweek business)
• Nothing Says ‘Buy’ Like ‘Free Shipping’ – New York Times
  A case study last year of Timberland that found that the online division would have to generate 40% more sales to justify the cost of an unconditional free shipping promotion. For companies that are still building a client base the increase in new custom
  (tags: nytimes marketing online)
• E-Mail Is Easy to Write (and to Misread) – New York Times
  as the use of e-mail increases in an organization, the overall volume of other kinds of communication drops — particularly routine friendly greetings. But lacking these seemingly innocuous interactions, people feel more disconnected from co-workers.
  (tags: business nytimes technology email)
• Halo Games Maker to Be Independent of Microsoft – New York Times
  Mr. Ryan said that Bungie planned to continue to develop games exclusively for the Xbox platform. He said that at some point, Bungie would have the right to develop games for other platforms, but he declined to say when.
  (tags: computergames microsoft nytimes bungie)
• The Fed Jammed Your In-Box – New York Times
  “With the housing market taking a continued hit in September, in-boxes also took an increased hit as spammers exploited the recent market slowdown and subsequent interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve”
  (tags: email spam technology nytimes)

According to a recent Neuromarketing post, the worst way to respond to an allegation about your product is by referring to it in order to refute it; that repeating allegations only reinforces their existence in people’s minds – and in some cases, presumably, introduces the rumour as new information.

By this reasoning, are the current Maestro adverts (aimed at getting people to use cards instead of cash) more likely to remind people to withdraw cash than to stop using it?

If there is a single thing I thoroughly dislike about alcohol advertising, it is the ideas of authenticity and purity as criteria for choosing a bottle of spirits. They are, essentially, bogus criteria; your whiskey might have been made by a company that’s been around for 200 years, but it’s not been aged for 200 years. You are probably not going to enjoy your vodka shot noticeably more because it’s been octuple-filtered through the only the purest charcoal.

However, it’s difficult to show how a product is fun. When this is attempted – as in Southern Comfort’s “Train” advert – it can be slightly embarrassing, limited (more or less) to pictures of young people having larks, which is one of the more excruciating forms of telling not showing.

This is why the new Smirnoff poster ads are so good. They show something that’s fun about spirits (making cocktails) and, throughout the series, what’s fun about vodka in that context (the ability to make many different cocktails).

Martini glass :

Short glass:

Highball glass:

There’s still the “Extraordinary purity in every drop” slogan, but the images give more of a reason to believe what that means – every drop is like a tiny cocktail. It’s not purer in the sense of cleaner, but purer in the sense of more like vodka.