Clever Marketing is an ongoing series cataloging some of the best and most interesting marketing I have come across. Enjoy.
Sex Sells. Men are lying if they say they’re able to walk by a Victoria Secret without taking a quick glimpse at the “merchandise”. Well this little piece of magic helps focus your eyes on the real merchandise at hand, the lingerie. Created for The Lake & Stars by Softlab this giant furry kaleidoscope was installed during BOFFO Building Fashion 2011 in New York. Yep, a giant furry kaleidoscope. Check it out.
Being that its new years eve I have decided to make this my resolution; to do a huge volume of work in 2012 (a.k.a 2kdoz). From big to small, I am hoping to do dozens of projects this year. I am hoping to use disciplines I know and expand in to new ones I don’t. I am excited and nervous. I know some of my work will be good, some O.K., and some flat out awful. But what I am really hoping is something will turn out great. I will be posting everything I do so stay with me this year, check back frequently, share my stuff with others, and please, PLEASE, give me honest feedback.
Clever Marketing is an ongoing series cataloging some of the best and most interesting marketing I have come across. Enjoy.
As a beer I am not crazy about it, but I do like this little campaign Red Stripe is rolling out with a series of videos around making things. For the first one they started with a festival, collected recycled cans, had artists like Yuri Suzuki, DJ Al Fingers, singer/songwriter Gappy Ranks and designer Matthew Kneebone turn the cans in to something amazing, and documented the entire thing. Sounds like a recipe for something cool. Can’t wait to see they make next.
Who would have thought? I mean seriously, who would have thought? Ice Cube is a design guy, who not only loves the Eames, but who studied architectural drafting. Amazing. This is a cool video by Pacific Standard Time an incredible art project put together by the Getty and dozens of other art institutions. Check it out.
Business is not complicated, but we tend to make it as complex as possible. I recently heard Nick Hanauer of Second Avenue Partners on NPR simplify business in to two fundamentals (I loved this quote):
“Business people spend their time fundamentally on two things: creating sales and cost containment.”
People always say its funny because its true and this is fun because its true. Business, no matter how complicated, boils down to these two things. You are either trying to make more money or trying not to spend money. End goal, put more money in your pocket at the end of the day.
I’m an old man. As I type this it is 8:08PM on a Saturday night and I am thinking about going to bed. Make fun of me all you want. My wife is wrapping christmas gifts, my son is asleep (lucky kid), and I have been up since 4:30AM. I am literally an old man and tomorrow I plan to attend the early bird dinner at Denny’s at 3PM. I used to stay up until all hours working away only getting 3-4 hours of sleep. I used to be able to power through the next day (I do work in coffee). But recently I have been exhausted. Getting home at 7PM, drinking an old fashioned at 8PM, and wanting to be in bed by 9PM. Lucky for me I found some support for calling it an early night in a book I’m reading called Rework:
Stubbornness: When you’re really tired, it always seems easier to plow down whatever bad path you happen to be on instead of reconsidering the route. The finish line is a constant mirage and you wind up walking in the desert way to long.
Lack of Creativity: Creativity is one of the first things to go when you lose sleep. What distinguishes people who are ten times more effective than the norm is not that they work ten times as hard; it’s that they use their creativity to come up with solutions that require one-tenth of the effort. Without sleep, you stop coming up with those one-tenth solutions.
Diminished Morale: When your brain isn’t firing on all cylinders, it loves to feed on less demanding tasks. Like reading yet another article about stuff that doesn’t matter. When you’re tired, you lose motivation to attack the big problems.
Irritability: Your ability to remain patient and tolerant is severely reduced when you’re tired. If you encounter someone who’s acting like a fool, there’s a good chance that person is suffering from sleep deprivation.
It’s easy to ignore sleep for a little while, just pushing your body and mind to go the extra hour, but “it will come back to bite you in the ass” as Rework says. Looking back, I can definitely see the toll it takes on people when they don’t get enough sleep. Countless arguments, disagreements, and frustrations have been had because either one, both, or all parties didn’t get enough sleep. Looking forward I am not willing to sacrifice sleep again. I have already noticed that I am more productive, creative, and have a better attitude with more sleep. Speaking of, it’s about that time.
I will be writing a full post on Rework as soon as I finish, but there isn’t much time to read with all the sleep I’m getting.
Clever Marketing is an ongoing series cataloging some of the best and most interesting marketing I have come across. Enjoy.
It’s a pretty normal ad until you see the cow in the glasses. Mind Blown. The text talks about farming quality and the idea of placing the cow in the CEO’s glasses simply states “this is our focus”, but in such a clever way. Brilliant.
My only question is was the cow photoshopped in? And if not how long did that take? Ha!
It seems incredibly simple to brew coffee at home. It’s not. I wrote a blog post about it for Broadacre (Edited by Lucas Elia). I tried to accomplish 2 things:
Set expectations: Brewing coffee at home is hard to do and it will not be as good as it is from a professional shop
Simplify: Brewing coffee is mad science but it can be approached from a simple perspective
As an industry we try and get people to brew great coffee at home, but often over complicate it with special tools and techniques, while spitting out numbers and big words (like Total Dissolved Solids and Extraction Ratios). Customers want to be able to reproduce what we create in the store. Being able to simplify and present our complex process is the key to getting them to brew and enjoy great coffee at home and in our stores.
Also, I got to create cool pictograms for the first time.
Clever Marketing is an ongoing series cataloging some of the best and most interesting marketing I have come across. Enjoy.
T-Mobile
This stunt was organized by Saatchi & Saatchi in Barcelona in May 2011. Although this is a huge production it goes to show that being creative and having fun can pay off huge, with over 9.5M YouTube views. There are many ways to pull off stunts like this without having a big budget, get creative.
If you at all deal with creating and curating a customers experience, this is a must read.
Here is the full PDF. (yes a 17 page PDF, put your reading shoes on). If you just want a quick overview look below.
By now most of us get the message — we need to consider the entire customer journey, the complete experience, surrounding the products and services we offer to customers.
But in this frenetic, multi-tasking, app-happy society, how do you prepare people to pay attention in the first place, let alone get actively involved in your carefully planned customer journey?
As brands aspire to create deeper connections with an endlessly distracted consumer, storytelling in design has become ever more crucial.
It’s simple: with an overture. Great brand experiences do exactly the same thing.
Show, don’t tell.
Your audience will learn more about your story by experiencing it directly, not by being told about it. Narration is usually an indicator of laziness on the part of the author. Could you do away with the “About Us” section of your website, and still have everyone understand your story?
Know what your story is about, not just what happens.
This is the most important thing to figure out, and also the most difficult. It’s similar to the difference between your product and your brand. The product is what your company sells, but the brand is what your company is about. You must know this inside and out in order to encapsulate the brand and communicate it effectively from the beginning.
Empathize with your audience.
Involve people on their terms, not yours. Put yourself in your target audience’s shoes, and develop the best understanding you can about what they do and do not understand about your product and category.
Be honest.
Acknowledge what’s difficult for the customer in the experience you provide. If it’s a necessary evil, present it as evidence of what makes it worth the trouble.
Level-set.
Not everyone starts with the same level of understanding about your category or your product. Try to educate the newcomers while respecting the regulars.
Make it worth seeing more than once.
Level-setting cues become part of the ritual of anticipation for your repeat customers. Add little details that the casual customer would likely overlook. Don’t worry; your best customers will notice.
So think about it:
How are you introducing a potential customer to your brand experience? How can you make that process rewarding on its own? If you couldn’t use words, how would you depict it? Rent Raiders of the Lost Ark again, and let me know what you think.
About Method
Method is an international design firm focused on
product and service innovation. Our clients are best
described as owners of progressive, era-defining brands,
and include Google, Comcast, Nordstrom, Sony,
Samsung, Nokia, Microsoft, Time Warner, Intel, and BBC.
Collaboratively, we help them create products, services
and businesses that are smart, beautiful and extendable.
