The power of context.

by | Jul 30, 2006 | Marketing

Design Observer had an article a little while ago about the power of context. One example given was about the use of bland typeface. Customers thought of it as ‘too bland for our new logo’, until they were told that this is actually the typeface used for Chanel … quite a powerful brand. Placed in the right context, the bland typeface suddenly made sense. Another example is that little design that looked like a checkmark, and which nearly didn’t make it in the end. Luckily for the company, the founder of the company had the luck to admit, “I don’t love it. But I think it’ll grow on me.” I think you know the company by it’s logo:

No one really got it in the beginning … and it took years to build it. The official story can be found here.

Something to think about next time you want to create a new slogan or brand.

Update: great article on design and the World cup here at Presentation Zen.

Does money make your marketing less creative?

by | Jul 30, 2006 | Marketing

Seth Godin blogged about marketeers and Money. his First and Second Rule struck a chord with me:

  • First rule: great product development and marketing almost always comes from organizations that don’t have enough money. Having less money keeps you from trying to buy your way out of trouble.
  • Second rule: learning to live with less money means you will develop skills and resources instead of buying them. And it means that when you have less money (again), you’ll be prepared.

This may be true as most big brand with big budgets spend a lot on (mostly offline) campaigns to splash their brand in people’s faces. Not the most creative or effective way to spend your marketing dollars. And when the budgets go down, it’s hard to all of a sudden step out of the spending model and get creative…

Testing the Lazer Granville

by | Jul 17, 2006 | Marketing

I’m testing the Lazer Granville helmet on my Yamaha Fazer. Great helmet, so far. I have always been happy with the Shoei helmet I got, and never really ditched that one for the Lazer Revolution. The nice thing about the Revolution, and the main reason I use it when it’s sunny, is the integrated sun-shield. Really good feature! The Granville doesn’t have that, but it’s lighter, and because it’s a modular helmet with a flip-open mask, it’s great for those wearing (sun)glasses.

Helmet courtesy of icemike.

Are we too switched on?

by | May 28, 2006 | Marketing

Tagging onto the previous post of making phones simpler again, here’s an article from TheAge to make you think about the need to be connected all the time. You’ve doubtlessly all encountered it already, someone next to you talking away on their mobile about work, totally oblivious of the world around him/her. Or you yourself, taking that work call at home, or when you’re on holiday. It seems we’re never alone anymore, having our mobile phone or e-mail device always in reach.

So, are we getting more productive with this, or are we accelerating our own burnout by not having any real “downtime” anymore? There is a growing fear that in this “always connected” society, people will burn out even faster than before, being “on call” all the time, never relieved from the stress of work. It is a fact that our pace of work has increased: letters used to take days, but e-mail, sms, voicemail takes mere seconds, and people do expect replies faster and faster. According to some research quoted in the article, this isn’t too good: it found that people can work at 100 per cent efficiency for 45 hours a week. The next 10 hours they worked, they fell to 50 per cent efficiency; and for any hours after that, 25 per cent efficiency…

The “good” news is that future generations may have it easier with this. Kids expect to be connected all the time, and they are using their mobile devices more and more.. It just may be the way of the future.

What do you do with your cell phone?

by | May 28, 2006 | Marketing

Wired has an article out on how some people trade in their Swiss-army knife type smartphones for just the basic models, because all they really want to do is .. Phone with it.

Of course, carriers aren’t too happy with that. They love for people to surf the web on their phone, download music and ringtones, take pictures and send the via MMS … all that infrastructure has to pay off you know. So they’re now designing more user-friendly, easier to navigate phones. Remember the ipod, it’s in the simplicity of the useage.

Read the full article here.