Good Design is Good Business

Fast Company explores the need to reconcile busniess and design.

"Valid thinking demands an inspired leap of faith. Before John Mackey launched one of the country's first supermarket-style natural-food stores, for example, nobody could prove that Whole Foods Market would succeed at all, let alone become the most profitable food retailer (in terms of profit per square foot) in the United States. But Mackey did it anyway. As the computer scientist Alan Kay put it so memorably, 'The best way to predict the future is to invent it.' And that is what design-centric organizations do: They peer into the needs and desires of their customers, identify patterns of behavior, refine ideas that tap into those behaviors, then push into the unknown--or at least the uncertain."

Tough Love

Selling Nostalgia and Little Else

The Search for Life in Yet Another Ghost Brand

In-Store Metrics ... For Real

Breakthrough? Stores May Be Able To Measure POP Display Impact

Gimme That Beer

Great, arresting OoH.

From Across the Pond

At their best, the Brits do have style. Here's a list of the anglo-cool.



UK's Coolest Brands

Super Serifs

Underwhelming tweaks to the Reds logo.

Cincinnati Reds Complete Club Logos and Uniform Graphics

Selling CDs with CDs

I hope the market rewards Umpqua for taking risks and trying some radically different approaches in a very cookie-cutter industry. They continue to be a great case study for using designed experiences to differentiate. This article touches on their latest music initiatives.

Branching Out

5 Things About PowerPoint

Some good advice on how to improve your Powerpoint presentations (or Keynote for the evolved).

Brands That Stand Out

Landor (and others) attempt to quanitfy brand strength via contribution to the bottom line. What works is not surprising. But some of the leaders are.

"Three unmistakable themes bubbled up from this year's survey, and most of the breakaway companies are standouts in at least two of them. 'Today it's all about trust, community, and creating a dialogue with your customer that shares real knowledge,' says Hayes Roth, chief marketing officer for Landor."

10 Breakaway Brands

Marketing to Mommy's 'Me' Time

"They don’t want to talk about laundry, they want to talk about a mom’s emotional relationship to her clothes."

Marketers Look Past Jelly Stains and See a Mom Who Has Needs

Character & Conflict

I saw these guys give a presentation a while ago. Very smart. Their take is to find a brand's essential point of conflict and tension. A little different to the more prevalent idea of essence, etc. It may not work in every case ... but it's worth knowing about.

How the Pillsbury doughboy explains what you buy

Innovation Overload

Lots of great stuff in the newest Business Week via its quarterly Inside Innovation insert. Including:

- Jonathan Ive, Apple Design Guru
- Ziba and the Chinese Consumer
- The Truth About Brainstorming

A Marriage of Design & Advertising

It's more than impressive to see how Apple is able to consistently deliver fresh executions of a brand look within a campaign. Here is the newest IPod Nano spot, delivering the silhouette graphic idea in a new way. It links to the previous creative without simply repeating it. Much like the product it's Completely Remastered.



Here's some previous ones:

H-2-Whoa

When there is little product differentiation, what is left? Some pretty sweet bottle shapes.

who needs designer water?

Authenticity & the Grocery

"So what did Safeway do right? The short story is that it delivered before it promised. 'We were very careful not to talk about quality until we had stepped up quality,' Burd says. That way, when Safeway told a story about quality in a TV ad, customers could walk into a store that day and see and taste the quality, leaving no doubt about the story's truth."

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

A Differ Kind of CEO

Non-traditional titles and the companies that love them.

Wanted: Experience Officer. Some Necessary.

Nike Ad Update

Start here:



Then go here.

Innovation + Guts = Growth

If I had a nickel for each time I've dragged this AquaFresh package into a meeting only to lose another soul-crushing TDC conversation ... well I would have about 15¢.

This article from Fast Company tells a bit of the story behind that box. More importantly it tackles the challenge of brands forever looking to cut expenses.

"So, the next time a bean-counter tells you that spending extra money won't result in any extra sales, consider telling them that it's not just about sales -- it's about growth. Real growth requires the kind of innovation that gets customers excited, and that kind of innovation often means just putting a crowbar in it."

Spare No Expense

SBux Racy New Logo?

Well ... not exactly ....

Starbucks' bare-breasted logo returns for 35th anniversary

Empathy for All

From the Logic+Emotion blog comes this useful post reminding designers to stay close to their consumer ... and not to think you're too smart for that kind of stuff. In short:
1. Get out of the office
2. Talk to someone
3. Eat, Sleep, Dream Curiosity
4. Do what they do

Creating Compassionate Designers

Wal*Mart to Segment Store Offerings Based on Location

World's largest retailer to tailor offerings to better appeal to one of six targets: Hispanics, African Americans, "empty-nesters/boomers," affluent, suburban and rural shoppers.

Wal-Mart to Drop One-Size-Fits-All Approach for Stores

OK GO

Because Fridays should be fun. If you haven't seen this yet ... I just feel bad for you.

Embracing Accountability

From the Zyman Institute of Brand Science (now isn't that impressive?) comes this explanation of why it is essential to measure brand value, along with a look at a variety of established brand equity models.

"While the desire of marketers to demonstrate that they are allocating marketing investments as efficiently as possible is admirable, they are doing themselves a disservice with their current obsession with ROI. By interpreting marketing accountability solely in terms of a metric of short-term payback, marketers are reinforcing the impression of marketing as a merely tactical discipline.

"The bigger question — and the one that will earn marketers a seat at the boardroom table in a way that no amount of ROI measurement can — is whether brands truly are assets that enable the business to generate superior returns over time."

In Search of a Reliable Measure of Brand Equity

Trend: Status Skills

The September issues of trendwatching.com's trend brief is out. I always find these pretty interesting and well done. I really like that they end each briefing with a section on "Context, Next, and Opportunities."

September Briefing

Stay on Target ... Stay on Target ...

"P&G continues to block and tackle at the high end of the peer group, with organic sales growth supported by new products and pricing to partially mitigate rising input costs."

P&G affirms quarterly outlook for profit and sales

Is It a Gimmick If It Works?

Street Stunts On The Digital Highway

CBS News' New Look

Boston Globe looks at the new design toolbox that will surround Katie starting tonight. Seems a little all over the place to me (at least in static form).

"To represent Couric, Allen says, they added warm golds and oranges to a palette that had been exclusively blue. And they changed the eye, CBS's iconic symbol, from blue to gold in the new title frame."

CBS Looks to Surround Couric with Shiny New Image

Marketing Morality

Very worthwhile post from Seth Godin (who I recently learned was my sister's camp counselor in the '80s) about taking responsibility for the work we do and the products we market. I do agree that one must make peace with this. The fact is that we're not saving lives, but there is integrity in a job well done and honest effort.

Marketing Morality

Ah, the Power of Robin's Egg Blue

"Don't get me wrong. No packaging, not even Lanvin's, can ever matter more than its contents. But great packaging makes shopping more fun, and, as Tiffany has proved, occasionally elicits cash from impressionable people like me."

When the packaging makes it perfect

Shopping Seduction

USA Today examines the in-depth multi-sensory strategies retailers employ to separate you from your $$.

Just browsing at the mall? That's what you think