Coke's New Design Direction

When Butler reviewed the state of design at Coca-Cola on his arrival, evaluating everything from the branding created for the then-recent 2004 Olympics in Athens to the process that the company's 300-plus bottling partners went through to get approval for new bottle designs to the customer experience of buying a Coke from a vending machine, he found a lot that needed fixing.

Business Week

Michel Gondry Levi's Commercial

Marketers get to us in more ways

"There are probably more pretty good products being sold in America now than at any time in history. This is a tribute to progress, but it both complicates our decision making as consumers," he writes, and makes it difficult for one product to stand out.

USA Today

Mixing It Up

It all sounds less like an ad than like a skit — the old Dan Aykroyd “Bass-O-Matic” bit on “Saturday Night Live” crossed with the recurring “Will It Float?” segment on “Late Show With David Letterman.” Then again, Dickson will, with deadpan delivery, touch on a product attribute here and there. And reducing 50 marbles to dust does suggest that the device sure is powerful, in a 1970s infomercial sort of way.

New York Times

Retailing icon Mickey Drexler doubles down

These brands tap into nostalgia, but Drexler does not want J. Crew's stores to be fantasyscapes that transport the shopper back to the country estates of Evelyn Waugh or the Africa of Isak Dinesen's memoirs. He dislikes the way a lot European designers' boutiques are intimidating. "Maybe its my Bronx upbringing, but I don't like elitist approaches. We don't take ourselves too seriously at J. Crew," he says. "Going into a store is kind of like meeting a person. I want J. Crew to come across as open, warm, and friendly."

Fortune Magazine

How to Win by Studying Culture: An Interview with Grant McCracken

If I could add an MBA course, I would call it "Anthropology and Ethnography In Business," and it would lay bare the culture that shapes how consumers think and feel and how culture determines what they want. It would teach students how to do "ethnography" which is the method anthropologists use to study culture, and in our case to extract the parts of the culture that matter so that these can be built into product development, innovation, promotion, advertising, direct marketing, digital marketing, new media, and the rest of the marketing package.

Harvard Business Review

Stop & Shop unveils new logo

Gone are the red and green traffic lights that served as the company's symbol since it opened in 1914 In their place: a yellow bowl with three colorful halves that can be interpreted as bowls of fruit, bread or ingredients, the company's spokesperson said.

Boston Globe

Put a Little Zappos in Your Day!

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Those Shelved Brands Start to Look Tempting

Marketers of consumer products go through a similar process during economic downturns, taking stock of brands they already own to see if any can be revived or renewed. It can cost significantly less to bring back a brand — or restore the luster to a faded one — than to develop a new product, because spending huge sums to generate awareness is not necessary.

New York Times

Nike Liu Xiang Ad

This is the type of thing that makes Nike a leader in sports marketing. When the other sponsors privately cringe at the thought of one of their top guys going down, the folks at the Swoosh actually think, "How do we spend on this and turn it into a great human moment that appeals to people?"

CNBC.com

Digital Designers Rediscover Their Hands

Mr. Tulley’s transformation highlights a little-noticed movement in the world of professional design and engineering: a renewed appreciation for manual labor, or innovating with the aid of human hands.

“A lot of people get lost in the world of computer simulation,” says Bill Burnett, executive director of the product design program at Stanford. “You can’t simulate everything.”

New York Times

Designing the Future of Business

A 2007 survey by Kelton Research for Autodesk (ADSK) found that when seven in 10 Americans recalled the last time they saw a product they just had to have, it was because of design. The survey found that among younger people (18 to 29 years old), the influence of design was even more pronounced. In Britain, a recent survey by the Design Council found that 16% of British businesses say design tops their list of key success factors. Among "rapidly growing" businesses, no fewer than 47% rank it first.

Business Week

More Bounce for Bounce

It is significantly difficult to get excited about dryer sheets — those scented thingies you put in the dryer to make your clothes smell better and cling less to your underwear — but this redesign is relatively exciting. Bounce, a product from the infinite P&G empire, recently launched a complete redesign of their full line of dryer sheets, which come in a variety of scents and styles. A large variety.

Brand New

Even P&G finds market difficult

"Lots of companies say that they're recession-proof. But when the recession comes, everybody gets touched, and P&G is not immune to that," said Richard Smith, an analyst who covers P&G for the Motley Fool.

Cincinnati.com

Mars Takes M&M’s Out of Their Shell

“Some of the first creative I saw was very serious and indulgent, and treated the product like this very rich new M&M thing,” Ms. Credle said.

But she believed that M&M’s candy was supposed to be fun. She revised the ads so that they parodied typical premium chocolate ads, and brought in a character — a sexy green M&M — that had been used in much of the traditional M&M’s advertising.



New York Times

Ex-Sara Lee, Nike executive hired by Brandimage-Desgrippes & Laga

Brandimage-Desgrippes & Laga, a global brand design consultancy firm based in Walnut Hills, has turned to a former president of Sara Lee Retail Foods to lead North America strategy for the company.

Cincinnati.com

America Is F*cked.......(Graphically at least)

America Is F*cked.......(Graphically at least) from Jess Gibson on Vimeo.

The Pitfalls of Megabranding

But then again, the whole idea of a megabrand is to strip the brand name of any actual meaning and turn it into a Paris Hilton. Famous for being famous.

Will it work? Maybe. Marketing is never one-sided. Winners are usually those companies whose strategies are better than the strategies of their competitors.

Ad Age

Font of Youth: How is Obama Like Target?

Like Aeron chairs or Eames furniture, Helvetica and its ilk have enjoyed a revival in the 21st century, and—like so much in campaigns—the use of the font sends multiple messages. First, given how small-c conservative most campaign design is (something like this could have been a campaign design for any candidate in the last four decades), the font and the all-around look communicates modernity—it reinforces the "change" branding. If you think of a Presidential candidate as a brand—and their campaigns do—it's young... but not too young. It also communicates a level of familiarity and safety, because you've seen if pretty much everywhere in commercial culture. (John McCain's website, befitting a conservative and old-school candidate, has a more traditional design and mix of serif and sans-serif fonts.)

Tuned In

How Stengel Found Purpose, Post-P&G

Stengel's interest in the institute stems from his kinship with Spence, whom he first met through a mutual friend about three years ago. Since then, Spence has spoken several times at P&G -- as part of the company's advanced general-manager training program -- and Stengel has visited GSD&M, which at one point he eyed as a potential agency partner for the packaged-goods giant.

More recently, as Stengel, 53, planned the next chapter of his career after 25 years at P&G, Spence, 59, invited him to become an advisor to the think tank -- a role Stengel will assume after publishing a book about marketing early next year.

Ad Week

Summer Silliness Brings a Pizza Field and a Giant Oreo

Alternative is a good way to describe the Right Guard campaign staged in London last month. While Right Guard referred to the subway stunt as “pitvertising,” bloggers called it icky and posted cheeky speculations about what might happen if the technique were applied to other products.

New York Times

Business Model Innovation: Best Buy, P&G and Apple Get it. Starbucks Doesn't Get It.

An economic crisis can be a crucible that forges new innovations in business operations or they can lead companies to make dumb mistakes that destroy them as they rush blindly to survive. We’re beginning to see corporations move into one camp or the other as the economic downturn gets worse and worse.

Nussbaum on Design