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Brands & Marketing

Connection, Communication, Consolidation, Convergence, Context

Last week I was presenting my thoughts & ideas on future tech & trends with a client, so I thought I’d share them here… but let’s look at where we’ve come from, where we are now & where we appear to be heading.

Connection: Advent of the internet; Arpanet (1969), email (1972), internet mainstream (circa 1982), the web (1989)

Communication: Social media, Amazon (1994), Google (1998), Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005), Twitter (2006). RFID & NFC payment systems, Oyster card (2003), Starbucks (10% of transactions are now NF & Mobile)

Consolidation: (Hub Device) Technology & users reliant on connectivity to the internet. Most obvious tech consolidation is the smart phone, no longer separate cameras, music players, web browser (iPhone 2007)

Now
Convergence:
Individual devices share data & influence one another autonomously (AKA The Internet of Things). We’re moving away from a world of dumb devices, to one of connected intelligent smart devices.
Consumption / Gathering:
Wearable devices: Wrist: Nike Fuel, Jawbone UP, Fit Bit, Nymi, Pebble, Samsung Gear, Sony SmartWatch, Qualcomm Toq, TomTom, Nissan Nismo / Head: Google Glass, Weartrons RnR, Melon / Feet: Nike+ Sensor.
Sensors: Medical Equipment (health, safety) Scanadu Scout Tricoder, Climate & Ambient Systems, Automobiles
POS & POI: Info Boards, Posters, Displays, Barcode Scanning, RFID / iBeacons (Estimote)
Smart Devices & Home Appliances: Music, TV, Lighting, Utilities, Security (locks, access controls, monitoring).
Prime Devices: Sony Lens Camera, POV’s, Audio Recorders
Creation / Output: Bespoke Product Design, 3D Printing

Where we’re heading:
Context: Location & context specific “big” data & actions
(The Age of Context / Networked Society).
Example: You’re on your way to a meeting, your Hub Device, knows where you are, your schedule, where you’re going, who you’re meeting (so it likely knows where they are too), what the traffic conditions are like ahead. Earlier it told you to leave early as there was traffic congestion, but that’s cleared, so you’re going to be early, so it suggests you wait it out at one of your favourite coffee shops (it knows there’s space at the coffee shop and can even tell you where the nearest parking space is, it could even pre-order your drink for you if you want), but it also knows it’s your kids birthday and has access to your to do list, so it suggests you can use the downtime to order & pick up the present, as there’s a special promotion on at the moment.

The Age of Context relies on the autonomous sifting of Big Data and putting it into context. Big Data is a cinch to create, but unfortunately a major stumbling block is the lack of correlation between systems & datasets, there are no open standards or protocols for sharing, and the likelihood of the social silo’s of Google, Facebook, Twitter & FourSquare et al sharing our data anytime soon is unlikely without a disruptive element.

The News & Education sectors will continue to go through major shifts, with Healthcare undoubtedly seeing the next major shake up with advances in self monitoring data & preventative care.

Brands & advertisers have huge opportunities to make their offerings even more granular & responsive, so stand a better chance of interaction, by being more personal & engaging by leveraging the viewers personalised preferences & location based data. In effect Contextual Advertising, is the Marketeers equivalent to responsive web design, advertising that adjusts to the viewers location & tastes.

Keeping with the C theme, I could suggest the next stage will be “Coherence” (the quality of forming a unified whole), but I won’t go that far for now… I can’t predict the future, things we take for granted today, weren’t even launched or invented 2-3 years ago, so who knows what we’ll be using in 5-10 years time?

Below is an example of a Networked Society (more examples on the Ericsson Channel)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wqm6G5DjaI]

Brands & Marketing

3 Bee Printing

This is a genius idea… I love bees (I’ve been planning on installing a bee hive in my garden), so when I saw this video promoting Dewars Highlander Honey Whisky I just had to post it here.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwfVFRPCVZY]

Not What You Think

Now That’s A Touch Screen!

When you think “Touch Screen”, you’d imagine a screen you touch, but what if you could use it to touch something else? Normally you use augmented reality by utilising real world objects to manipulate virtual objects, but here it is in reverse!

[vimeo https://vimeo.com/79179138]

Brand Building

Can I Ask You For Something?

I just stumbled upon this video by Amanda Palmer, it’s worth 15mins of your time. She outlines her experiences on the relationship of an artist and a fan, and how she overcame her initial feelings of guilt when “Asking” for help. It all boils down to two way engagement and building trust.

Rather serendipitously Seth Godin blogged today about evoking trust, which ties in beautifully with Amanda’s TED talk.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMj_P_6H69g]

Visualisation & Infographics

The Beauty of Mathematics

I love mathematics (don’t ask, I generally keep that quiet)
I love visualisation, and I love this video!
Don’t worry you don’t have to like or know anything about maths to love this
(you need to watch it full screen to appreciate it)

“Mathematics. Rightly viewed, possesses not only truth but beauty. A beauty cold and austere, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music”
Bertrand Russel

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/77330591]

Visualisation & Infographics

Information Visualization Definition

Data: a record of related quantities
Information: organised data
Information Visualisation: schematically represented information

But that only defines what it is, not it’s purpose & why?
Purpose: “to clearly communicate information, stimulating viewer engagement & attention”
Why?: To gain knowledge (meaningfully interpreted information)

There’s a balancing act a creative must perform between form & function, plus they’re influenced heavily by the audience. An infographic is often designed to provoke discussion or promote an idea, so can afford to be more visually rich than a visualisation that’s main objection is analysis.

Personally I define the differences between Infographics and Information Visualisation as:
Infographics: present the viewer with a conclusion or a story
Information Visualisations: give the viewer a means to discover their own conclusions

Brands & Marketing

Virgin on The Ridiculous

I’m guessing (hoping) this is a way to get press coverage and get people talking, rather than Virgin’s new way of doing safety videos, although I could be wrong.

Although as I’ve posted before, Air New Zealand and Cebu Pacific have their own unique ways for inflight safety demonstrations

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtyfiPIHsIg]

Drivel

It’s The Way I Roll

What do you get when you take a musician, his band, a friend with a cool central London rooftop pad, a couple of digital cameras, and a very (VERY) hot sunny afternoon? Answer: a photo-shoot and two music videos!

Tech has totally changed the photography & video landscapes, it’s a far cry from the 20 years ago, when I first sat in a plush office in the heart of Soho, on a very comfy leather sofa at the back of a darkened edit suite directing an editor. Then waiting every time he made an edit for the stack of tape decks (which had their own room) to spin up to speed, before finally transferring the edit from tape to tape. The equipment cost £100,000’s, it took hours to edit, and a good editor charged more an hour than a good lawyer!

I’m the first to admit that I’m no Ridley Scott, but below are two videos I directed & shot in an afternoon using would you believe, my Sony NEX 5N (the wonderfully light weight little gem of a camera I bought last year for when I spent three months trekking in the Himalayas). The biggest problem on the day, was the glaring sun and trying to stay ahead of it as it chased us around the rooftop (hopefully you won’t notice that the drummer had to move & set up three times during the Stacey shoot!). Incredibly we also managed to have time to do the photo-shoot for the promotional material & album artwork. Which we were able to review on my iPad while we sunk a few pints down the pub afterwards, something else we’d have never have been able to do years ago!

The album is available as a digital download or as a CD form rollingexile

Stacey & Deep Down, both from the Album Exile

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmlrrs02SH0]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHdqwj_GGcw]

Brands & Marketing

Second Sight

With more and more of us having a mobile or tablet device within arms reach no matter where we are, you’d think that would give advertisers more opportunities to grab our attention, but the opposite maybe true. With DVR’s we pause live TV and watch it when we want, and more often that not we skip the adverts.

But recent research by Ofcom has found that the living room and live TV is making a surprise come back, with 91% of adults saying they watch TV in their living rooms (up from 88% in 2002), with 25% “Media Meshing” (interacting with the live shows via Twitter, Facebook etc), but most surprising of all is that 90% of TV watched in the living room was live. Although that’s only half the story, as  41% of households have only a single TV now, that’s up from 35% 10 yrs ago (with only 50% of 5-15yr olds now, it was 70% in 2007). While youngsters may now spend more time in the same room, they’re focused on their mobile or tablet device, so they maybe  in close proximity, but they’re no engaging or communicating locally.

Below are some interesting stats collected by the Time Warner Media Lab on the effectiveness of advertising and the second screen.

 

infographic-second-screen-effect-1

 

data-timewarner-05-2013

Drivel

What iWant iWatch To Be, Not a Watch!

iwatch

While very beautiful, the image above is not what I want a wearable from Apple (or any other manufacturer) to be, and I very much doubt Apple would produce it, not because they couldn’t, but because it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t serve any additional purpose, users already have an iPhone in their pocket, why would anyone slap another one on their wrist?

I haven’t worn a watch for at least 10 years, my mobile is good enough for me when I’m mobile, and the menu bar on my Mac is a glance away when I’m at work, so a watch is redundant for me, if I’m about to put something on my wrist it needs to add functionality, not simply replicate another device (or look worth mugging me for).

I know Apple have started trademarking the name iWatch around the globe, but I suspect that’s either Brand Protecting whatever they do produce from copycats, or it’s putting the rest of the market off the scent of what they’re really working on… who knows, maybe iWatch is a trademark to cover something they’re working on for the Apple TV, referring to what customers view and has nothing to do with time keeping?

I have friends with Pebble watches, but they all tell me not to bother, why? Because they sound great on paper, but in reality they don’t actually add any real purpose or benefit to their daily routine. Example they’ve all said, you receive an SMS, your phone vibrates or goes ping, you start to reach for your phone in your pocket and then the Pebble on your wrist goes ping and vibrates, mmmmm… is that worth $150? There are plenty of others in the market, Sony, Samsung, Google Glass, but personally I don’t want to walk around looking like an extra from Star Trek, at least Google Glass is waterproof! So it has to look like something people would want to wear regardless of it’s function!

Apple have an amazing eco system they can monitor, they monitor how & where users are using their iOS devices, what apps they’re downloading, utilising, erasing, that’s a goldmine of UX. Their partnerships with the likes of Nike have been carefully orchestrated and even more carefully monitored, they now employ a former Nike Fuel Band consultant. They’ve purchased sensor development companies, notably in the medical monitoring and healthcare sectors.

But let’s look at the practicalities… the real world have hard surfaces, technology doesn’t like being smacked around and nobody likes scratching their shiny new bit of tech, why else would their be a multi-billion dollar industry in protective cases. And that’s for something that sits a large amount of it’s time on your desk, in your pocket, or bag… something on your wrist is going to get a lot more abuse, you move your arms around a lot more. And let’s no forget, we’re organic, we sweat, we have bacteria living on our skin, we get wet, we wash, we take showers, we wash our hands, we swim, snowboard, ride bikes, mountain climb, go running etc any device spending the majority of its time on our wrist or any other part of our body, needs to stand up to all of that. Something made of shiny white plastic and glass wouldn’t last long. Plus, with a reasonable size screen power becomes an issue, and with extra batteries comes extra weight.

So rather than a glorified wrist watch that offers a limited and lacklustre phone experience (which in itself is contrary to Apple’s raison d’être), I envisage an elegantly simple looking, non-descript, screenless, virtually seamless device that we forget we even have on our wrist until it reminds us with a little vibration, ping, or illumination. Something water proof, that monitors our biometrics (heart rate, temp, glucose levels, unique ECG pattern, sleeping patterns), our movement, elevation, velocity, has a fingerprint scanner for ID confirmation, handles NFC payments (Ski passes, transportation, Oyster), handles security (opens doors Locitron), connects to other devices around it (BLE & iBeacons), is voice controlled (Siri), has a battery that lasts days, not hours and costs no more than $200-250. If there is a version with a screen, then something with only limited functionality, i.e. SMS, email notifications, alarms, calendar events, media playback control (pause, stop, next, previous, volume etc)… and of course, the time! An always on screen would kill battery life of course, but a screen that only activates when prompted should be ok.

I could go on, but you get the idea, it adds functionality and usability where a mobile phone can’t (or it wouldn’t be practicable). That’s a wearable I’d wear.

continuous
The above image is taken from an Apple patent for a wearable device, akin to a reflective snap on a cyclist would wear.

UPDATE (Jan 2014):
Wow just stubbled across this concept by Thomas Bogner, he must be a kindred spirit!

continuous

Brands & Marketing

iBeacons, Apple’s Stealth NFC Killer (Plus a Retailers Dream!)

I’ve an iOS developers account, so I’ve been playing around with iOS7 for a month or so, and have to say it’s pretty good, there’s still a way to go yet and there’s still a few bugs to iron out, plus I’m glad to see the back of all that digital felt & leather! But that’s not why I’m posting, iOS7 is out now so you can check it out for yourself.

No the reason I’m posting, is iBeacons. Like a lot of people, I’ve been longing for Apple to include NFC in the iPhone, and was hoping the 5S would have it, so was a bit miffed to see that it was still absent… but I missed iBeacons in the launch keynote presentation.

Now it’s all starting to fall into place, fingerprint scanning, Bluetooth 4, iBeacons… oh sneaky! I won’t go into details but let me point out a couple of very important distinctions between RFID & NFC… RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is a protocol that allows the wireless non-contact use of radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to transfer data. NFC (Near Field Communication) is a set of standards for devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching them together or bringing them into close proximity.

So what does that mean in English… NFC chips are now in almost every credit / debit card and many smart phones, and allow you to make small payments or gather item info etc. As the name implies the great thing about NFC is that the devices have to be in very close proximity to connect… but that’s also a bad thing, as a retailer cannot push notifications to shopper unless they’re within 5 cm.

iBeacons (which is integrated into the iOS7) on the other hand uses the RFID protocol, which means that any iPhone / iPod / iPad (iWatch in the future), can detect other iBeacon devices at a range of 200m (but it can also be limited down to 10cm). So what this means for retailers is that they can transmit customised coupons, product offers / info, location, maps, directions etc directly to shoppers within their stores without needing shopper instigation, is Minority Report Advertising about to become a reality? But there’s another really important factor about iBeacon, the users iOS device isn’t just a passive receiver being bombarded by coupons and offers, as any iOS7 device can also become an iBeacon transmitter! This allows the user to filter out unwanted offers and connections… bad for the retailer you may think, but on the contrary it’s great news, rather than wasting theirs and the customers time with offers they’re not interested in, the user can tell the retailer (or advertiser) what they are interested in, now that’s powerful… plus there’s likely to be greater uptake by users if they can filter what they do and don’t want.

The potential advantages of iBeacons is huge, and with the built in fingerprint confirmation, the concerns over long range cyber pickpocketing or snooping are reduced. Of course if Apple had included a NFC chip as well that would have been perfect, but this is Apple’s way of breaking the back of NFC payments, are at least slowing it down in the short term so it can get leverage (sort of what it did with Adobe’s Flash dominance on the web vs HTML5, and look how that ended up). Apple do have their own a NFC / fingerprint solution in the works, but that may never see the light of day, especially if iBeacons and the fingerprint scanner take off in the way they’re planning!

So maybe I will upgrade to an iPhone 5S after all.

more details here on Gigaom

and check out the Estimote Beacons 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUIqfjpInxY]

Drivel

Creating Software With a Soul

I’ve been asked a few times before to explain the difference between UI & UX, but I think this amusing little video says it perfectly “Creating Software with a Soul”

[vimeo 19131028]

by Lyle

Drivel

Resigned to Viral Marketing

Fed up with a boss that wouldn’t listen, by being too focussed on viewing numbers and not quality content, Marina Shifrin decided to quit… but rather than simply writing an email giving her reasons why, she created a video herself to get her point across… and with 13,000,000 views in 5 days, she’s obviously getting a lot of attention, news networks, job offers, even several marriage proposals!?!? plus of course the attention of her former employer… who have also released a Meme video themselves, saying, “We’re Hiring”

As I’ve posted before: A campaign can give your product & service exposure, but it can’t make your business a success, only your customers can do that. If your campaign goes viral, great, but if your business or offerings aren’t as well, then the campaign was probably pointless. You want people talking about how good your product is, not how good your viral campaign was.

With 13M hits and counting within 5 days of posting the video, she’s also made a nice chunk of change out of advertising on YouTube.
My rough calculation: Views x 50% of CPM (cost per 1,000 adverts)
13,000,000 x (.5 x  $6.20/1,000) = $40,000

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew_tdY0V4Zo]

their response

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ukGrwL4ky4]

Brands & Marketing

The Real Thing

I really like coca cola, when I was in my 20’s I’d drink about 2-3 ltrs of the stuff a day (yes you read that correctly, that’s 8-10 cans a day), and contrary to what you may think, I was as thin then as I am now, plus I still have all my own teeth!

But Coca-Cola’s having a tough time at the moment, with greater public awareness on the obesity epidemic and the reported dangers of artificial sweeteners such as Aspartame, their sales of diet coke have dropped by 3% (diet Pepsi down 6.2%), while Coke is down 1% (Pepsi down 3.4%). Coca-Cola announced earlier in the year that they would start a new advertising campaign defending the use of these sweeteners. But let’s hope for their sake that it’s more successful than their previous campaign on obesity.

That didn’t go too well, going by the drop in sales, the comments on their Youtube and Facebook pages, plus the meme video with an overdubbed voice over that appeared within a couple of days of the original video. I can’t help but think they would have been better off not trying to spin it in such a positive manner, and rather than telling us to come together, maybe they should have come a bit clearer with the facts, as without doing so, they simply left themselves open.

Maybe due to the online backlash from last time, is why so far, they’ve stuck to print advertising, but in this world of social media, they know better than anyone, you need to be out their participating in dialogue, and not simply broadcasting your message

Meme video 1,714,573 views (1,000,000 more than the original coke advert)
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHhCP5ad-zM]

The original commercial (734,458 views)
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zybnaPqzJ6s]

New Advertising Campaign

Quality-&-Ingredients-hed-2013

Brand Building

What’s the Cost of a Bad Brand and What’s…

What’s your brand really worth to you? If you’re Coca Cola it’s a heck of a lot, in the past year alone Brand Finance estimate that Coke lost $9bn in Brand Value! In comparison BP and it’s recent Gulf of Mexico disaster lost $3.4bn in brand value last year, only a third of Coke’s loss? Does anyone recall a major Coke slick last year? So what did Coca Cola do so disastrously wrong last year? Not much actually, it appears to be more down to a shift in consumer interests, moving to more healthy and non-carbonated drinks, ouch!

Nokia took the biggest hit of anyone losing $8.8bn in Brand Value last year! The Top of the crop is Google, with a Brand Value (BV) of $44bn

But what does this all mean? To get a bit of perspective, Coke’s BV is now $26bn = 37% of it’s $70bn Market Capital (MC),  Nokia’s BV is $9.6bn = 28% of it’s $27bn MC, Google’s $44bn = 30% of it’s $143bn MC… while the likes of Apple, (whom appear to be in the press all the time) have a BV of $29.5bn which is only 12% of it’s $244bn MC, meaning Coke’s Brand Value is worth 3 times as much to it’s share price than Apple!

While ExxonMobil (the worlds largest company) with a MC of $312bn, has a BV of $14bn, which is just 4.3%

So as you can see, brands are very important, but they can be far more valuable to some companies than others.

more info here

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Future

Envisioning the Near Future of Technology Infographic

This is such a wonderful infographic

Michell Zappa

you should follow me on twitter here

Tech Stuff

Cash is For Squares

[vimeo https://vimeo.com/63784924]

Square

Brands & Marketing

What You Lookin’ At?

Now here’s a neat use for a lenticular poster

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zoCDyQSH0o]

Brand Building

Do You Know Where You’re Going?

Alice asked the Chesire Cat, who was sitting in a tree.
“What road do I take?”
“Where do you want to go?” the cat asked.
“I don’t know” Alice answered.
“Then, it really doesn’t matter, does it?” said the cat.

If your destination or goals are vague, then the decisions you make will reflect that.

You can apply this philosophy to numerous aspects of your life, be it your job, your personal life, your retirement plans etc unless you’re clear on what you really want, then you’re unlikely to make informed decisions that will help you achieve something truly fulfilling, you need a compass to point you in the right direction.

In Branding terms, these are referred to as your Core Values… as I’ve written before “Your core values are the very essence of what you or your company stand for, strip away everything else and the core values remain, they become your compass in good times and bad times, they guide your decision making process” more on that here

Applying this sort of branding technique to your personal life may seem a bit strange at first, but it could really help, especially if you’re stuck in a rut, or find it difficult to make decisions. Core Values are a reflection of who you are, your essence, you don’t make them up, you discover and refine them.

As David Eagleman explains in his book Incognito, “The next time a friend laments that she cannot decide between two options, tell her to flip a coin. The important part is to assess her gut feeling after the coin lands. If she feels a subtle sense of relief at being told what to do by the coin, then that’s the right choice for her. If instead, she concludes that it’s ludicrous for her to make that decision based on a coin toss, that will cue her to choose the other option”

Why? It’s all to do with the fact that the unconscious mind has already made the decision, it’s just that your conscious mind, which is much slower, hasn’t caught up yet, in this instance, your unconscious mind represents your Core Values. So if you’re someone that usually goes with your gut feeling, great, but wouldn’t it be good to refine the process!

Fun

Forget Fish, Get Fired!

Build a man a fire & he’ll be warm for a day… set a man on fire & he’ll be warm for the rest of his life!

Brand Building

Which came first the egg or the credit card?

I’m often surprised by how many times I’ve been asked by friends & clients to help them name a business or service, as they believe, once they have the name sorted, everything else will fall into place, but this isn’t the best way to do it (but it can work sometimes). What comes first the product or the name? (when I say product I’m referring to your company, services, products), hopefully you will say the product.

Depending on how you market yourself, ie your company name explaining what you do as a company may be vital, or it may be irrelevant. eg Kwik-Print informs you that they’re a printers and they’re quick, while the name MacDonalds has nothing to do with fast food. You should try avoiding negative connotations within the name, and if you’re using a descriptive name you need to get to the point, plus whatever you end up with it should be as memorable as possible or even unforgettable.  Of course you can break all the rules and end up with a name that’s descriptive, an oxymoron, has negative connotations yet still unforgettable. I own no paper™, it has the word “no” in the name (can’t get much more negative than that!), it’s descriptive yet an oxymoron, as it says exactly what we don’t do as a company, we don’t do anything that involves using paper, yet it’s unforgettable.

So if you agree that the product comes first, then surely the next step is, defining your goals, your service offerings, your branding etc well, not exactly, the most important aspect of your business, no matter what industry you’re in, it’s your customers, without them you don’t have a business, plain and simple, so what your customers get out of your product is key to everything. The more you can make your name about what they want & not what you do, the better. Here’s an example, if the benefits for you customers is to help them in their day to day lives and to help them achieve new goals etc, then you’re obviously having a positive affect on them. So, you should be focusing your naming efforts on the outcome for your clients and not on you & your services. You should be looking at the positive results of your service, not the service itself, your audience & customers will only be interested in the results, so that’s where you need to hook them.

Here’s a list of things you should consider before finalising your name and in this order as well.
Your Mission
Your Vision
Your Core Values
Your Unique Selling Point
Your Emotional Selling Point
Your Brand
Your Tagline / Strapline
Your Identity
Your name (Yeah sorry about that, but it’s way down here!)
Your Logo

Briefly, your mission sets the goal for your organisation, it’s purpose. Your vision is more personal and motivational, a driver to help you fulfill your mission. Your core values are the very essence of what you or your company stand for, strip away everything else and the core values remain, they will be your compass in good times and bad times. Before I move on it’s important to understand the importance of this. Your values become the very glue that holds your company together, your values are things you either know already or discover, you can’t invent them or fake them. Plus they must not be confused with your service offering (ie Disney’s core purpose is to make people happy, not build theme parks or make cartoons). Your unique selling point is what makes you different from the competition. The emotional selling point is how customers will feel about using you or your service. Your Brand is your promise, it reflects your Core Values, but note your brand is what your customers think & perceive about you, it’s what they walk away with, it’s important that you live up to your promises and deliver them. Your tagline, supports your brand, it says in words what you can’t necessarily express with a picture or icon. Your identity is the visual element that supports your brand & it’s message (note that, audio, smell, taste & touch are elements to some companies/products identity & brand). Then we get to the the name & eventually your logo.

Of course you can always ignore this entirely, and just come up with a name that has absolutely nothing to do with your product, then market the hell out of it. Egg did it with their credit card & bank services, it’s not unforgettable, but it’s certainly memorable, plus it’s been very successful. Of course marketing alone won’t make your business a success, it’s your customers that make your business a success, so focus your efforts on your customers, as they’re the best viral marketing campaign you can ever have, remember, make your business viral, not your marketing.

Not What You Think

Steal

Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.

Devour films, music, books, paintings, poems, photographs, conversations, dreams, trees, architecture, street signs, clouds, light and shadows.

Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic.

Authenticity is invaluable.

Originality is non-existent.

Don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it.

Remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”

I stole this from Paul Arden (although he stole it from Jim Jarmusch first)

Brands & Marketing

Make Your Business Viral, Not Just Your Campaigns

A campaign can give your product & service exposure, but it can’t make your business a success, only your customers can do that. If your campaign goes viral, great, but if your business or offerings aren’t as well, then the campaign was probably pointless. You want people talking about how good your product is, not how good your viral campaign was.

Brands & Marketing

Do You Want a Green Egg?

“Help us help the environment, go paperless” is the pitch you get from your utility company, your bank, your broadband provider and anyone else that sees sending you a paper statement or invoice in the post as a cost to them. We all know that they don’t actually care about the cost to the environment, that’s just marketing spin, we know they need to look good because everyone else is turning green, so they have to too.

Which is fine, but they should at least stick to their end of the bargain. When I sign up to be paperless, that’s exactly what I want, they promised not too send me any more paper in the post, but they lied. Of course they kept their end of the deal on one level (but only because it cost them actual money) I no longer get the statements and invoices sent out to me (although I now have the inconvenience of going to them to find them, having to remember yet another username and password, plus they only keep them for a year, what???? so I have to download and store them myself! but that’s another story for another day)… but I still get just as much marketing junk mail from them trying to entice me with new offers and services. Where’s their green credentials now?

Thankfully I don’t get anywhere near the amount of junk mail I used too, but it still annoys me that I still get any at all… especially as like most people, it never gets opened, as it all instantly goes into the recycle bin. There was a time years ago that I would open it, but only to see if any contained a freepost envelope… why? so I could stuff it full of the junk mail I’d received from someone else, which I would then drop in the post box on the way to the office in the morning. I know, not very grown up, not very clever and not good for the environment, but it made me smile (in fact it made me smile just now when I thought about it again!)

Of all the companies that I have accounts with, I believe only Egg banking had the option to stop ALL post, and sticking to their promise, I’ve not had a single piece of marketing or post from them through my letter box in years, yes I get the odd email, but that’s OK, it’s not everyday, just once a month, if that, plus I can automate it to the junk folder if I wish, so no biggie. Let’s just hope it stays that way, now that they’ve been bought out by Barclays!

So in answer to the question, yes I like my eggs green.

Wize Wordz

Stick to What You Know

“It’s not necessary to use chop-sticks, 
when a knife and fork will do.”
Unknown Chinese Businessman in Singapore

Brand Building

Be Unforgettable

When you devise your company name or create it’s brand & identity, create a marketing/ advertising/ viral campaign, put on a live event or show, interact with a client or customer, you have a choice…

you can be memorable…
you can be remarkable
you could even be phenomenal…
but best of all, be unforgettable!
(for the right reasons of course!) 

Fun

Breaking The Rules

Rules of Grammar: A double negative is a no no

Brand Building

Why oh Why

“its not what, but why you do something that matters”
Brendan Mitchell
Tech Stuff

WiFi Visualisation as You’ve Never Seen it Before

“In order to study the spatial and material qualities of wireless networks, we built a WiFi measuring rod that visualises WiFi signal strength as a bar of lights. When moved through space the rod displays changes in the WiFi signal. Long-exposure photographs of the moving rod reveal cross sections of a network’s signal strength.”

[vimeo 20412632]

YOUrban.no

you should follow me on twitter here

Drivel

You Get What You Pay For

I know this has been floating around for a while, but looking at it again this morning I thought I should share it in case anyone missed it first time round. You can apply this to most things in life, you get what you pay for, if you pay peanuts, don’t be surprised when you get a monkey

Originally posted by Colin Harman

you should follow me on twitter here

Visualisation & Infographics

Just Say No

A design isn’t finished when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away… good design is about saying no.

Occam’s Razor: “the simplest solution is almost always the best”

Fun

Keepin’ It Real

I saw this cartoon posted on Phil’s Unionversity Website yesterday… as the founder of no paper I simply had to repost it, plus I thought it was genius. There’s plenty of other great cartoons on the site

more at poorly drawn lines

you should follow me on Twitter here

Drivel

It’s Time to Throw in the Tau

I generally keep this to myself, but I’m actually a bit of a maths geek at heart… Hey, where are you going? come back here… don’t worry I’m not about to bore you with loads of maths I promise.

Today is Tau day, 28th June, although you have to use that weird back to front American way of writing the date to see what I mean, it’s 6.28, get it?

No? mmmmm… would it help if I said March 14th is Pi day? (3.14)

OK if you still haven’t got it, Tau = 2x Pi or to put it another way 2 x 3.14 = 6.28 tadah!

anyway doesn’t matter, what does matter is the video below.

A talented musician named Michael John Blake composed a piece of music that transposes the numbers from Tau to 126 decimal places onto the musical scale… and for those math-muso geeks out there, it’s set to 125.6 BPM = 6.28 x 20.

But forget the geekness that lies beneath this composition, just listen to it, it’s wonderful. By the way, Michael also created a composition based on Pi, but had to remove it off the net due to a copyright infringement claim? yep can you believe it, another composer claimed he’d thought of the idea first and composed a piece of music on Pi… what’s next the Fibonacci Sequence!?!?

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3174T-3-59Q]

Oh and for an explanation of Tau, I can’t think of a better way than this very informative and amusing video by Vi Hart

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG7vhMMXagQ]

You should follow me on Twitter here

Tech Stuff

Daisy Disk Sunburst UI

I stumbled across this app a few days ago and purchased it, not because I needed or would likely use the app that often, but because I simply loved the User Interface… and while it’s beautifully executed it’s not a case of form over function, this UI is a really elegant solution and works brilliantly… have a look at the video below to see for yourself (they’ve even uploaded the UI development history onto Flickr)

I have no idea what the sales demand of such a utility would be on the Mac platform alone, I don’t think it would be very large, which is a shame as the developers have spent an enormous amount of effort creating a stunning looking app and building a strong brand and identity around it, but it seems to have been abandoned, probably due to lack of sales. It looks like they made the classic mistake of focussing on developing the solution instead of ensuring the problem was big enough to warrant their investment.

[vimeo https://vimeo.com/22346304 width=”500″ height=”281″]

Developer: Daisy Disk
UI history on Flickr

 

Brand Building

Defining a Fan

A short film exploring the roles of fan culture and their importance to brands.

Personally I think Aaron Bogucki nails the definition of a fan by saying “A fan is someone that finds something so inspirational that they alter their lifestyle to support it”

An important takeaway is that big brands need to respect that for someone to be a real fan and possible advocate, they need to do so freely and without pressure or coercion.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/41129290 width=”500″ height=”281″]

created by we are amplify

Brands & Marketing

Pay Up, or We’ll Send The Boy Round

mmmm, having avoided paying £500m in tax this year, it’s rather ironic of Barclays to create this advert, but maybe that’s the whole point, it will undoubtedly get tongues wagging… although I’ve got to add, I really liked the advert.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ipX2UoWDYlA]

To send your own gentle reminder here

Visualisation & Infographics

The Doctor Will Actually See You Now

A common problem faced by patients, is keeping track of their condition and remembering dates and details when asked for information by a physician. I’d pondered creating a personal visual health diary app in the past, something that prompts a patient to input information about their condition, be it hourly, daily, weekly etc. This data could then be presented to the physician in a visual and interactive way.

And I’m not the only one to think this could be useful, Katie McCruddy, a Myasthenia Gravis sufferer, has kept a detailed diary of her condition from the age of 13, but she is also an interactive designer, so when she was faced with explaining her condition and history to a new physician she thought visualisations would help get the details across quickly and effectively.

To see how effective it was see these posts The Timeline & The Consultation

Brands & Marketing

ImprovEverywhere at TED

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw52e0dfCaA]

Brands & Marketing

One For The Ladies

Here’s a novel way of positively implementing facial recognition software for an advertising campaign by Plan UK.

If the poster recognises you as a woman (90% success rate), then it displays a video highlighting how women around the world are denied choices based solely on their gender, with a call to action to become engaged in the plan. If it believes you’re a guy, you’re not shown the advert but instead presented statistics on the problem, turning the table and driving home the message that as a man you’ve now experienced what it’s like to have your freedom of choice taken away purely down to your gender.

Neat idea that should garner plenty of press coverage and undoubtedly get a few people hot under the collar, but that’s a good thing!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BHnpSGdIGAI]

more info:
Plan uk
Choices for Girls

Brands & Marketing

The Bark Side

Chewbacca’s my favourite

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6ntDYjS0Y3w]

Brands & Marketing

Fotoshop by Adobé

This is a genius piece of self promotion by Jesse Rosten

“pro-pixel intensifying fauxtanical hydro-jargon micro bead extract infused with nutrive volumizing technology will leave your face virtually unrecognisable… My skin feels like plastic!”

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/34813864 width=”500″ height=”281″]

thanks to Unionversity for posting this first

Visualisation & Infographics

Got a Minute?

Drivel

Makes You Think Doesn’t It?

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7pY0Opyyi8]

So switch off your computer, go outside and do something!

Brands & Marketing

Apple’s Flashy iPod Touch Ad

There’s a iPod Touch advert on Wired’s homepage that’s very smart.

Anyone not in the digital media industry, will likely look at the advert and not be overly impressed, but technically, this ad is very impressive, as it extends beyond what you assume is it’s frame, the iPod covers the menu bar above (which remains active), and that my friend is really neat, in a very geeky way.

I’m assuming it’s done with a combination of still graphics synced perfectly with the video below, but I could be wrong. Although the question to ask now, is whether this is all done in HTML5, or did Apple use Flash?

Drivel

Facebook Timeline Photoshop Template

Facebook timelines have now gone mainstream, as you can see from the screen grab of mine below, you can play around with the top image however you please.

This top graphic is 849 x 312 pixels, with the small square being 180×180 (although this gets scaled down to 125 x 125. But rather than you having to worry about setting that up, I thought I’d upload Photoshop & Illustrator templates so anyone could make their own with little effort.

The .zip file contains layered Photoshop & Illustrator files 849 x 312px with a positional graphic for the profile picture in the Photoshop file.

download .zip
UPDATE: Almost 2,500 downloads in 21 days! Wow, I wasn’t expecting that!

Brands & Marketing

The Next Train Will Arrive in the Vegetable Aisle

Hate grocery shopping? Hate waiting for public transport? Then why not combine them and make them twice as bad? ah, but elementary maths tells us that adding two negatives creates a positive!

This is a really simple, yet very effective way to get customers to try out Tesco’s online retail store. Perfect for South Korea, where 80% of the population have web enabled smart phones. Unfortunately Tesco would unlikely have the same success on their home turf, with no mobile reception and crowded rush hour platforms, the London Underground would be an impossible test bed.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btJBwhzGcoo]

Drivel

The Web Icon

A couple of years ago I needed a blog icon, realising there wasn’t a universally accepted one in existence, I created one to use for myself and threw it out into the world for anyone to use… it became far more popular than I ever expected, averaging 45,000 downloads a year!

A couple of months ago, I joked that I would look at creating an equivalent icon for websites, I actually sketched out a few ideas, but didn’t take it any further, until this weekend when I was realised I need one for my ID me at website, so I sat down to think about it a little more.

After numerous sketches and scribbled ideas based around “www”, “://” hyperlinks (even, dare I say it, a spider’s web), I eventually came back to a very simple solution and the first thing I’d drawn, a “w”

In keeping with the earliest web standards I used the web colour #0000FF (r=0 / g=0 / b=255) for the blue, plus added an underline to the “w”, both of these referring to the default way to identifying a hyperlink in standard HTML.

I’ve created a stylised “w” although I don’t see a reason why an underlined “w” in another font couldn’t work equally as well. As to colour, #0000FF makes perfect sense, but as with the blog icon, a colour more in keeping with it’s surroundings could be used.

As with the blog icon, I’m throwing this icon out there for anyone to use, tweak, do whatever they like with, totally gratis and without restriction. A mention or link back would be appreciated, but it’s not a prerequisite.

Let me know what you think and whether you’d use it, or know of anything else in use, I’ve included all original vector artwork and PNG’s with the blog icon .zip

 

 

 

 

Drivel

There Can Be Only One!

aha, I got a few responses/questions to my post last week about the death of email, so thought I’d explain it a little clearer.

Email may be being used less and less but we need email addresses, as they’re the most widely used open standard that we can use to uniquely identify ourselves on the internet. Of course Mr Zuckerberg would like to change that, and make having to have a Facebook ID the defacto ID and login for the web. That won’t happen as the web community naturally resists when a monopoly gets too big. Ironically you still need an email address to create a Facebook ID initially, although I’m sure it won’t be long before you can use just your mobile number to do it.

So why do I think needing an email address is likely to become a thing of the past, let’s look at phone numbers and domain names first.

When you purchase a mobile phone or have a landline installed, you get a unique number for your country or area, these numbers have in turn been allocated to the service provider you’ve chosen. If you choose to change service provider you can usually transfer the mobile number to the new one, thus retaining your number.

When you purchase a domain name, you choose a registrar that offers the services you need and pay them annually to retain it. If you decide to have a website you point the domain name at an IP address allocated to the service provider. The IP address is the unique ID number for the webserver that will host your website, 217.77.185.55 is an example. NB every device that connects to a network has a unique IP address.

So what? Well imagine this…

You go to a service provider that gives you a unique number, just like getting a mobile phone or a domain name, but unlike a mobile number, this number replaces your mobile, email, domain name, message service, voice calls, Twitter ID, Facebook ID, in fact any social network you choose to register it with.

If your number were +878101393436328

http://n.878101393436328 is your domain
@878101393436328 is you email, instant message ID
+878101393436328 is your phone number and entering the number is how you’re found on social networks (the same way someone finds you using your email address or mobile number)

You control how your messages are routed the same way you decide who hosts your website, or handles your email. So if someone calls +878101393436328 you decide if it gets routed to a mobile, landline, desktop, TV, tablet (or they could all ring at once, or in sequence), same when someone sends you an SMS, email, instant message, Tweet, Skype etc, it makes no difference how the message originated, as long as it’s routed correctly… the same way someone can call you on your mobile from the other side of the world using their phone / Skype, the audio gets routed to you instantly, no matter where you both are.

This will only be possible when the standards are open, there’s no monopoly and it’s available to everyone. That’s when email addresses or having to be on the same social network or instant message service or same VOIP service will become obsolete and a thing of the past.

Further reading: The ITU (International Telephone Union) introduced a universal personal telephone number (UPT) +878 in 2001 (wikipedia), controlled by VISIONng. ENUM is the process of converting a telephone number into an internet name space.

Drivel

Email Est Mort, Vive Le Email

I’ve been pondering the longevity of email for the past few years, wondering whether it’s time was numbered due to the ease and rise of messaging and social networks. And I’m certainly not the only one that’s considered this, there’s been plenty of opinions and debates about this online. Mark Zuckerberg said email was dead a few weeks ago (oh really, well you try signing up for Facebook without an email address, then let me know how you get on), plus on monday the CEO of Atos put a ban on email within his organisation stating employees should all be using social networks and SMS instead! (yeah that’s gonna work isn’t it… the staff will love having their work colleagues on their social networks!)

But think about this, email and messages in whatever format remains, but the days for having an “email address” are numbered! mmm, now that’s an interesting idea isn’t it.

But that won’t be until the various telephone, email services and social networks agree an open standard for messages and voice to flow freely and seamlessly between them, and that is unlikely to happen without coercion. The reason email has survived so long and is so prevalent is the same reason phone calls and SMS have proved so effective and robust, because they rely on open standards that anyone can use without restriction or more importantly, additional licensing costs.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could compose a message and send it, without worrying how the recipients have chosen to receive it, be it on their mobile as SMS, on a social network, as email, or whatever else they’ve decided upon.

Apple are making moves into this area, although very slowly, I write a text message on my iPhone, as I would any SMS, to a friend and it arrives on their iOS device, but it may have been routed to them as data (not an SMS), so via email servers but displays in their Messages app as an SMS.

Doesn’t sound that amazing at first, mainly because Apple have made it so effortless, but when you really think about it, the underlying principle is in fact ground-breaking. I send an SMS, and the recipient still receives it, even if they’re not on a telephone network or have reception (as long as they have internet connectivity)

But let’s take this one small step further, what if you had a single ID (not separate email addresses, mobile, landline, Skype, messaging, Facebook, twitter etc), a single way for people to contact you regardless whether the contact was voice, text, image, email, instant-message etc. How cool would that be? (of course you could still have a separate one for personal and home).

You give someone your unique ID (probably numbers 0-9 only, so it can be input using a phone), then they call, SMS, email, message you and you receive it regardless of the device you’re using, if you preferred you could split the incoming messages so voice goes to your mobile/landline/desktop/tablet/TV, SMS and messages to your messaging app, email to your email app… whatever you want, it’s your choice, the sender doesn’t need to know, it makes no difference to them… it just works.

So how cool would it be to have a single ID… mmmm, now where have I heard that idea mentioned before 😉

Drivel

Hello World… Ahem, Hello Carrier IQ

How would you feel if your every location, keystroke, button push, SMS, URL and Web search you made on your mobile was monitored, read and stored by a piece of factory pre-installed software that automatically sends it to a company you’ve never heard of, plus this software cannot be switched off or removed? AKA a *rootkit

You wouldn’t like it would you? Well, if you have a modern Android, BlackBerry or Nokia phone, then that’s exactly what’s been happening from the first time you switched it on.

And when I say every keystroke, I mean EVERY single keystroke! so yes every login and password you’ve made, even over HTTPS, has been recorded and is now stored by Carrier IQ

Don’t believe that’s possible, then check out this Wired article, plus the video below (although jump to 11 mins in for the good / scary stuff!)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=T17XQI_AYNo]

Trevor Eckhart original post. The root kit creator Carrier IQ

* “rootkit,” a security term that refers to software installed at a low-level on a device, without a user’s consent or knowledge, in order to secretly intercept the device’s workings. Malware such as keyloggers and trojans are two examples.

UPDATE: there’s a Twitter hashtag for this now #CIQ

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Brendan Mitchell
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