Ian Fitzpatrick writes, collects and shares things here.
Some of these things have to do with brands, some of them have to do with buildings and places or machines or computers (which are, you know, machines, too). Each of them has to do with people, and the ways in which we respond to the stimuli around us.
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An interesting post last week over at Idea Sandbox on the concept of fallow field farming, and whether brands ought to explore a methodology that halts short-term growth to allow operations/markets to replenish:
What about the notion of letting the business rest for a season to allow it to rejuvenate? Instead of aggressively building new stores or launching new products – why not let that part of the business go fallow?
It’s an interesting notion – a distant cousin of creative destruction. Worth a read, given some free time.
Link: Farming Lesson to Save Your Brand on Idea Sandbox Categorized as: Links, People and Brands Published Dec 14.09
We’re suckers for rapid, identifiable transformation. It drives investment. It drives news cycles. It drives Twitter.
Calculated, unidentifiable transformation is a much murkier proposition (which is, perhaps, why the changes in China scare the hell out of so many Westerners). It’s also a big part of the reason for the collective impatience with President Obama – who promised change (but did not promise that it would be instantly recognizable).
I’ve noted frequently here, and in a particularly robust conversation with Gareth Kay, that there exists tremendous inherent value for brands in mundane, incremental change that reveals itself only through the larger transformations it enables. Consider the massively incremental transformations at HP as outlined by Carly Fiorina some years ago or the slow evolution of IBM into a services provider.
Read the full post...Categorized as: Notes on Things Seen, People and Brands Published Dec 08.09
In a post this week on the ongoing problems of subscription music services, Anthony Volodkin aptly summarizes the perilous landscape of the space from a user’s perspective:
Read the full post...So [instead] they end up in a minefield, whenever they try one of these services out. This minefield experience is present in every single music subscription service to date and comes from the simple impossibility of licensing all available recorded music. We all know why that’s so difficult, but this issue continuously eats away at the real, mainstream viability of these services regardless. Your users don’t care that it’s hard to license music.
Categorized as: Notes on Things Seen, People and Brands Published Oct 26.09
I’ve been ruminating all weekend on this video, created by the good folks at Moving Brands. In summary: they found that a white paper on ‘Living Brands’ dated quickly, as is the nature of such documents. Rather than republish the document in a new iteration, they decided to employ augmented reality as a means of updating the document in real time. Essentially, anyone who has purchased the publication will find that the document is truly evergreen.
Read the full post...Categorized as: Notes on Things Seen, People and Brands Published Oct 13.09
“Sometimes I like to talk about the “paradox of marketing.” As marketers we feel obligated to get our clients/brands where the eyeballs are. We then descend on that thing like vultures and in most cases we destroy that thing we originally loved and saw as an opportunity to reach consumers. (Think George from “Of Mice and Men” with the rabbit.) We’re currently in the process of killing Twitter as well.”
– Freddie Laker via Take Me To Your Leader
Categorized as: People and Brands, Quotations Published Oct 12.09
Pianotrappan:
”Take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator and feel better” is something we often hear or read in the Sunday papers. Few people actually follow that advice. Can we get more people to take the stairs over the escalator by making it fun to do? See the results here.
(via Rolighetsteorin and The Fun Theory by Volkswagen
Read the full post...Categorized as: Notes on Things Seen, People and Brands Published Sep 11.09
From Valeria Maltoni’s interview with Geoff Livingston this week on Conversation Agent:
Social media had an opportunity to make more companies accountable, but by and large, companies are evading this call to responsibility. I question whether social in corporate America can get the job done, and instead am starting to look at other ways to affect [...]
Categorized as: People and Brands Published Sep 09.09
Paul Isakson has a brilliant, and I think quite on-point, take on where the social web is today, and where it’s headed. You’ve likely seen a great deal of this before, albeit perhaps in slightly different contexts.
The clincher, for me, is this gem:
The best way to get people to do stuff with you, is to first join them in what they are already doing.
It’s so easy to get caught up in the mojo of this discussion that one loses rational perspective on the basic nature of human interaction. This simple tenet is a great rule by which to operate, and one far too often overlooked. Kudos, Paul.
Link: on Categorized as: Links, People and Brands Published Sep 09.09
Some choice pearls from an imagined, and quite interesting, Media Magazine ‘interview’ this month with Bill Bernbach (who passed away in 1982), culled from verbatim quotes, and surprisingly prescient:
I want to warn you against believing that advertising is a science…Logic and overanalysis can immobilize and sterilize an idea. It’s like love – the more you [...]
Categorized as: People and Brands, Quotations Published Apr 10.09
Jason Kottke has a post today recalling this quote from legendary ad man Howard Gossage from Harpers in 1960:
Outdoor advertising is peddling a commodity it does not own and without the owner’s permission: your field of vision. Possibly you have never thought to consider your rights in the matter. Nations put the utmost importance on [...]
Categorized as: People and Brands Published Mar 24.09
Over on ISO50 this week, Scott Hansen posts on Linda Aldredge’s treehouse – a lovely construction outside of Woodstock, New York, covered in more detail by Inhabitat and Domino.
Aldredge, from the Inhabitat interview:
With treehouse building, you have to take into account all the various changes a tree will make in it’s lifetime with your house. [...]
Categorized as: Notes on Things Seen, People and Brands Published Mar 17.09
There are some really intriguing underpinnings of an infrastructure meme at the moment, which I’ll attempt to coalesce around some ongoing social media trends. Please bear with me:
Deepak Kumar, a consultant with the ICFAI Journal of Infrastructure, outlines the distinctions between ‘hard infrastructure’ and ’soft infrastructure’ in these terms1:
(The) infrastructure sector is divided into hard [...]
Categorized as: People and Brands, Things I Have Written Published Mar 12.09
Before there was a Heroes comic book series, Marvel created a fantastic series of comics called ‘What-If?’ that lived entirely outside the (admittedly limited) constraints of the existing character and narrative arcs of its properties.
Some of my favorite titles:
What if Conan the Barbarian walked the earth today?
What if Captain America had been elected president?
What if [...]
Categorized as: People and Brands Published Mar 10.09
A reminder that large brands using social media is good, but large brands using social media thoughtfully is much better. 140 characters are more than enough for grace and courtesy.
That said, imagine if (God forbid), you could Tweet to find out if your specific flight will have WiFi. Baby steps, I guess.
*****
Mashable has a great post today on the collective benefits of enterprise social media use. A gem:
We should also remember that big brands are nothing more than successful companies who create many jobs, wealth, and bring great products into our lives. This means they have every right to a place in the open and democratic social landscape as the rest of us.
Indeed. Please take the time to read the full post.
via Brand Flakes for Breakfast.
Link: on Categorized as: Links, People and Brands Published Feb 18.09
Ran across this sign today in the parking lot of the wholesale giant from whom I was purchasing baby wipes and dishwashing detergent:
It brought to mind a similar sign I’ve come across at IKEA (my shopping habits are frighteningly naked at the moment):
I happen to very much like the idea behind both messages: effectively that [...]
Categorized as: People and Brands Published Feb 17.09
Two equally-addictive toys I’m playing with this week:
1. The Brand Asset Valuator: Some of you will be familiar with this particular gadget from Y&R (or at least from John Gerzema of Y&R). The Flex application allows you to compare the momentum of up to three brands simultaneously along four distinct criteria:
Energized Differentiation – the measure [...]
Read the full post...Categorized as: Notes on Things Seen, People and Brands Published Feb 17.09
I was never much of a skater, though not for a lack of trying. In the end, I think I was much more interested in the culture that it embodied (and was as far flung from my rural Texas upbringing as could be imagined) – mostly the recordings of Skatemaster Tate1.
Still, absurd co-opting of skate [...]
Categorized as: Notes on Things Seen, People and Brands Published Feb 13.09
Two more seemingly-unrelated articles, with a thread in common:
ESPN’s Buster Olney, among the best sportswriters in America, and my favorite source for baseball analysis, wrote a poignant piece last Saturday – before the news of Alex Rodriguez’ positive drug test broke – in which he argues that it is a business imperitive that baseball players [...]
Categorized as: Notes on Things Seen, People and Brands Published Feb 12.09
PSFK posts today on Google’s Power Meter initiative.
It’s a fabulous idea, to be sure: Allow anyone with a smart meter to plug into the Google application and retrieve a visualization of their actual power usage, thus enabling users to make informed decisions about their power consumption, and ultimately cut down on both usage and costs [...]
Categorized as: Notes on Things Seen, People and Brands Published Feb 03.09
Poster Boy is a New York subway artist who, it appears, eschews spraypaint for a razor blade.
His work is wildly popular, and one imagines that he’s on the way to a show of his own. View his Flickr stream here.
While watching the video, I found myself wondering what the folks at Showtime think about the [...]
Read the full post...Categorized as: Notes on Things Seen, People and Brands
Bobby Solomon’s fantastic blog covers all manner of design-related significa – from gallery shows and events to the latest found creations. Updated with great frequency and dedication.
A blog from the magazine of the same name, devoted to the study of objects – and the relationships of those objects to the people who use and engage them. Always intriguing.