Mutually Inclusive PR

With a Wink and a Nod to Spinal Tap...

Brown Communications got a grudging pat on the back from AdRants' Steve Hall for their latest self-promotion on their storefront billboard.

This one features an amplifier volume switch that goes up to 11.  Brings back memories of Spinal Tap, the great mockumentary that showed Christopher Guest how it's done.

In Spinal Tap, the heavy metal rocker enthuses about the fact that after fudging the number on his amplifier, it now goes "one louder" than the others.

Nice to see the other Saskatchewan marketing/digital/PR blogger get some attention.  Nice one, Derek.

Tags:  saskatchewan, outdoor, promotion, advertising, browncommunications, regina

Previous post:  Self-promotion: Make a Statement
 

Holiday Tableaux - Mix and Match

Via Ed Lee's blog, I came across Choose Your Own Holiday Adventure, set up by iStudio.

This is a nice little self-promotion tool for the web design firm.  I chose to NOT include music, so it's safe for work (unless you click on the video game - then all bets are off).

Based on your input, the Playmobil figures are arrayed in a tableau, so don't complain if it looks really weird.  (Playmobil figures always look a bit sinister, with their bland, Stepford normalness.  I think the dog did it in the study with a pipe wrench.)

For a look at a traditional Eggertson Christmas, check out my own holiday adventure by clicking the banner ad below (nobody will try to sell you anything).  I think Ed's North Korea Christmas has a more authentic feel...

And to everyone at iStudio, have a great holiday, wherever you are, and whatever play figures you choose to play with!

Josh Gets the Money Shot for Signage Fetishists

Confesion: I have a thing for signage.  I rave about good signage, and contantly harp about the perils of bad signage.

When I see a new stop sign - without warning signs about the change - all I see is a lawsuit.  When I can barely navigate a parking garage because the signs are hard to read, hard to understand and poorly placed, I vow not to return to that mall (well, for a few months, anyway).

When I speed up after the super speed bumps, only to find out someone mistakenly placed the 50 km/h sign before the last speed bump, instead of after it, I start to fantacize about painful procedures mistakenly performed on city engineers.  (Try going over one of those extra large speed bumps at 50 K when your spouse is recovering from whiplash.  Now go look up pain and suffering in the dictionary.)

So, I'm a signage fetishist.  I'm not ashamed.

I was particularly pleased to come across Josh Hallett's photos from an Ikea.  The signage - like the rest of the store and product design - is simple, elegant and extremely functional.

The spotlight trained on the arrow on the floor is a particularly nice touch.  Thanks for sharing, Josh. His Flickr photos. Check his blog, too.

Tangential linking:  For a different take on design, check out Ross Howard's post about ambient signifiers, and how the use of sound on the Tokyo rail system suggests ways to subtly help website visitors find their way (and no, Ross isn't suggesting musical websites).

Tags:  signage, kea, retail, signs, joshhallett, functionality

Flickr's Open Approach Continues to Pay Off

Every time I try out another third-party tool to view my Flickr photos, the creative options out there reinforces the cool factor in the Flickr brand.

But it's not just my photos I can play around with. All public photos on Flickr are available for anyone to view and sort.

Kevin Dugan pointed me to a site that lets you browse visually by tag, but there are dozens of other ways to play.  Check out some more toys.

Without Inherent Excitement, Word of Mouth would Fizzle

When's the last time someone broke into the conversation because they couldn't wait to tell you about a nondescript product or service that met some of their needs in a generic sort of way?

Unless your friends are broke and have found something free that would normally cost hundreds of dollars, it's not likely.  People may be pleased when they find something that sort of meets their needs, but they don't get excited about it.

And excitement lies at the heart of generating word of mouth.

Software developer Eric Sink has an entertaining and enlightening piece about the need to narrow the focus of your product design so that it perfectly meets the needs of a group of people. Then you have potential for generating buzz, if buzz doesn't just bubble up by itself.

Designing something that sort of meets the needs of a huge group of people? Don't even think about word of mouth. And why are you even doing it in the first place?

Since I found the link to Eric's piece on Robert Scoble's blog, I'm officially declaring this Scoble Week on Mutually Inclusive PR.  Next week I promise to look further afield for topics...

Update:  I fixed the headline, which said "fizz' instead of "fizzle."

Tags: robertscoble, buzz, word of mouth, wom, promotion, excitement

Powered by Qumana

Design Flaw as Brand Experience

The first time I started our Xbox I couldn't believe the incredibly noisy start-up sound that emanated from the TV speakers.

Obviously, the design team never tried to catch a quick video game at 2 a.m., while everyone else is asleep.

It's designed to draw attention to the fact that you're about to play games instead of:

• > sleeping
• > doing chores
• > working, or
• > monitoring the reactor core.

Thanks, Microsoft, for such an annoying experience that I will always associate with your product.

Now, the company is planning to hard-code a start-up sound into the long-delayed Windows Vista operating system. Now even the geeks won't be able to disable that Windows trill, as they boot their laptops during a conference, meeting, phone call, symphony recoding session, or whatever.

On Scoble's blog, the decision is described as part of the Vista "brand experience."

Some design decisions are so anti-customer, it's hard to describe the stupidity behind them.

Tags: microsoft, mistakes, sound, branding, stupidity

Powered by Qumana

Branding Innovation #483 - Meat Labels that Look Stale-dated

Shopping at the Safeway a while ago, I kept picking meat packages up out of the meat cooler, looking them over, then putting them down again.  None of the meat appealed to me, but I couldn't figure out why.

I finally picked some beef, took it home, and noticed something about the new packaging.

The label's checkered tan accent colours emulate the look of paper that has had blood soaked into it, or is faded from age.

Brilliant brand-building.  This will certainly set Safeway meat apart from the competition.

Powered by Qumana

You Say Bad Design, I Say Not Overdesigned

Web seer Robert Scoble claims "ugly design" or "anti-marketing design" works well for web sites, because people have become suspicious of sites that look too well put together.  In a lot of ways, he's right.

Anyone who has been involved in direct marketing can tell you the most effective solicitation pieces aren't always the fanciest.  They're the ones that slip past people's defences long enough to have an impact.

Graphic designer and all-round publishing guru Robert MacDonald used to tell me that the pitch letters that worked best for him were two or three pages long, with lots of words underlined. By Scoble's standards, they would rate as anti-marketing pieces, because they were made to look and read like they came directly from the keyboard of the hard-working head of a non-profit organization who didn't have time for fancy page design.

However, Scoble's use of Google as an example of ugly design is off base.  It's a remarkably well-designed site, partly because they resist the temptation to load the site up with eye candy.

Pat McCarthy's advice is to focus on usability and search engine optimization first.

Powered by Qumana

Self-Promotion: Make a Statement

  Brown Communications Billboard - The Power Plug 
  Originally uploaded by Mutually Inclusive.

Brown Communications puts its best creative foot forward on a billboard on their Albert Street office in Regina.  The self promotion generally tries to get the observer to look twice, and hopefully think about the visual or verbal pun after they've driven by.

It's a good idea. When your office is on the main drag, use your office to make a statement. See their complete library of billboards.

Welcome Adrants readers. For more ad industry posts on this site, check out the Marketing category. Take a look around while you're visiting.

Links to this page: AdRants; Derek Leverington

A previous post about Brown by Advergirl.

Making Blog Information Easier to Access

Most people would agree that it would be great if information people plug into their weblogs was easily searched, retrieved and categorized for the kind of information it is. For example, getting a search bot to go out and find all the conferences on a certain topic scheduled for your region for the coming fiscal year might help you plan professional development. It's one thing to find only information that's been posted in events databases. But think of the possibilities of finding every mention in every blog as well.

What people can't agree on is a standard method.

I missed this debate back in October, but it's worth going back to look at. Stowe Boyd of Corante describes the debate between advocates of microformats and structured blogging.

Stowe Boyd

I won't drag you into a technical debate. Suffice to say that microformats is one method of cataloguing information (such as a movie review, or an event notification). It calls for the use of web page style sheets to insert information about what category of information is being published (ie. event date, event location, event time). Another method, structured blogging, would employ plug-ins to help bloggers categorize their information.

Boyd leans toward the microformat method (style sheet approach) over the structured blogging method, mostly because it requires less up-front agreement among players in different companies.

It's not for the technically challenged, but the debate extends across several months and many authors:

• Structured Blogging Wiki
• Ken Thompson - Structured Blogging Standard Launched
• Phillip Pearson - Structured Blogging
• Pete Cashmore - Riffs, Noodly and Microformats
• Joshua Porter - Structured Blogging: Who Is Benefitting and How?
• Gregory Narain - The Structured Blogging/Microformats Debate - Different Sides of the Same Coin

The discussion extends way beyond this small group, but these were the ones I could easily pull from a BlogPulse search of Boyd's blog. As I get more comfortable with tools like BlogPulse, it's changing the way I pursue a topic. Instead of being stuck with one or two perspectives, I can open my field of vision to see a broader discussion taking place across continents, interest groups and time frames.

Update:

• Shel Holtz has an excellent overview of structured blogging
• Bob Wyman of PubSub (which has sponsored two plug-ins to help bloggers) gives some examples of structured blogging in use
• Google Blog Search on Structured Blogging and Microformats (a lot of overlapping results)
• Technorati on Structured Blogging and Microformats
• Stowe Boyd continues to naysay
• Arnaud Leene argues that even if structured blogging takes specialized skills and effort, a devoted core of people will make it work