This episode contends with the reality of what’s happening in the design firm, as far as creative choice, influence, and direction, doesn’t always translate to the intended audience. How do you make creative decisions that break new ground and reach out and touch a whole lot of someones.
Program Length: 11′24
Listen here:
Download here: WKYD Transmission #2
Marketing for Baby Boomers as a Gen X Designer:
Well here goes my first audio blog posting ever –I even created my own intro music too. I feel so contributive to the www now!
This episode covers some of the unique perspectives of business and strategy that a Generation X designer may have when it comes to other generations (Baby boomer – Gen Y) in taking on possible new projects. I myself am Gen X born in 1972 –so I feel that I’m a premier authority on the subject.
Run Time: 12:37
Listen here:
Download here: WKYD Transmission #1
In our consumer world, where we have the scoop on everything happening that wants to be known, and sometimes not, coupled with national ad campaigns and international level product launches, what happened to the value of being an insider? I’m not talking about well-known gadget blogs here either.
In other terms; the quiet launch where a product is trickled to influencers and hubs, here and there, so that those involved will feel different from their peers–A given cultural grouping given the pass to be “In the know” of a life changing/enhancing experience through a brand or product.
The term “In” comes from the noun “Insider.” “Psssst, hey buddy. I got something that is really hot! You “In?” People always want to stand out, psychologically, emotionally and anywhere from major to subtle ways from one another in their settings for all sorts of reasons: some conscious, some not. Perhaps just for the reward of getting noticed and loved.
With a new product or service just try to build it slow. Build it regionally. Make it special at every Hub. As any gardener knows, good soil and proper watering make for strong root systems and eventually healthy living trees with far reaching branches. The fruit is only as good as the root.
I’m stoked! The Nintendo Wii product launch is a brand developer/marketers wet dream of a case study. They made a money engine that is no gimmick and is here to serve the public at large.
Where do we start!
Being first. For the console wars, Nintendo saw that being best was not a being a “first” category that they could win. Let Sony and Microsoft figure that one out – and perhaps at their expense (Sony loses money on each console). Nintendo’s pledge was to re-invite the larger public back to video gaming at any age. Sort of like –were all in this life thing together, so let’s play.
This pledge took the form of their new controller. The Wii Remote became a “first” in a category that Nintendo had the ingenuity to invent. That’s smart strategy. Strategy that can roll a thousand PR and news stories on –and you can see it reinforced in their advertising and marketing media.
As form follows function – it may be safe to assume that in the Nintendo boardroom they made a pledge to make gaming fun again for all people – especially for families and groups. This is where the Wii Remote design and game engine really took shape.
Current American social concerns. We can’t really know what went on at Nintendo HQ. Perhaps its just serendipity that has the new Wii Remote & Nunchuk controllers getting consumers off the couch in a fat obsessed America (NYC Bans Trans Fats : Super Size Me : Fast Food Nation : Kirstie Alley).
Every ad and early news release has centered on the product giving us an experience of coming together with loved ones and family to smile, shake and move. Any concerned parent who sees their beloved youth alone and sitting there staring at a screen or feeling a disconnect with the family is going to be motivated to buy a Wii in the hopes that their child’s metabolism will kick in and that they’ll open up and go play well with others.
When we see the ads, the clips posted on YouTube, the Wii Experience website itself, we’re spying on ourselves; like Jane Goodall, monkey see–monkey do. We can’t help but say; “I want to laugh with my friends like that!” The social benefits of the product are highlighted. Not art directed. Not focused on the physical design of the box. Not hyping the spec sheet. Not something artistically new in creative presentation. Every impression serves to remove the barrier to entry and give us vicarious living through fun media presentation.
With the TV ads themselves, someone did get just a hair too creative. Thank goodness they still include the family playing together, and that’s their main focus. The other portion of each ad seems to be like a plug for Japanese social relations and some sort of car ad. Yes we understand that Japanese are polite and will bow when they offer you a video game system at your door. Are those two actors/spokespersons showing up in real life and doing that? –That would be better. Get them doing that on video and YouTube it! Nintendo may come from Japan – but gamers live in a global landscape.
Ok wait –I have to go into the most powerful position Nintendo created for itself –the power of the AND! Consumers are reporting to news media that not only will they buy a Sony Playstation 3 OR an Xbox 360, but that they will buy one of those high end consoles AND a Nintendo Wii because of its low price point and unique playing experience. They have captured everyone.
Who’s Bad? Nintendo’s Bad! Check the rollout numbers. Wii has sold over 600,000 units (and counting) with a promise to ship 4 million units by the end of the year, while Sony has sold anywhere from 175K to 400K with a promise to ship one million units by the end of the year.
Was it strategy at work here? Was it just good timing? There are many, many, factors in an international product launch –no duh! But we can look back and say “Wow, good job, there’s something to take note of here.” –Tools and strategies that any campaign has the opportunity to utilize, especially if your product or service is a “first” or “leader” in its category. A good product with a good mission made for great PR and communications with the advertising serving to reinforce what newsgroups and peer networks were already reporting –Fun!
(Story image from Nintendo Wii site.)
This came out back in ’04 (PBS Frontline: The Persuaders), you remember then – right? Very worthy of watching if you have not done so and really worthy of re-watching to remember this: Advertising campaigns and brand strategy based around how your ad-agency sees the world (pursuit of industry recognition awards, creativity and ephemeral imagery) and not how your consumer relates and operates in the world (consumer benefits) will fail and blow your 12 million dollar advertising budget mmmmmm every time.
You can watch the entire 90-minute episode online here. Enjoy. BTW–Emotional Branding is so 2004!
There has been a brilliance in the visual arts for some time now. It occurs for me when two previously separate but conjunct ideas are married by their manifest forms. But I see a possible danger for societies exploration, growth and range of expression when the content sources or results are too nostalgic and shallow in their pop culture in references. Brief limited commercial ideas merging with brief limited commercial ideas leads to an instant “Wow!” but then what?
This “emergence of brilliance” is when something you’ve seen in one context, say a utilitarian object, a movie, or a piece of clothing merges with another object from another separate and well known context. They have a connection that was not seen before but aided by the artist in their coming together. So the skill we are after in this particular expressionistic from becomes the skill of mixing disparate contexts and forging a treaty in the middle.
It is possible to see that the end result becomes like a child born of two parents. Then, after a while, this child is free to marry with another context, because over time it has become a context unto itself. The child is free to become something new or its own when it can shed, or be perceived without its personal or cultural history attached.
So with the Storm trooper/Kiss Helmet image done by Bill McMullen (visit his website: www.billmcmullen.com) – if you didn’t know either of the two sources or “parents” from which they came, you could begin to ask or envision “What are these characters capable of?” “Where are they going? “ “What do they do?” etc. They can be even so free as to invent their own mythology and personal history bearing no relation and totally devoid of their sources (Kiss, Star Wars) to their somewhat actual inception.
If we scan through pre-industrial art, what is its brilliance? Say in ancient Greece, was there brilliance when they placed their mythology in pictorial form upon the surface of their jugs and cups? Was there wit occurring at Stonehenge or in the armor plating of Roman foot soldiers?
A question for designers: “What really matters to you – what needs propagation?” Will art of this nature cease to be witty? Is “witty” only relevant to the industrialized, time based world where nostalgia can be married to the future? It can be said that, “What really matters” is relevant to the particular group or target audience being addressed.
Like they said in the Belief video (see links) – “Just because you saw it for the first time, doesn’t mean it didn’t exist before.” If you do see “it” for a first time, then what relevance does “it” have? Is it innovative? New? Does “it” require the history of its sources to be seen as cutting edge?
Grabbing someone’s attention is only the first step in genuine communication (not that all your communication has to be genuine – but I measure my life by being clear with others). A danger has occurred on the mass level where that “flashy pop expressions” are all we have come to expect or know! A reference to a reference to a reference and the true source never known let alone one having a direct and intimate experience with that said source.
Let’s marry contexts but not just with pop references. The intention being, making relevant and useable ancient, universal and world culture knowledge and wisdom here in our biological domain and its veins of commerce and communication.
Links:
Bill McMullin
As brand designers and market developers we can witness that we extend equal influence in both directions with our campaigns. Not only do we change the consumer/end user by interacting with and influencing their environment, leading to an awareness of the offering and subsequent interest and sale. But we actually change the product as well. We tweak its persona/image and group it with particular demographics, situations and specific emotive or practical solutions.
This can be seen as the double-edged sword. Demographic interest from our efforts and influence leads to physical changes in the products hardware or software look and capabilities in future public releases. A smart business sees from this work a rise in one or several sets of users and meets it. Hopefully your design firm gets the second contract.
The universal essence of business marketing has always been about how to generate awareness of the water from the stream (material origin source) to the homes on the hillside faster, better, cheaper, on demand and now extremely niche personalized.
Some core questions to ask for every client project: What is their stream (unique product offering). What are the digestible (understandable) and sticky (memorable) ways to (and into) these possible homes (your customers customers space) in which to receive the invitation to the unique watering hole.
This is the web 2.0. Have you asked lately of your endeavors and promotions: How well does our website promote itself? How easily “spreadable” is its contents offerings, vibe and or message?
Well, why is that important?
Here’s a view to hold while structuring your new media expressions: Rather than having everything locked under one undividable vault, every kernel of content must have the ability to be autonomous yet one with the whole – A single part or component (News Story, Blog Entry, Photograph, MP3) that can deliver a quality offering all by itself, while still linking back to its origin, the source (website, hub) from which it came.
This style of media must have something that is noteworthy, passable, sticky, spreadable about it - be that in the content or in its mechanism/code. We are talking about compelling media - while at the end of that segment, experience, nugget - it automatically urges you to find out more about its source (media group, people, product offering). When I say “automatically”, I mean that the content is so resonant, or discordant with you, that you have to find out more before going on your way.
We can then begin to view media, in all its forms and styles, as members of a tribe sent out on multiple scouting missions, each acting as an emissary of the main body of experience - be that the website, Blog or product. Media that leads the users to home base - your home base!
It would be to our supreme disadvantage to assume the market, of whichever description or sector, is saturated and cannot bare to accommodate innovation or exploration of any kind. To enter into a venture with a defeated tone or meek apology for existing will bare the most meager of fruits, unequal to the material and human expenditure invested. Grab your battle-ax and chop wood. Plug your ears to the din of the battlefield if you must. Not for one millisecond do you let in doubt nor defeat. They have no place in victory.
We share this world. Have your say. Decree it! Make your conscious mark. “I was here and I helped.”
Perhaps you direction is not firm, for you have not committed yourself to an action or have no vision. Understand this - No action or outcome can be fully known or explored by mind alone. Only upon commitment to action will the full experience reveal itself. Move. Observation, while crucial, should not be mistaken for action.
