From The Head Of Zeus Jones

The Wabi-sabi Experience

2009-06-30T18:09:04Z

I’ve been reading a lot about wabi-sabi lately, and in it I have found a window into the art of experience design. Wabi-sabi is described as “the artistic mouthpiece of the Zen movement.” It is a conceptual worldview and aesthetic ideal. Just as experience design seeks to address human needs in their diversity, frailty, and flaws, wabi-sabi acknowledges the impermanence and imperfection of the natural world as an aesthetic ideal. It transmits feelings of transience and flux. In contrast to the Greek ideals of perfect order and harmony which permeate our Western culture, wabi-sabi embodies simplicity and asymmetry. It provides “space for the mental collaboration of the audience.”

This space, combined with the transitory nature of wabi-sabi, resonates with the idea of adaptive interfaces that change along with the user and her environment. The wabi-sabi approach seeks to minimize the ego and any personal branding, focusing rather on drawing out the natural qualities of the piece. So it is with great experience design, where the user is pleasantly immersed in an action and free to discard any conscious thoughts of the interface. Just as wabi-sabi style tea cups encourage a more intimate communion with the experience of drinking the tea, the user of a well designed experience should be liberated from the mechanisms of interaction.

The form of wabi-sabi expression is drawn from the “properties of the material used and the function it provides,” and this holds equally true for creating usable design. The more I learn about wabi-sabi, the more I feel it is another excellent directional filter for experience design. What do you think?

Sources:
Juniper, Andrew. Wabi Sabi:The Japanese Art of Impermanence.
Koren, Leonard. Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers.

Technorati Tags: design, interaction, UX, wabi-sabi

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Bling for your new iPhone 3GS

2009-06-23T21:27:06Z

The upgrade bug missed us completely here at Zeus Jones and we are all sticking with our 3G iphones, but we know that some of our loyal readers have probably succumbed to the allure of new Apple hardware and are proud owners of spanking new iPhones.

One thing we’ve noticed is that there aren’t any new features is that the iPhone 3GS looks disappointingly similar to the the iPhone 3G. No one can really tell that you’ve spent several hundred dollars more on your phone than people who still only have the 3G. So to rectify that situation, one of our designers, Celeste, has created some official Zeus Jones iPhone Bling which will mark you as a person of unusual discernment and taste.

Enjoy.

(These were designed specifically for the iPhone 3GS, but we believe they’ll also run on the 3G too – sssshhh.)

Technorati Tags: artwork, Backgrounds, iphone, Zeus Jones

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Operations as marketing makes back-end technologies the hero.

2009-06-10T15:25:18Z

It’s been busy here lately, not much time to put together a coherent thought let alone a blog post. Too much stuff swirling around in my head. However, the one thing I’ve been meaning to write a bit about was our recent co-presentation with Microsoft on operations as marketing.

The format was a 1-1/2 hour presentation from us and MS to some of their clients here in the Twin Cities. We kicked it off with a short deck that explains the concept of operations as marketing, then we handed over to Microsoft for an discussion of technologies that enable this kind of marketing and finally we finished with some case studies of work we’ve (ZJ and Microsoft) done to show how it can work in practice (sorry I can’t share the deck at the moment, maybe later). All in all we thought the presentation was a success. We had some good discussion afterwards and heard that a lot of the attendees rated it very highly. (Importantly, we have some good follow-ups too!)

What was most interesting though was while we had rehearsed a bit beforehand, we didn’t really know what Microsoft was going to say (nor they us), and to be honest, we were a bit nervous about that. However, when it finally came down to it, our talks were surprisingly consistent, because while operations as marketing is a great marketing story it’s an even better technology story.

As you know, the idea behind operations as marketing is to find some internal aspect of a company’s existing business, something that they’re already doing, that can be modified and made transparent in order to also serve as marketing. Because customers generally respond better to businesses who are better run, the best way to run your business can also be the best way to market your business. This is the definition that makes sense to a business or marketing person, but to a technology person, the way they’d translate that is that it’s about exposing one or more of your internal, back-end data feeds to the public.

For example the brilliant Hertz Freerider example that Beata shared, is enabled by exposing inventory data to the public. Dell Swarm is enabled by exposing sourcing data to the public.

As you can imagine, this is a particularly great story for a company like Microsoft to tell as its software powers the back-office of most of the world’s largest companies these days. In addition, products like Sharepoint are tailor-made for providing controlled access to vital back-end business data. What’s interesting about this is that this makes Microsoft a better partner for many agencies like us than traditional front-end players like Adobe or even web-based companies like Google!

I’ve been saying this over and over to a bunch of their people but I don’t get the sense they find it as interesting as I do. What do you think? Am I nuts here?

Technorati Tags: marketing, operations as marketing, technology, Zeus Jones

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ZJ Design is Fine

2009-06-05T22:55:45Z

I was recently asked by Salih Kucukaga to do an interview with Grafik Tasarim, a Turkish design magazine. AND the issue is finally out! So I thought I’d share the translated version here. Click image above for larger view. Enjoy!
-
Q&A
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Firstly, can you tell me about yourself for GT readers? Who is Celeste Prevost?
I’m a designer/illustrator currently living in Minneapolis working at Zeus Jones. I’m originally from Colorado where I attended the Art Institute of Colorado and received my BFA in graphic design. Had a couple internships, freelanced at a few studios in the Denver area and was later offered a position at Zeus Jones. I spend the majority of my free time consumed by the internet and if not by the internet then I’m off working on some idea or collaborating with friends and/or my husband Rob.

You have so many brilliant works in your portfolio. Clean and strong use of typography. How did you get interested in typography?
Signage has always inspired me and to this day is some of my favorite typography. I also have this strange obsession with reading labels… constantly and often the same labels multiple times, not sure how that relates. I also love hand-drawn type it has so much personality which I really enjoy.

What is the effect of typography on a design product? How do you decide the right typography when you are working on a project?
What I find most interesting is how people pick the fonts they use and what they represent to them. I don’t feel like I’m too particular about the type that I use in a project I usually stick with my favorites and use the one that “feels right”, I like to keep it simple. If I have something in mind when starting a project I will jump right into designing a custom type treatment or taking an existing font and tweaking it to my liking.

You work for Zeus Jones. It’s a quite interesting design agency. Especially the website is definitely worth to visit. Great example of how a next generation agency website to be. Tell me about Zeus Jones, when did you start to working? What do you do there?
Zeus Jones is a strategy based company who goal is to help modernize business with smart solutions. Design is then a facility to help push/deliver the ideas that require a design solution. I started at Zeus Jones a little over a year ago as a designer after a short stint as a freelancer in Denver, Colorado. I do a little bit of everything at ZJ but mostly I just make our ideas come to life whether through design or just helping direct the finished product.

What kind of projects have you been recently working on?
Lately I have been working on packaging and collateral materials for Thymes (a Minneapolis-based bath and body company). I’ve also been busy with icon work for a variety of projects. A recent favorite of mine, is a poster I created for a local art show titled Artcrank, a show themed around bikes.

Do you have some design fields that you would prefer to work?
I enjoy identity, and just about anything that requires some level of illustration – especially iconography.

How do you start a project? What is your design process?
My process is pretty loose. I usually first cruise my resources for imagery, patterns, etc that inspire a certain mood that I want. I then sketch, but generally very loosely. And then I jump right into design and try a few ideas out. I also like to get the ideas in front of someone else, see what ideas/thoughts they have which helps bring in new perspectives into my work that I hadn’t thought of.

What’s the story of your recent project Hand of God Font?
Hand of God was created as a fun gift to give away during the holidays. Inspired by the ‘Zeus’ of Zeus Jones to represent Zeus throwing lightning bolts. It was also an opportunity for me to try my hand at creating a font which I hadn’t done prior.

There are some personal designs on your website too. How often do you make personal designs?
As often as I can. I like to participate in local art events and/or work freelance projects in my spare time. Keeps me busy, gives me a break from the mundane and is generally the work that I like to do the most.

Your domain is Designisfine. What’s the story behind it? And what makes a design fine.
It’s catchy! It started as a joke because it rhymed so well. It stuck and so I began to use it as a portfolio moniker. What makes a design ‘fine’ for me? Generally something that is very simple, and clever and illustrative.

Do you have any designers that you have been recently following?
I like so many! Here are my current favorites most of which lean heavily on the illustration side:
1. Arlo
2. A Friend of Mine
3. Experimental Jetset
4. Eighthourday
5. James Joyce
6. Lance Wyman

What you know about Turkish graphic design and designers?
I unfortunately know very little about Turkish graphic design. Send me some links!

And your final words, what would you like to say to Turkish graphic designers?
Get your work out there. Don’t fuss too much about making it perfect. Love what you do.

Technorati Tags: celeste prevost, designisfine, grafik tasarim

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The Fleeting Illusion of Brand Experience

2009-06-04T18:13:57Z

Traditional brand marketing is an effort to build perception around a desired business outcome (usually shareholder value). But the audience isn’t that interested in whether or not you make your numbers this quarter. In fact, every dollar spent on creating perception is a dollar that could have been spent improving the lives of your customers.

It’s the quality of the products, services, interactions with an organization that builds an authentic brand character. If this sounds radical, or if you’re still using marketing to try and manipulate perception, you are walking on thin ice. For your consumers and observers, there is no such thing as a “brand experience,” only a human experience which may be associated with a brand. The meaning of the interactions themselves must be addressed.

Take, for example, the notorious private security firm Blackwater Worldwide. Their stated mission is “empowering a talented collection of seasoned professionals from a wide range of disciplines, directing them to develop cost efficient and operationally effective solutions for the US Government and other clientele.” But after employees were accused of using excessive force resulting in the deaths of innocent Iraqi civilians, the company lost their U.S. government contract to operate in Iraq. The response? Blackwater rebranded itself under the new moniker Xe, an identity that Wired’s Noah Shachtman aptly calls “inscrutable and opaque.” Yet the lawsuits continue – families of seven more Iraqi civilians have filed suit against the company just this week.

Curated perception has long been a free-for-all land grab aimed squarely at focusing the attention of a market. Because information is now instantly and freely shared, those brands with the largest gaps between fabricated perception (traditional marketing) and the authentic character of their actions (products, services, human interactions) will be the quickest to sputter and implode. This is true no matter what new platforms are employed to manipulate awareness, or what tools we use to examine them. Brand experience is an illusion, human experience is real. The problem is not perception, but rather the consequences of human behavior. The solution is found through trying to change perception, but through creating more constructive human interactions and positive, authentic experiences.

Shakespeare’s message is more true today than ever – “the truth will out.”

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Ideas of scale versus ideas of disruption.

2009-05-19T21:04:56Z

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about the challenges of running a business of scale. I often think it’s something that we in the marketing industry don’t really know that much about as we’re, even in the biggest agencies, only really responsible for selling our “products” to a small number of people. However, when I walk through the aisles of a Nordstrom store (for example) – I realise that most of our clients’ businesses are very different. They make a living by selling to lots and lots and lots of people, over and over again.

The skills and ideas that grab small groups of people are very different from the skills and ideas that grab large numbers of people. I refer to one of my favourite models (above) to illustrate why. Ideas that only need to grab a small number of people can be extremely innovative and disruptive. They can appeal to the risk takers and ignore those who want familiarity, safety or tradition. Ideas that need to appeal to large numbers of people can’t make that sacrifice. In order to get to really large numbers of people, you have to start bringing in the more mainstream audiences. For these people, really new thinking isn’t going to be that appealing.

This difference comes to a head in the differing criteria that agencies and clients will apply when evaluating ideas. Agencies have always been proponents of innovative or disruptive ideas. Some of this has emerged from the need for communications to “break through the clutter” but often, if we’re honest, it’s simply been a product of ego. While ego is also a factor for some clients, more often, they’ll be looking for ideas that are going to deliver the biggest bang for the buck. These two viewpoints are always going to result in a completely different way to evaluate and judge the same idea.

I think this is another reason why we agencies need to develop a different aesthetic sense in order for us to become holistic marketing partners rather than just communications providers. I think we need to begin to celebrate ideas of scale rather than disruptive or niche ideas. I also think this will be an extremely difficult transition.

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: aesthetics, mass, scale

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Transparency places an emphasis on size and culture.

2009-05-19T15:20:27Z

Image via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sd/

Transparency has been on my mind for a bit recently due to the operations as marketing presentation I’ve been writing. (Transparency is, of course a fundamental requirement of any company that wants to turn its operations into marketing because people have to be able to see the operations in order for them to work.) However, I’ve started to realise that transparency (or operations as marketing) is a strategy that’s only open to certain types of companies.

The problem with transparency, of course, is that your competitors can see what you’re doing along with your customers. If your competition then decides to copy your strategy then the difference between you and them will come down to:

The way in which you execute the strategy
How well you can execute the strategy
How cheaply you can execute the strategy

Items 2 and 3 strongly favour large companies. They can throw lots of resources at a problem, plus – as the Dell Swarm idea so cleverly illustrates – they can bring their scale to bear on forcing prices down. The only way that small companies can compete is by outperforming on item #1 which, to me, is a product of culture. The more unique your culture, the more unique your execution will be, because your culture shapes how you see the world and colours how you respond to it. Also, a strong culture may also enable you to lower your personnel costs by creating a place where people are competing for jobs.

Not sure this is anything very new, just more evidence that you either have to be really big or really different to thrive.

Technorati Tags: operations as marketing

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New-marketing strategies: turning your customers into your product.

2009-05-13T14:26:09Z

Image via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/endora57/

(I’ve been meaning to write this one for a while now, originally the title of this post was building your business around your customers, but then I realised how stupid that sounded.)

It seems to me that a foundational premise of any new marketing strategy is that you try to reshape the relationship you have with your customers – hopefully turning them into partners or collaborators. However, the next step after that is to see if you can actually resell your customers back to your customers.

We’ve already seen this happening in a bunch of different situations:

Amazon.com uses customer reviews, lists, images, ratings, sales rankings and discussions from its customers as a big part of its “product.” Etsy, like eBay is completely sourced from and sold to its customer base. And, Threadless combines both of these different models to source products, reviews and sales from its customers. However, a bunch of examples that Christian and Sarah found recently, show even more sophisticated ways of selling your customers back to themselves:

Shopstyle.com allows its customers to combine different items into “looks.”

People can then, rate, comment on, email/share and of course shop these looks.

Polyvore.com offers a similar experience where the express purpose of the site is to allow customers to create “sets” or looks. These are then served up with the item as suggestions on how to wear this item.

Kaboodle.com lets shoppers create polls from products they are deciding on to send to their friends to help make their decisions.

Finally Jansport has used Facebook Connect in a really smart way to let shoppers both share what they’re shopping and also see what their friends think about different Jansport products.

What’s brilliant about these kinds of examples is that there’s a recurring loop of both selling to and making money from customers in a bunch of different ways. It’s meta-meta and that to me is new marketing at its finest.

Technorati Tags: customers

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Influx Curated.

2009-05-12T20:17:49Z

Ed over at BSS&P is putting together what looks to be a truly amazing conference and a really inspiring day. Thirty (YES 30!) – five minute presentations from speakers like:

Paul Kim – Heads up marketing for Mozilla Foundation- and has done a lot of interesting things with Firefox
Marieke van Der Poel – Analyzes trends for Peclers Paris
Mark Barden – Helps persuade brand owners to be brave at Eat Big Fish
Alexis Madrigal – Writes illuminating stories about the worlds of energy and science for Wired
Madison Mount – Does lots of thinking at IDEO
Jeben Berg - Creative Director, Cross Platform Solutions, YouTube

Plus, each speaker has been given the ability to invite guests many of whom are equally interesting!

Amazingly, the cost for the entire day is only $99!

I think the whole idea of this kind of conference is brilliant and I wish I could figure out how to justify a trip to SF just for this. If you are anywhere near the Western part of the United States on June 11, you have to make a trip to see this. Registration details here: http://influxcurated.eventbrite.com/

Technorati Tags: inspiration, presentation

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Creating tools for doing.

2009-05-12T18:49:51Z

Image via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eliazar/

Regular readers may know that I have a huge fondness for tools and models, however, in my experience, this has been a somewhat unpopular position to hold in the planning and strategy community. Many planners I know run screaming from anything vaguely model-like because it, “limits creativity” or “binds you to some rigid inflexible process” that “always leads to the same answers.”

I must admit, I used to say the same things but over time I realised that NOT using tools is a much surer way to limit creativity or deliver the same answers and that the right tools will ensure that you ALWAYS end up in a more interesting place than you were before.

For me, tools are ways to turn philosophy into action. A great example of this is the tool Brad uses for identity design.

The idea of this is that a great identity is a visual story about the brand. That it brings together essential and important ideas about the brand into a holistic and visually appealing way. That it tells a story. In the above example, this was the model he used for one of our early clients ImmunoViva. On each axis are the ideas that we had decided were important parts of the brand. The idea is to work through the various iterations and combinations of ideas, drop + shield, drop + seed, human + IV, etc. The important part of this is that this isn’t just a tool that’s used to develop the identity, it’s also a tool that’s used to explain the identity to clients. So rather than telling clients we want their identity to tell a story we simply work through this exercise with them and avoid the philosophical discussion and focus, instead, on the work.

I tried a similar thing on an Audi pitch that I worked on in my last days at Fallon.

The goal was to turn Audi into a modern brand, a brand that brings its values to life in unexpected and surprising ways, rather than simply making everything it does build to one simple idea. The last thing I wanted to do was to have a philosophical discussion about modern brands with anyone so I created this magnetic poetry-like brand model that could be taken apart and recombined in different ways. The idea was we could express performance + craftmanship + sophistication in one area and maybe design + progress + authenticity in another area. These would lead you in very different places yet could still be reconciled to the larger idea of Audi.

Some tools are more successful than others and it’s important (I think) to continually evaluate the tools one uses to see if they’re still relevant and productive but I think the absence of tools is even more damaging. In today’s world where there are so many opinions and philosophies about how to develop great marketing and great brands, the need for tools is even greater. I think we as strategists and new marketing thinkers need to translate our lofty ideas and thinking into practical tools that anyone and everyone can use. It is much more difficult to describe hammering in a nail than it is to pick up a hammer. I believe the same is true for how to market and brand your company in today’s confusing and high-tech world.

What are your thoughts?

Technorati Tags: thinking, tools

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Dell Swarm

2009-05-11T16:50:06Z

Long known as a distribution innovator, Dell is once again rolling out a new service which allows online users to act as a purchase cooperative. When enough users commit to buying a computer together (say 15 users), they get the bulk price. The price incentive will spur more sales, and the social aspect of the virtual coop will be a multiplier. Brilliant. Dell Swarm launches today in Singapore.

These users are geographically disconnected but share a common desire for a particular product. Why shouldn’t the public benefit from the same purchasing power once reserved for the distributors who cozied up to – and even pushed around – the manufacturers? Swarm is another example of the socialization of a business process flowing from the democratizing impact of network media. From a business perspective, the test of success may be the bottom line, but from a user perspective, putting the potential for price-pressure in the hands of the people is a great step forward. It will be interesting to see how it catches on.

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Are the biggest benefits of social media local?

2009-04-30T16:03:14Z

The recent release of Microsoft’s Vine reminded me about an insight that we picked up while collaborating with Piers last year. PSFK interviewed a bunch of entrepreneurs and one of them (above) talked about the fact that his usage of social media had shifted over the years. At the start of using it, he connected mainly with people in other cities and in other countries, but as social media matured, he found that he was using social media more to connect with people that he’d actually met, people that are in the same city as him.

Over time, I’ve found the same to be true. One of the most useful benefits that I’ve gotten from using social media is that I know more about what the people around me are doing. I know more about what’s happening in my city.

Yesterday, Christian tweeted about this exact thing:

In Memphis, someone asked about my thoughts on the future of social media. Typically I hate to guess about these sorts of things, but in this case it does seem to me that the future of social media will be increasingly local. If you ask a lot of the people who don’t use social media “why not,” they’ll often say “because I don’t care what someone in Australia is having for breakfast.” These people do care what their friends, neighbors and communities are doing and as more people adopt social media, the density of these types of people will inevitably increase. So I think local is what will really send things like Twitter mainstream rather than celebrity adoption. What do you think?

Technorati Tags: local, mainstream, social media

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Great examples of how operations can become marketing.

2009-04-29T20:27:25Z

Image via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dunechaser/

In a couple of weeks we’ll be partnering with Microsoft to give a joint presentation to some IT and Marketing directors about the idea that their two disciplines are starting to (or needing to) work much more closely these days. What we want to show is that there are many cases where marketing and IT are collaborating to create programs that deliver operational efficiency within their companies as well as being great marketing vehicles for attracting and retaining customers.

Regular readers will recognise this as a favourite theme of ours – we like to think that the best marketing ideas are actually company operations that happen to be really appealing or compelling to customers too. One of the many advantages of this line of thought is that marketing is completely integrated into the business and you don’t have to spend money to build marketing programs that then build your business, you simply spend money on building your business.

While this area can be a bit hazy and wooly, I think the best definition for this kind of marketing is that it is: an aspect of internal operations that has been made transparent to customers and in doing so has become a driver of loyalty or additional business.

I wrote previously about the fact that this kind of marketing is much less sexy than other forms and therefore great examples are harder to find. So I thought I’d continue my list-making with some of the examples that we’ve been bookmarking. Sam and Eaon have clearly been thinking about the same kinds of things as they also contributed massively, thank you again! This isn’t an exhaustive list by any means, more of an appetizer. I’d love to hear of any examples that you might have in the comments, in fact, please help me make this better!

Delivery: while delivering your product can be a mundane forgettable experience a number of companies have turned it into a big advantage.

Zappos is famous for secretly upgrading its shipping from 2-day to overnight whenever possible. Customers who get an early surprise have tweeted and blogged by the hundreds and this tactic has been a big part of driving growth and love for this company. Ironically (or not) they canceled their advertising to pay for this program (double awesome!).
Mercedes pioneered European delivery in the early 60s (proving that great operations have always been great marketing). Even though it’s pretty common among the European luxury brands I still think this is genius. Get your customers to transport your product for you, give them a great experience and save them money in the process. I wish I’d though of it.

Sourcing: more and more, people care about where you got your parts from, some companies have turned this into an art form.

Trader Joe’s has built a large part of its business around the fact that they find interesting foods that are also really inexpensive. While it may be frustrating to find out that your favourite peanut butter is no longer available, the surprise of finding something brand new has led to their cult status among foodies.
Patagonia has taken a slightly different tack by exposing the carbon footprint of several of its items from design through delivery with their Footprint Chronicles. I think this is really brave and predict we’ll see a lot more of this kind of thing in the future.

Construction: this is basic but when you make something differently/better – people like it better

Apple recently saw a lot of success with their new “brick” manufacturing process for its Macbook Pros. The unibody construction really is a lot nicer.
Howies has gotten a lot of buzz for its hand me down line. Really unusual for a “fashion” brand to be promoting the longevity of its clothing.
Threadless is probably well known to most of you but I still think it’s really smart how they pretty much ensure that they sell all the shirts they make by crowdsourcing their designs and only producing the popular ones.

Billing, even the mundane task of asking for money can be a marketing opportunity.

Apple, I wrote about this before but I think their email receipts are really smart. A bunch of different benefits that come from this one small step.
Almost everyone is offering paperless bills or statements now. This is becoming too common to be a real advantage but I still think it can be a marketing edge for some.

Payment: great thinking can make this more efficient as well as a huge advantage over your competition.

Apple dispensed with fixed registers last year and gave all its staff handheld registers in their stores. Now I never queue to pay and there’s always someone around to help answer questions because they’re not stuck behind a desk. Why doesn’t everyone do this?
Self-checkout machines are getting pretty common but I almost always prefer them to human-powered checkout.

Internal metrics or data: the data your company collect can be really valuable, useful and interesting to customers

Amazon’s site has lots of examples of using their data to help customers but its sales rank is one that I’ve often found very useful.
Current, a broadband over powerline company has just announced a really cool home energy monitoring service which allows people and businesses to see their power consumption and make changes to reduce it. This is extending data they already have and need to deliver their service to their customers.

Repair: this is typically a real pain with most companies but it can also be a real asset.

BMW is one of the only European luxury brands that still offers free maintenance for the first 50K miles. Because BMW has an image of being costly in the shop this is one of the best ads they could possibly “run” to counter that.
Apple (again! sorry) has turned repair into a real advantage by branding it Genius. Remember, these are the guys that are usually hidden behind thick doors and reinforced glass windows at other places.

Saving money: can actually be something you get credit for.

Howies again got a lot of people talking with a simple light switch on its Carnaby Street shop. Instead of keeping its lights on all night, it allowed curious, late night, window shoppers to press a button and light the window temporarily. Brilliant.
Whole Foods is joining a bunch of other retailers in completely eliminating plastic shopping bags. Instead, bring your own or buy a branded, reusable bag. This is the equivalent of being charged for online banking – the business wins twice.

Many of these are very simple ideas, but ones which required an enormous amount of coordination and cooperation within the company in order to execute. In most cases, their value is obvious or easy to measure. There’s no need to create a secondary measure like “engagement” in order to figure out the value of these ideas to the company. They’re also really smart and really inventive solutions to business problems. They solve marketing problems by saving money or making more money rather than by “investing” in marketing programs whose returns are questionable. When done well, they get talked about, a lot, because people are always always interested in getting more value. For these reasons (and more) I think these kinds of programs really are future of marketing. Or at least I’d love to think so.

What do you think? Have you seen any other examples? I’d love to hear.

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Defining User Experience

2009-04-29T18:32:20Z

Having been asked the question “what is UX?” on numerous recent occasions, I thought I would spell out my preferred definition here in blog post form. I must start with my rant on the misuse of the word “experience.” Why not. If I had a dollar for every time I heard a well-meaning designer use the word “experience” as a euphemism for “Flash microsite,” I would have the down payment for that new MINI by now.

In the context of design, experience should mean the same thing as it means in reality, which is not tied to any platform or mechanism. It is simply a series of perceptions and interactions; independent of channel. Not only should the experiences we design consider all human aspects of the interaction itself, they should work within the context of the user’s life. This is where strategic disciplines can inform the approach of the UX designer. In essence, it doesn’t matter how perfect the articulation of the interaction, or how elegantly the experience is structured; if it does not address a human need or desire, it is destined to decompose in the ever-more-crowded graveyard of traditional advertising (RIP).

Now that I have that out of my system, I’ll share the definition of UX that I’ve come to embrace.

Experience Design is exceptionally well positioned to address the problems we face in the Era of the Fox. I would love to hear other perspectives… Please add, subtract, concur, rebel, or submit below.

Technorati Tags: design, ia, interactive, ixd, UX

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Final presentation for Launch Memphis/Southern Growth Studio Event.

2009-04-28T14:00:20Z

Launch Memphis Workshop

View more presentations from Zeus Jones.

Here are the final slides from the talk I gave in Memphis. As you can see, I incorporated many of the comments and suggestions from the draft post (thanks to all). It seemed to go well and I had some great conversations with a bunch of the local marketers afterwards. I was also very glad to meet CC Chapman. He talked about Passion and his presentation was great. You should go check it out here if you haven’t. Even though we hadn’t planned it, the two talks were very aligned. The crux of both of our talks was that you can’t fake it anymore. If you want people’s business, you have to be about something bigger than just selling a product and you have to prove that you’re about it with everything that you do.

I also really enjoyed visiting Memphis and learning more about the marketing community down there. It was very inspiring to be around so many people who are clearly so committed to their city and who are doing what they can to make it better. It made me think that there are probably similar grass-roots communities in every city in the country. I think groups like these are becoming ever more important and powerful. With institutions in disarray, I think it will be these grass-roots efforts that will create real progress in the next few years.

Thanks again to Southern Growth Studio and Launch Memphis for inviting me. I had a blast.

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Mastering new modes DRAFT.

2009-04-16T17:13:56Z

DRAFT: Mastering new modes

View more presentations from Zeus Jones.

This is a draft of the presentation I’ll be giving next week at the Masters of the new modes event in Memphis. I’m speaking there with C.C. Chapman who I’m very much looking forward to meeting. The brief was to talk about “Insights and Innovations from the Blending Worlds of Technology, Marketing, and Culture.” I decided that meant I could talk about the changing nature of brands, branding and the implications for our industry.

This is a subject you’re just as smart about as I am so I thought I’d throw this out to the community and ask what you would include, add, delete or change? I’d love any thoughts, comments or whatever.

Adrian

Technorati Tags: branding, marketing, presentation

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Installing Disqus.

2009-04-15T16:08:00Z

Image via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pierre_pouliquin/

Things may be a bit sluggish here today. Sorry

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Welcome Jason Sack.

2009-04-13T14:16:09Z

Jason Sack, our new head of user experience starts today. We met Jason about a year ago and decided we wanted him to join us almost immediately. It took us nine months to afford convince him to join us, but we’re super excited to have him. He’s a fantastically talented guy and just felt right as a part of Zeus Jones from day one. Check out his most recent presentation below, he gave this last week at Minnewebcon.

UX + Community Building, U of M – MinneWebCon 2009

View more presentations from Jason Sack.

Jason tweets here: http://twitter.com/jasonsack
Jason blogs here: http://jasonsack.com

Hopefully I’ll also convince him to blog here too.

Mastering new modes DRAFT. DRAFT: Mastering new modes View more presentations from Zeus Jones....

The best social media marketing.

2009-04-08T17:54:43Z

Image via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevegarfield/

We recently went through a fairly lengthy process of weeding through hundreds upon hundreds of examples of social media marketing done by companies to find the best for a client presentation. It was tedious beyond belief because there’s actually quite a lot of crap. I’m guessing there’s probably a similar search or two going on out there at the moment, so I thought I’d share our best of list, You may not agree but at least it might save you some time.

We used a variety of different sources. One was Peter Kim’s excellent social media marketing wiki, but mostly we just trawled through our various RSS feeds and so on (surely we can automate this sort of thing one day?) So here goes in no particular order:

Adobe on delicious: http://delicious.com/adobe
This is really smart, basically they’re bookmarking all the best Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, etc. tutorials out there. They’re driving traffic to these content creators from their 2700 fans (and their networks) and they’re maintaining a master list of the best how-to information on their products.

NYT Firefox Plugin: http://timespeople.nytimes.com/home/about/
I think this is smart because they’re turning the experience of reading the Time online into a social one. Using the plugin you can see what you friends are reading and share your stories with them. It unearths valuable data that helps me decide what to read. (The NYT and The Guardian are light years ahead of the pack – while the rest of the industry are whining these two are just getting on with it.)

My Starbucks Idea: http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/
Dell Ideastorm: http://www.ideastorm.com/
Not much to say about these that hasn’t been said but still, they’re very good and even after all this time, fairly well trafficked.

Intuit Tax Wiki: http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php/Main_Page
This is actually a wiki for tax professionals. I think it’s genius, Intuit offers them a service by helping them stay current and in return gets free tips and advice from tax pros all over the country to help improve its consumer products. This is new marketing thinking at its best.

Urban Outfitters Flickr pool: http://www.flickr.com/groups/79323077@N00/
Urban outfitters customers and fans post pictures of themselves wearing UO gear. While you have to join to post, UO gets a free fashion catalogue with over 4K images from 1.3K members and people get inspiration on how to wear UO.

Comcast on Twitter: http://twitter.com/comcastcares
Again this one’s been covered extensively but having experienced first-hand the help of ComcastBonnie recently, I rate it because they’re using social media to try to sort out one of the worst parts of the Comcast experience.

Run Finder on Nike+: http://nikeplus.nike.com/nikeplus/#mapit
Yes, like everyone else I love I love Nike+ and yes, like everyone else, I hate their slow, flash website, but at least they’re starting to add useful features to it. As a frequent traveler, Run Finder is invaluable and because Nike’s community is so big it even helps me find runs that aren’t on MapMyRun.

Home Depot on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/homedepot
How-to videos for fixing decks or other projects. The Home Depot channel seems really mature and well organised. 1600 subscribers isn’t bad either. This is really a no-brainer for them, it’s help, inspiration and content which can be repurposed a bunch of places.

Open Forum from American Express: http://www.openforum.com/
Business and marketing advice from business and marketing leaders. While this almost doesn’t make the list because it’s a little far afield from their core biz (more on this later) I think that the quality of thinking and writing they’ve assembled there is pretty amazing and is, in itself, a testament to the power of the brand.

Blendtec on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/blendtec?blend=1&ob=4
You may find its inclusion here strange but it’s a product demo that people want to watch! That’s pretty amazing in my book.

Dell Twitter directory: http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/community/dell_on_twitter?c=us&l=en&s=gen
Dell have taken the really smart step of segmenting its different Twitter feeds into specific subjects. I think this is a must have for any big company with lots of different lines and/or products. It’s a blessing for people who are looking for very specific information or help, and I think that’s almost everyone when it comes to engaging with companies on social media.

The Official Google Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
Put simply, this is where they typically launch new products. It’s so obvious but yet still brilliant.

IBM in Second Life: http://www.ibm.com/3dworlds/businesscenter/us/en/
I know this will be controversial, in fact someone tweeted a great quote from Steve Rubel yesterday, “Second Life is digital marketing’s Vietnam.” I’m guessing this isn’t that well used or popular, but I think it’s actually a really smart use of Second Life that is extremely well tied to what I might want to know about IBM as a prospective customer. If Second Life didn’t exist, they might want to roll their own just so they could do this kind of stuff.

Zappos Twitter Page: http://twitter.zappos.com/
An aggregator page that drives up Zappos’ organic search performance. Brilliant.

TJ Maxx on Twitter: http://twitter.com/tjmaxx
Like all discount retailers, TJ Maxx carries designer clothing but isn’t actually allowed to tell you it carries designer clothing. You’re just supposed to “discover” it in the store. Well their Twitter feed has circumvented that so you know exactly when that shipment of Dolce & Gabbana has hit and where.

Walmart Eleven Moms: http://instoresnow.walmart.com/Community.aspx
Walmart is actually making good on its save money claim by crowdsourcing real-world money saving tips from customers and sharing them. I think this is great because they’ve realised saving money isn’t just about low prices it’s about all the choices you make.

You may be thinking this is a strange list, what’s the criteria for qualifying for “the best?” In the beginning, we started with a small set of criteria, but more arose from looking at, playing with and studying these examples. In the end, when we looked at them as a group there were a bunch of commonalities that jumped out for us which I think are interesting.

All of these are very focused, while they bring lots of benefits, they’re really designed to do one thing and do that well
They put the product or service directly at the center.
They are completely customer focused, they aren’t designed to do things that the company may want e.g. build community, evangelists etc. they are designed to serve customers.
They are utilities much more than they are communications.
Simply put, they make it easier for customers to do more business with them.

I think that companies make the mistake of thinking that they can behave like people on social media. The reasons that I follow or interact with people are completely different from the reasons I follow or interact with companies. I may develop a sense of friendship or community with the people behind a company’s social media, but that isn’t the primary reason I’ll start interacting in the first place. These examples above recognise that. They understand that their company is in business to sell or do something for me and they used social media to serve me better.

What are your thoughts, what would you add, subtract to this list?

Technorati Tags: best of list, examples

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How the real-time web shapes our information?

2009-04-07T16:35:39Z

Yesterday’s news was filled with the new Friendfeed beta and stories about the real-time web. This, along with some comments on yesterday’s post got me thinking about the effect of the real-time web upon the nature of information that we consume.

As you know, time is one of the most important qualifiers for a piece of information. Knowing when it happened, when it was written, how long ago, how recently, to which time or date the information refers and whether it is outdated, timely, timeless and so on is essential to being able to accurately assess how valuable, useful or important that piece of information is. I’m constantly frustrated when searching for information on something to discover that the only relevant article I’ve found has no date on it.

But there’s also another effect of time upon information, and that is that “timely” or “real-time” information tends to lose its value over time, whereas (potentially more important) timeless pieces of information may actually not be valued when produced but grow in value over time.

Because the web, and in particular the real-time web, favours information that is timely, it’s likely that we are creating a situation where information producers will be dissuaded from producing more timeless pieces of information. I don’t think this is that far-fetched. I’ve done this myself, looked at Feedburner or other stats on posts to decide what to write about.

I don’t think this means this information won’t be produced, it may just be produced elsewhere. Books are clearly an outlet for this kind of information, but for me it also starts to re-frame the importance of Wikipedia or possibly more resources like that. As the move towards a real-time web gains steam, it will be more important than ever for us to have an equally large part of the web devoted to timelessness.

Technorati Tags: real-time web

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Measurements of engagement aren’t necessarily measurements of interest.

2009-04-06T22:03:59Z

Tipped off by a post on RWW, I installed the Postrank extension for Firefox on Google reader yesterday. Postrank adds a number next to each post which is a composite of “how engaging” the post has been, e.g whether it’s been clicked, bookmarked, commented on, or even inspired new posts. This number can be between 1 and 10, where 10 is the most engaging post and 1 is the least.

What’s was immediately interesting was how few of my starred stories qualify on Postrank as “great” posts. I started looking into this and the trend that I began to see was that the top posts tend to be ones that are about the immediate present and are about the web, or social media or web tools.

Among the least “engaging” stories are many of the larger stories that are, to me, more interesting but less immediately practical

This story for example on Intel’s innovation which scored a fairly poor 1.6 (although I have just theoretically improved that) was one of the more interesting things I’ve read lately. Unlike almost everyone else, Intel has decided not to retrench and instead wants to use the recession to actually move ahead faster. In doing so they’re going to obsolete themselves. This press release goes into more detail with some great quotes from Craig Barrett:

“In the current global economic climate, thinking long-term is more important than ever,” Barrett said. “Today, we can lay the groundwork for growth. Many nations and businesses try to save their way out of a recession. It is much better to invest our way out.”

Barrett believes that investing in new ideas and inventions not only stimulates job creation, but also increases productivity, leads to new forms of energy and smarter energy consumption, improves health care and medicines, and gives consumers more benefits for less cost.

The thing is I don’t actually think I’m that different, I don’t think it’s that I’m just interested in different things than most people. I think a lot of people found this news interesting, it’s that these types of posts aren’t things that we’re going to interact with physically, because they’re designed to make us think.

This is a cousin to the popularity problem that I wrote about before and which Noah wrote about this weekend. There are structures that the we use on the Web that are designed to surface the most interesting information that often end up actually hiding it.

I think that this problem also extends to other kinds of engagement measurements, particularly those that try to assess the effectiveness of marketing communications. When people click on virals, pass them on, or bookmark them, it does not immediately also mean that they find them interesting. They are clearly finding them useful, but that use may simply be as an object to continue a relationship with their friends rather than as a tool for making or forming an impression about a brand or product.

Technorati Tags: filter, organization, popularity

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Marketing as a soft martial art.

2009-04-05T16:28:34Z

I finally watched Red Belt yesterday on Netflix and thoroughly enjoyed it, Mamet is a genius. If you haven’t seen it, the film is really a Greek Tragedy set in the modern world where the hero is a Jujitsu instructor. I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t watched it, but the instructor – Terry – says, “There’s always an escape. There is no situation you can’t escape from.” His point is, no matter how dire, you can always find a way to reverse the strong position of your enemy and gain the upper hand.

I couldn’t help thinking that this is also one of the tenets of new marketing. Where classic marketing is a discipline of force and strength, new marketing is a discipline of strategy and position. In new marketing, you don’t attack head on, you look to use the opponents strength(s) against them, you look to find a position where your opponent is off balance and you can gain the upper hand.

I think this is one of the reasons that Positioning (as defined by Ries and Trout) is no longer as effective as it was. In defining a positioning, you are essentially locking yourself into a fixed point. This is always going to make you vulnerable to competitors who are flexible enough to change their position and throw you off balance.

There is always an excape, there is no position you can’t escape from, unless you have defined your brand so precisely around a fixed position that movement becomes impossible.

Technorati Tags: new marketing, positioning

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New marketing strategies: the tripod (updated!)

2009-04-06T14:05:47Z

I think the tripod (not the official name but I was always disappointed that marketing strategies don’t have cool names like chess strategies so I’m hoping to start naming them) is one of foundations of what I’d call new marketing. It’s based upon the premise that the best way to transform a transactional relationship between two parties is to introduce a third.

In branding this takes the well-understood form of replacing a brand promise or benefit with a shared mission. So rather than being a company that’s all about selling something to someone, you become a partner in working to achieve something bigger with your customers.

But this principle can also be applied more broadly anytime you are faced with a situation in which you are trying to get someone to do something that they don’t already want to do. Instead of simply attacking the problem head-on and forcing or tricking them into doing what you want, The Tripod would suggest identifying a third party who can change the dynamics.

For example, let’s say you are a car manufacturer. Right now, your direct customers aren’t buying. So rather than reducing your margins or creating a host of incentives to lure unwilling drivers, think instead about creating new partnerships. For example, could you do a deal with Zipcar to help them, expand their footprint while taking a cut of new revenues.

An approach like this changes the situation from one where one party has to lose in order for the other party to win, into a situation where all parties can see some gains. While his can’t work all the time, it’s amazing how many different situations can be transformed through this approach.

UPDATE: In the comments, Niko pointed out that I have essentially described a Two-sided market. I initially disagreed but he sent me an email which proved me wrong. So the Tripod can also be defined as the transformation of a transactional relationship between two parties through the creation of a two-sided market. Now that’s starting to sound much more official.

Marketing tripod by Adrian Ho is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at zeusjones.com/blog.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at zeusjones.com.

Technorati Tags: tripod

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The era of the fox?

2009-04-01T20:25:36Z

Looking for inspiration for a project recently, I picked up that old stand-by “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. You may recall he talked of the Isaiah Berlin distinction between hedgehogs and foxes: the former know one big thing, the latter know many little things. Collins’ analysis of many companies concluded that the great businesses are run by hedgehogs with a single, unifying worldview.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and I found myself reading a review by an economist and fellow Scot, John Kay, titled “The world needs more foxes and fewer hedgehogs” and a NY times column with a similar theme. Turns out there’s a Berkeley professor, Philip Tetlock who studied thousands of predictions from 300 political “experts” over time and figured out these experts were not much better than a chimp at picking winners. More interestingly, he found that the worst performers were the ones he likened to Berlin’s hedgehogs. John Kay extrapolated:

“Mr Tetlock’s analysis is about political judgment but equally relevant to economic and commercial assessments. Foxes are better at prediction than hedgehogs because they derive information from many sources, adjust their views in line with events and see a range of perspectives on each situation. Hedgehogs have one clear view, seek evidence that confirms that view and have ready explanations for apparent failures of foresight.”

It’s certainly not hard to see the political shift from hedgehog to fox. And Jon Stewart was merciless with Jim Cramer recently for his hedgehoginess about the economy. As for the commercial world, it seems to me that this extrapolation can easily continue into brand and business strategy.

In previous posts here, Adrian has talked about some of the differences between classic vs modern companies and brands. I think the shift from hedgehog brands (think single-minded promise, consistent and unchanging viewpoint, reductionist, declarative) to fox brands (culturally adaptive, nuanced, complex, inquisitive) is very much part of that same strand of thinking.

If Jim Collins was to study the great companies of the next ten years rather than those from the latter part of the 20C., I bet he’d find this to be the era of the fox – and I wonder if he’d adjust his theory. If he’s a fox, I’d think he would.

Now I’m off to ponder the implications of Tetlock’s damning analysis of experts on businesses peddling marketing expertise.

Rob.

(First post. Hopefully the next one won’t take so long.)

Technorati Tags: fox, hedgehog, isaiah berlin, jim collins, john kay, modern brands, richard tetlock

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Regularly scheduled maintenance.

2009-04-01T15:29:39Z

Image via:http://www.flickr.com/photos/sekihan/

In case you hadn’t noticed, we’ve been doing a little improvement work around here on the main site. As a part of that we’ve also upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress. I’m not sure I see any differences but it makes me feel better nonetheless.

I’ve also done some other cleanup, apologies to subscribers, I finally got round to deleting the old blogger version of this blog and I may have accidentally deleted some of your subscriptions as they weren’t all carried over by Feedburner. Hopefully you’ll continue to see value and re-subscribe. On that topic, I’m now redirecting all Wordpress feeds through Feedburner too. I’m crossing my fingers that this won’t screw things up even more but you never know with this stuff.

In other news, I’ve finally figured out FTP and have been going crazy with plugins. Most notably, you can now subscribe to comments via RSS or email and also I’ve added Facebook Connect which our site designer @orangetrulo will despise because it puts a huge ugly button on his nice layout. I’ve also added a nice, related posts plugin too. If there are any others you’d find helpful let me know in the comments.

As always, thanks for reading

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