Make Seriously | Design and Life

Marketers have some lessons to learn.

I spent a good portion of the last few years studying two things: design and propaganda. During that time I learned a thing or two about influencing people and getting action from that influence, and the role that images play in that. Over the course of my lifetime, marketers have been pretty good at taking those principles of design and propaganda and employing them to move products off shelves. Over the last couple of years, however, a few problems have presented themselves:

1 | Marketers have quit being creative in favor of banking on the creativity of other people.
2 | Marketing students have learned business models, and have not focused on creativity.
3 | The market sees the greatest influence from creative, private citizens.

Those problems, of course, are a vicious cycle. Marketing students, focusing on business instead of creativity, need to find creative solutions to promoting their products. A lot of times they work with firms to control the image and visual promotion of a product. Lately, however, it seems that they forego finding creative, unique, solutions to their problem and instead opt for the “viral thing”. Facebooking works, right? Well. It can. And viral marketing can be successful when done well and when unique to the product. Of course, the whole viral concept is best evidenced with the spread of random, quirky videos. Of course, not all videos are as… cruel… as that one. But the interesting point to make is that the video has been watched nearly ten million times. What about that low production video makes it worth viewing ten million times? It’s not particularly well done, it’s not useful. It is, however, interesting, and there’s a demand for it. And that’s where marketers, lacking creative training, turn so often to promote their products. It’s worked before, right? So it must keep working, right? And that’s where it falls apart. Creativity isn’t recycled, it’s reimagined. Recreated. Remade. It’s not something you can copy, but something you can learn from and move in a new direction.

That said, I find myself continually impressed by the Obama campaign, and tonight’s “infomercial” is perhaps the most compelling part of it. When was the last time that something like this came from a candidate? (other than Ross Perot… the answer is Kennedy) It’s huge, and despite the criticisms Obama has faced for making this move, I find it a particularly meaningful and creative approach to solving a problem in his campaign. So far, there’s been a clear difference in the visual vernacular of each campaign. One asks for patriotism (country first), and the other plays on the thing Americans seem to want most (hope and change). Artists have continually supported Obama and created compelling images which have become part of the campaign. The debates painted a calm, cool, collected image in contrast to McCain’s aggressive, time-to-fight attitude. And tonight, it seems that the image has come full circle as Obama takes the time to address the nation as a whole, for a period of time, focusing on what he has to bring to the nation. It’s moving, and it takes an otherwise divided nation and joins them through stories that all of us can relate to and offering solutions to the problems we face. It sends chills down my spine, and I applaud it as a great, creative marketing solution.

A random ‘toon:

I had some time at work today, so I drew an amusing image for myself. (note: this image is not an endorsement of John McCain and is copyright Josh Taylor, Oct. 2008)

There is the version I originally made and a version with some color added in. Personally I prefer the original, but I thought people might like the color one as well.

Charting my reactions to the third debate

This is coming late in regards to the debate, but I haven’t really had time to work on it (heck, it’s only the first hour or so, so it’s missing a good thirty minutes.) I attempted to fact check it as closely as possible and to provide my input about certain statements made. That got turned into an interactive chart that I hope you can enjoy.

Here’s the key for the visual:
X - false statement or lie
M - misleading or misstated, intentional or not
D - dubious, suspect or lacking clear evidence
O - offensive statements, slander, rhetoric, and general unpleasantry
J - Joe the plumber mention

I’ve missed things in my examination, but hopefully most of it’s there:

Public Radio: almost free.

There are two things I look forward to on my drive to and from work every day: Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

It’s been nice to have a news source that’s both independent and journalistic. There are very few conflicts of interest for a source like WFYI since they don’t accept funding from political campaigns and they don’t allow political ads on their station. Even better, there are really no ads at all on the station. There’s occasionally a brief pause to identify local station sponsors, but no sitting in the car for ten minutes of my twenty minute drive waiting for programming like on the commercial stations. It’s also a public station that’s funded by the public, so the programming is geared toward pleasing the consumers of the station rather than to push an agenda for a target segment. There’s also a far more journalistic approach to the news. Rather than labeling their nouns with charged adjectives like some stations (*cough *cough) the folks at WFYI and NPR choose to actually report the news based on facts.

Here are two examples of the same story, one journalistic and the other clearly commentary bias:
NPR
and
Rush Limbaugh

Now, if any of the 3 people who read this happen to be Rush listeners, they’re probably saying, “but Josh! NPR is liberal!” And if so, I invite those people to examine the difference in the links I posted where NPR didn’t give their opinion on the delivery of jokes at the dinner, while Limbaugh explained why John McCain clearly won the joke-off and deserves to be president over a terrorist.

That reason alone is enough for me to enjoy NPR. On the flip side of the coin, I do enjoy some of the liberal satire. Not surprisingly, Colbert and Stewart round out my top 5 TV shows behind The Big Bang Theory, The Office, and LOST. However, I don’t want them to actually report stories to me because I know their bias is extreme. I want them to make me laugh at the banality of American politics, not to report the news. NPR also avoids that trap.

This past week or so has been their annual fund drive, and for the first time ever I donated to a public service (not my first donation ever, just to one of this nature) and became a member of WFYI to show my support for what appears to be the last of a dying breed of journalistic media sources. They don’t consult politicians or other journalists for commentary on economic matters, they consult economists and economics professors. They don’t let politicians talk over one another, they interview them separately to get actual responses rather than yelling diatribes. After a debate, they check the facts, they don’t poll a panel of journalists to see who they think won. When a story breaks, they don’t cast blame, they report facts.

It’s nice.

I encourage anyone reading to give it a listen. If it piques your interest, support it. Keep alive the last of a dying breed.

Numbers in November

I was thinking about doing something a bit more time consuming over the next month (starting in November) and making some sort of graphic representation of my life sounded good. I seriously doubt that many people read this (although I do use google analytics to keep track of those numbers) and was trying to think of things that people would be interested in besides my opinion. So, if you are reading this, and you think that this project sounds interesting, let me know what you think I should keep track of. Things I’ve considered so far include the number of ounces of water consumed, number of miles run, number of hours spent online, images of food eaten, amount of money spent, and number of times I say a given word. I’ll update sometime between now and November first with the verdict on what’s getting recorded. I could also do a month-long sketch-a-thon and redraw something random for a month (or into the foreseeable future).

BestBuy for sale?

Oh, no. It’s just their new logo. In case you’ve missed the news, here’s a link to BrandNew’s reaction for images.

It’s curious that BestBuy has taken this drastic of a step in updating their identity, and it’s certainly too early to see what will come of it. It will be nice when there’s an official press release concerning it, until then I think there will be a lot of head scratching and speculation. Here are a few of my thoughts:

- The new logo says to me that you are purchasing the “best buy”, where the old one communicated that you were getting the “best buy” on the object you are purchasing. A small distinction, but a huge shift in meaning.
- The old logo was easily recognizable at a distance. It seems illogical for a large retailer who locates their outlets most often in strip malls by interstates to make their identity less easily recognized. A good example is the image Armin linked to on the BrandNew blog for the storefront in the Mall of America. It doesn’t stand out in contrast to any other store.
- The new logo, according to the small amount of information the company has published, is meant to target a new market segment: women. It’s a trend going around the marketing world right now (see: walmart, memorex, michael’s, etc.) I’m not sure that sacrificing the brand equity, recognizability, and visibility of their identity is worth targeting a non-primary market. Perhaps they don’t think they’ll lose their current, male, clientele. They could be right, but I don’t know that it offsets the new problems.
- They could have updated the logo rather than completely replaced it. In some ways it is just an “update” in the sense that it still says “bestbuy” and has a yellow tag, but it in no way keeps the same visual identity of the previous logo. The face is now title caps and doesn’t appear to relate to electronics or retail, it’s two primary functions. It’s only quality is that its interesting, but a little awkward around the “s”. The tag appears to be an afterthought at this point, being unattached, fitting only because it mirrors the “y” and little else. It’s nice to see that it matches cap height and the descenders perfectly, but the weight drags it too far down, making it appear aligned below the baseline. It also doesn’t interact with the type in any way, and it makes me question the necessity of an illustrative element if it’s just “attached” at the end of the wordmark.

Frankly, it may have been better off without the tag at all. It’s too easily recognized as the primary feature of the original logo and now it’s treated as an element that the designers were forced to use but didn’t want to emphasize. It seems to me, that the wordmark would appeal to me more without the tag, and it could still be given the size emphasis BestBuy is used to. Time will tell us what this new identity will do to BestBuy. It may be nothing, it may position them out of their own market.