Filed under: Emergent media, Future of Media, Innovative advertising, Innovative marketing, Innovative promotions, Innovative retail | Tags: conversion marketing, Eightbar, future of retail marketing, hursley park, IBM Hursley Park, retail trends
I’ve also just come across another piece from eightbar. For those of you who only know eightbar as the common eightbar blues chord progression, eightbar here is the unofficial blog of cool and interesting things from the creatives and techies at IBM’s Hursley Park Laboratories in the UK.Filed under: Designers, FMCG innovation, Food trends & info, Innovation, Innovative marketing, Innovative promotions, Innovative stimulus, Marketing, new product, Nice Design, Nice products | Tags: FMCG, Innovation, innovative packaging, new product
While you can’t judge a book by its cover, we often judge food by its packaging. One dollars worth of spaghetti sure looks a million dollars with a bit of fancy pants wrapping doesn’t it…Never underestimate the importance of appearance when it comes to food, or anything for that matter…
Why do pet care companies always put an animal on the front of their pet food? The dog can’t read but the owner can. Why are we packaging pet food for the pet? They know what dogs look like, talk to them in their own language.
I’d take a premium supermarket pet food brand & stick it in a stylish black tin with silver labeling & discrete branding with no visual reference to animals. Risky you say? I doubt it.
And another thing… why do washing detergents all use bright colours & show water or clean clothes? We make our decisions on what detergent to buy on the perceived quality of the brand. In the absence of any
laundry powders which don’t present pictures of clouds or water gushing through logos, let’s be honest, we pick the one we think looks more sophisticated or innovative or expensive than the rest.
Why not take washing powder & stick it in a metal canister that sits proudly on the laundry shelf instead of embarrassingly in the cupboard? Or better still, cook some good looking detergent granules &
put the stuff in a stylish transparent container.
For a fresh spin on packaging, make it design-orientated not product-orientated. Just because you’re selling pasta doesn’t mean you need a fat Italian & a bunch of tomatoes on the front. Lord, this is 2008.
Filed under: creativity, Innovation, Innovative marketing | Tags: American, brainstorming, chewing gum, FMCG, idea, Innovation, innovation idea, innovation tool, new product, positioning, technique, what about..., what if
Gum is always about taste. A nihilist doesn’t believe in anything. Nihilist gum doesn’t believe in flavour. Which begs the question..why chew it?
A counter trend can often be the most convincing way to get someone to try a product because for every go-with-the-grain consumer, there’s a million nosy parkers who want to try something new.
If we were to push this kind of reasoning to the extreme . . .well then, If restaurants are always about service, could you create a restaurant which goes against the grain of service? Instead of making you feel at home & treating you like a welcome patron, they abuse you and ridicule your food decisions..
If you don’t understand the menu they call you a philistine, if you don’t order enough they call you a tight-ass anorexic & if you don’t tip big they point out the cheapskate to all the other patrons. Dining becomes a combat sport. Welcome to the game, its survivor restaurant-style.
Assume for a moment that you are the marketing director of a large confectionery company. While everyone else is focusing on higher end premium bite size indulgence, you decide to launch the largest single
serve chocolate bar in the world. It is big & chunky and it proudly displays its calorie count on the front next to the name :: Fattyboombah. Nice huh?
For every trend there’s a counter trend. Look at the research, chuck it away & do the exact opposite. Imagine what you think people want and offer something completely contrary. The truth of the matter is that people are contradictory. A large percentage of Americans may disapprove of the reporting of a political sex scandal but you can bet that the circulation of trashmags increases when one is on the cover! So embrace the contradictions, scope out the challenge and then just close your eyes and pick a side….
Filed under: Innovative marketing | Tags: Australian Bloggers, Australian blogosphere, Julian Cole, Marketing Magazine, Naked Communications, Servant of Chaos, Top 50 pioneer marketing blogs
Julian Cole, a digital strategist at Naked Communications has just created a new list profiling the top 50 Australian marketing pioneer blogs to shed some light on the Australian Marketing Blogosphere and connect us with some great Australian Marketing thinkers.
He uses a combination of ranking stats- (Google Page Ranks (10), Technorati Authority (10), Technoati Blog Reactions (10), Alexa Page Ranking (10), Bloglines (10) and has also added a Pioneer score (10) which is a subjective score reflecting the blogs ability to have pioneering thoughts about Marketing.
The list can be found here on his blog and will be published in the August edition of Marketing Magazine.
It’s definitely worth a look, my personal fave, the man who encourages more of us to get out there and engage, participate and connect Servant of Chaos comes in at number # 2. Yours truly makes its humble debut at number # 20.
Nice one Jules.
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Total | ||
| 1 | Banner Blog | 6 | 6 | 8 | 6 | 8 | 9 | 43 |
| 2 | Servant of Chaos | 9 | 5 | 8 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 39 |
| 3 | Duncans Tv Adland | 6 | 5 | 7 | 6 | 8 | 5 | 37 |
| 4 | Corporate Engagement | 8 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 8 | 35 |
| 5 | Better Communication Results | 8 | 3 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 34 |
| 6 | Young PR | 7 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 34 |
| 7 | Small Business Branding | 7 | 3 | 0 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 33 |
| 8 | Get Shouty | 8 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 33 |
| 9 | Personlize Media | 8 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 30 |
| 10 | Brand DNA | 6 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 30 |
| 11 | PR Disasters | 7 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 29 |
| 12 | Ettf.net | 6 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 27 |
| 13 | 1+1=3 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 27 |
| 14 | Business of Marketing & Branding | 6 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 26 |
| 15 | Media Hunter | 7 | 2 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 25 |
| 16 | Australian SEO Blog | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 6 | 1 | 24 |
| 17 | Wide Open Spaces | 8 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 24 |
| 18 | The Marketer | 7 | 3 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 23 |
| 19 | Three Billion | 6 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 23 |
| 20 | Innovation Feeder | 6 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 22 |
| 21 | Campaign Brief | 6 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 21 |
| 22 | EcioLab | 7 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 20 |
| 23 | Adspace-Pioneers | 7 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 20 |
| 24 | Publicity Queen | 8 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 19 |
| 25 | Filter Media | 6 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 18 |
| 26 | Marketing Easy | 6 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 5 | 1 | 18 |
| 27 | Hothouse | 6 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 18 |
| 28 | Mark Neely’s Blog – 3rd Horizon | 7 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 17 |
| 29 | Lexy Klain | 7 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 17 |
| 30 | Peter Sheahan | 6 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 17 |
| 31 | In my atmosphere | 6 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 16 |
| 32 | Elbow Grease | 4 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 16 |
| 33 | Falkayn | 5 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 14 |
| 34 | Pigs Don’t Fly | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 14 |
| 35 | Diffusion | 7 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 14 |
| 36 | Australian Small Business | 6 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 13 |
| 37 | The Jason Recliner | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 13 |
| 38 | The Wayfarer | 7 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 13 |
| 39 | Adnotes | 6 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 13 |
| 40 | Ryan’s View | 6 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 13 |
| 41 | B&T | 7 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 13 |
| 42 | Zero Budget Marketing Ideas | 6 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 12 |
| 43 | Blackwatch | 5 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 11 |
| 44 | Fresh Chat | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 11 |
| 45 | Latin Ocean | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 11 |
| 46 | Arrow Internet SEO | 7 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 11 |
| 47 | The Sticky Report | 7 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| 48 | Naked Communications-The Flasher | 8 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 10 |
| 49 | Pixel Paddock | 5 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 8 |
| 50 | Send up a larger room | 7 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 8 |
Filed under: beta, Brand, Community, content communities, creativity, Digital culture, Emergent media, FMCG innovation, Future of Media, geek, Geek stuff, Innovation, Innovative marketing, Lifestyle trends, Macro trends, neophiliac, new product, Nice Design, Social, Social media, Thinking, Work Futures | Tags: beta, Beta-culture, Facebook, Forrester Consumer Forum, Google, Innovation, MySpace, Radiohead, social networking, trends, Twitter
The idea of being in beta has become a broad cultural phenomenon. Many new products never make it beyond trial stage, and the trial and error beta-approach that helps Google and other alpha innovators to out-fail and thereby out-innovate the competition, is as much an attribute of successful organizations as it is a sign of our time.
But it’s not only analysts and conference organizers who are switching instantly from micro to macro, picking up nascent trends and elevating them to a must-deal-with core competence that transcends the current fad (just see all the Facebook conferences that are mushrooming right now). What I find even more interesting is how the media and blogosphere deal with it. If everything’s in beta, the public doesn’t have the patience anymore to wait for the alpha. As the media are increasingly forced to immediately widen the scope and view every innovation in a larger context as it occurs, the boundaries between reporters and commentators, bloggers and industry analysts are fading.
Some examples: Not too long ago, Twitter was all the rage, and it was stunning to see that just shortly after the initial coverage during SXSW in March, reporters were already elaborating on the concept of micro-blogging, wondering what the new “radical transparency” meant for business. Nowadays, there is a great chance that you will stumble upon a Facebook story when you open just about any publication: It’s Facebook vs. MySpace, the implications of social networking on the borders between work and personal life, reflections on the “Facebook economy,” Facebook vs. iTunes, and maybe a philosophical piece on Facebook “as a post-modern book” or the future of social networking, which, for TIME, equals the future of the Internet. It is only a small step from MySpace to the “MySpace generation,” and from Facebook to the “Facebook generation” and then to the “Fakebook generation.” Similarly, the recent buzz around Radiohead’s “pay what you want” online release has instantly led to the coining of a “Radiohead Generation” and praise for the band “as a pioneer of the digital revolution.” And there are hundreds of articles discussing if Radiohead’s decision ushers in the definite end of the record industry. The stories about the radical distribution model appear to eclipse the actual music on the album–in this case, too, the reviews are in before the story is told.
Evidently, the media need to cope with the current while also putting forward a vision for the up and coming. The time between observation and conclusion, between description and prediction, however, has shrunk to almost zero. There are no more lapses between news, analysis, background story, industry trend story, and intellectual dissection; they have become one and the same, at the same time. Not only is beta the new alpha–beta has gone meta.
Filed under: Asia Research, Brain stuff, creativity, Gen Research, Innovation, Innovative marketing, Marketing, Mind candy, Oz research, steal or borrow info, Work Futures, Work out up top
What makes one person think more innovatively than another?
Most people spend their time doing stuff. Selling shoes, marketing hammers, securing distribution, balancing nutritional value with taste and so on and so on. So to sit down one afternoon & just decide that you’d like to think more innovatively is kind of like deciding that you’d like to paint a masterpiece without the paints or the canvas, or even the subject matter. In order to be more innovative you need to prepare your brain with the tools it needs & you need to garner the stimulus, the
subject matter if you will. Then how you interpret that subject matter will determine what kind of masterpiece you’ll create.
Some people seem to be naturally more creative just like some people are better musicians or artists. But there’s a big difference between people who are mediocre, bloody good and those who are brilliant. When it comes to innovation like everything else, there’s no reason why most of us can’t be bloody good if we set about learning the skills in the same way we would for music or art.
Picture the person in your head who you think is the cat’s pijamas. They’re more creative, more lateral, they see things and make connections that you don’t. They approach opportunities from different angles and they change things. Can you picture them? Are they better looking than you too? Some people have all the luck…
The truth is, those people that seem to be more creative or more innovative than you, it’s generally because they spend most of their time looking at things differently. If I’m asked to help companies innovate, I find it easier to come in & look at a category in a completely new way. That’s because I’m not bogged down with the details of how to sell in a product to stores, or pitch for company funding, or create a media strategy or control a budget. You know, the hard stuff.
I spend most of my waking hours trying to think differently & innovate – create new brand positioning, new revenue streams, to imagine a new space or think about what the future might be. The point being, that if you put aside some time each week to concentrate on being more innovative, you’ll find it easier too.
The best way to start being more innovative is to force yourself to start thinking differently. To start imagining ‘what if?’ rather than just being concerned with ‘what is’. That means taking some time to expose yourself to new ideas & thinking. It also helps to start gathering together a bunch of tools that will help you ask the right questions & force your brain to think differently.
It doesn’t have to feel like homework, it doesn’t have to take a huge amount of time out of your day. You could start by checking out of the site links on this site each day. Pick a blog or a site that sounds interesting, visit a new one each day and ask yourself : What is interesting about this site? What could I learn from this site? How is this site different or similar to my business or the issues we face? or the people we reach? or the sorts of ideas we’re looking for?
Being innovative is about making new connections, it’s about jumping from one space to another, it’s about putting a new lens on existing research or points of view. It doesn’t have to be a big shift, it might just be a little bit different. Sometimes that’s all you need.
This site has a whole bunch of brainfood but don’t stop there :: there’s a whole world wide web of non-work related mind candy goodness that will put some buzz in your uptop muscle. So go, hang your balls out in the wind and try something new.
