metacool

Please help us kill gas in Palo Alto! CIA 2009!

A student team from our Creating Infectious Action (CIA) class at the Stanford d.school needs your help:  they are trying to create a movement to transform part of downtown Palo Alto in to a pedestrian zone.  Here's their idea:

Imagine this: University Ave-- from High to Cowper-- transformed into a pedestrian-only urban park complete with outdoor restaurants, street performances, community events, trees and gardens, and bike-friendly infrastructure.

This Initiative seeks to do more than just block University Ave. We aim to tear up the road and create a unified and truly beautiful community space. Cities all over the nation and Europe demonstrate the success of Pedestrian Malls. They revitalize business, encourage alternative transportation, and reinforce a sense of community. It's an all-win situation.

I like how this team has used the design thinking process to end up with the creation of this movement as a goal.  Given a short but sweet design brief to go "Kill Gas", this team spent a lot of time hanging out with business owners, store workers, and citizens on the street in downtown Palo Alto.  They prototyped various solutions, and kept learning as they went.  They ended up with several very interesting design directions, and picked the pedestrian-only urban park as the way to go.  I think they were wise, for two reasons. 

First, this direction, executed well (which we'll see -- the quarter isn't over yet!), has strong potential to knock it out of the park across what I consider to be the three key principles behind creating infectious action:

1. create a remarkable offering:  a pedestrian-only zone in Palo Alto!
2. weave sticky stories around the offering:  "tear up the road and create a unified and truly beautiful community space"
3. identify communities receptive to points 1 & 2, then light some small fires, and then spend time pouring gas on those fires:  this is where you come in

Second, I think a pedestrian-only zone in Palo Alto would be a Good Thing.  I grew up in Boulder, where part of Pearl Street was transformed in to a pedestrian mall when I was a kid.  A few decades later, it's still the beating heart of the town, a fun place to be in touch with the community.

Here's where they need your help:  if they can gather 1,000 pledges of interest by May 27, a former mayor of Palo Alto will take their multi-stage implementation plan before the city government.  As I write this, they have 883 887 supporters and four days to go.  It would be awesome to see them blow through the 1,000 barrier in a big way. 

If you would like to support this team and their cause, you can do it in one of the following ways:

1. Join the Facebook group Palo Alto Pedestrian Mall
2. You can sign their online petition here
3. Or send a text message to: 67463

Last but not least, please print out this flyer and stick it on your front lawn or in the back window of your car.

Thanks for helping this remarkable movement catch on fire!

If you use Twitter, please consider tweeting this blog post to help spread the word!  And if you blog, a post mentioning the movement would be much appreciated!  Mahalo.

Paul Bennett & Egill Helgason on design thinking, Iceland, the future of the world economy, and a whole bunch of other important topics

I'd be posting these videos even if Paul Bennett and I weren't colleagues at IDEO, so rich and fascinating is this conversation between Paul and Egill Helgason, the host of the Icelandic show Silfur Eglis.  Design thinking is a central theme of their time together, and they touch on many important topics of the day, including transparency, community, and how we might move ourselves out of this mess.  It's definitely worth a listen.

And don't worry -- it's all in English!  Enjoy.

Innovating under our noses

I saw two cool things today which renewed my faith in the ability of us all to innovate anywhere.  There are tons of things right under our noses which would benefit from a rethink.  Today's examples come from two organizations that usually go by their three initials.

The first is Apple's brilliant rethink of "banner" and "skyscraper" ads in the online version of the New York Times:

In these ads, the PC and the Mac guys on the right interact with the Apple Customer Experience banner on the top, and then with the bald guy from the Sopranos in the "Hair Growth Academy" ad on the left.  It's funny, witty, clever, and catchy.  And it's the first web ad I've clicked on in, well... forever.  It's a nice example of an incremental innovation, and I'd love to see the resulting web metrics.

The second piece of inspiration is the Intern Auction being held by Crispin Porter + Bogusky on eBay:

 

Not only is it a fun way to raise awareness of CP+B's intern program, but it also provides a market check on the value of an internship to clients.  Just to be clear, the auction is to buy the services of the intern, not to buy the internship itself.  I wonder how much more the internship would sell for in that latter mode?

Thanks to both the NYT and CP+B for an making this an inspirational Monday.

Leading tribes, cultivating a movement

This is the second of my favorite talks coming out of this year's TED conference.  Seth Godin takes us through his ideas about leading tribes.  I think he does a fabulous job of describing a different way of leading, a way that seems like the perfect fit to our highly networked, interconnected, and (potentially) interdependent world.

His three questions at 14:15 are priceless.

You can't manage a movement.  But you can lead one, even cultivate one.  Don't be a sheepwalker -- try and lead the tribe that matters most to you.

next week: the CIA conference!

David H. Liu Memorial Lecture Series in Design at Stanford

The David H. Liu Memorial Lecture Series in Design starts up again next week.  The speaker roster is truly amazing, and they should be an awesome experience. 

If you're anywhere near Stanford on these dates, I highly recommend stopping by.  Do check the series website for any room or date changes.

Director's Commentary: Adrian Van Hooydonk

This awesome Director's Commentary focuses on the thinking behind the reworked BMW 7-series.  Narrated by BMW design maestro Adrian Van Hooydonk, it's important on two levels.

First, it's amazing to hear an expert take us through the intricacies of making a car look good.  Cars can be magnificent works of scuplture, but rarely does success come by accident.  As we listen to Van Hooydonk describe the interior and exterior design details, we get a glimpse at the extreme amount of attention to detail required to pull off a product experience as complex and multifaceted as a car.  Such is the state of technology and design process at BMW, even a rear tail light has become a sophisticated mechanical-eletronic subsystem, and one designed to the hilt.  What a far cry from the incandescent-bulb lit taillamps of my old 1969 1600-2!

Second, once again we see the importance of having a clear point of view to guide design decisions.  Listening to Van Hooydonk, it's clear what is important when it comes to the design of a 7-series: power, sport, elegance, strength, authenticity.  Staying on brand means designing to those parameters and throwing out everything else.  Which sounds a lot like the art of strategy making to me; perhaps the most important aspect of designs informed by a strategic point of view is that the design does come to embody that strategy and as such forms the basis for a completely coherent brand identity.  In my experience it's much easier to have effective marketing communications if your offering actually is designed in manner that's congruent with your messaging.

I consider organizations such as Apple, BMW, Zappos, and Pixar to be part of a select few capable of nailing a complete and compelling user experience.  They each do so by betting on the talent of their designers and creators.  Clear and compelling vision, coupled with quality execution, does in fact win over the long haul.

Travis Pastrana and the future of the world economy

While not trying to be flip about such a weighty topic as the state of the macro international economy, I believe this daredevil bigwheel jump by Travis Pastrana elegantly captures some of the key elements that will help consumer-facing brands thrive over the next few years.

(No, it's not about shooting bottle rockets at night in your underwear.  Skip ahead six seconds)

I reckon there are five in total:

1. Optimism is the New Courage:  Travis wouldn't attempt this mondo backflip if he wasn't optimistic that he could land it.  Sure it's dangerous, sure it's risky, but he has the skill and the experience to know that he can pull it off.  That's optimism grounded in reality.  Just as the fundamental rules of the marketplace haven't changed in our current predicament, it's not like Travis is facing a whole new set of laws of physics -- so why not be optimistic?  His bigwheel is not his usual motorcycle (or a Subaru, even), but it has wheels and he can deal with the downsizing.  That's optimism.
2. Use planning to minimize the stupid risks:  even Travis is wearing a helmet for this one.  And notice that this is his third-time-charmed attempt.  Now more than ever, when the price of failing is so high, it's a good idea to minimize secondary risks even as we embrace big leaps.  That might mean building an extra prototype, running another market test, or getting out in the field with customers more than usual.  These days your big or small leaps really need to work, so a little extra midnight oil is probably worth it.  There's enough risk out there as it is, why not cut out all the dumb risks to better focus on the big ones?
3. Potential Energy = Cash: Pastrana's maneuver is all about converting potential energy in to kinetic energy.  If you're like me, you held your breath for those scary seconds he was inverted.  But if you think through your physics, you know that 90% of the success of this jump was set up at the start; with the right amount of potential energy on tap, Travis knows that he can make the jump so long as he's able to execute all of the routine details.  But without that energy, even the best execution won't hack it.  Cash is the potential energy of the business world.  Without it, you can't pull off a stunt of any size. Like Travis, you want to do anything you can to maximize your potential energy/cash.  If that means canceling your trip to the nifty event across the country, or eating rice and beans instead of steak, or riding a train instead of flying, you just have to do it.  Save and conserve your cash: you don't want to be caught low, slow, and out of ideas.  Or money.
4. It's not about the flight...:  Bombing down a ramp and flying through the air is one thing, sticking the landing is quite another.  Above all, we cheer for Travis because his sheer talent allows him to nail landings like no other.  So, what's next?  What happens when you make it through these Schumpterian flames?  If you're successful now, will you or can you be successful when things turn up?  What's the balance? Landings are important... where will yours take you?
5. Dress for success:  There's no better time than a downturn to use surface aesthetics to convey a sense of optimism, planning, and control.  The posture you and your brand take in the world will define you.  So put on your best, put your best foot forward, and let other people know that you've got your act together.  Hell, even Travis wears pinstripes.

Many thanks to my friend Reilly for pointing me to this video.  The weird resulting thoughts, however, are those of yours truly, and should not be blamed on him.

Fast Company stuff worth reading slowly

As I've said before, while I work at IDEO, this is not a blog about IDEO and I don't talk much at all about what's going on there.  However, I wanted to point out two cool things involving IDEO which I think have broad appeal to all of us trying to make a dent in the universe.

The first one is about David Kelley.  I hope you can read it.  After my parents and my family, he's way up there in my personal you-changed-my-life-forever-and-ever category.  He's been a teacher, boss, fellow gearhead, accomplice, hero. 

The second is Fast Company's list of the world's most innovative companies.  Yes, IDEO is in there (we're in the top 10!  Woo hoo!), but it's also super instructive to read through the list of 50.  It's also a really nicely designed web experience.  For me, it's affirming to see that so many innovative companies are also ones whose brands are part of my life or consciousness.  If I were to draw up this list on my own, it might look a bit different (where's Mozilla?), but here are some of the Fast Company 50 that are part of my life (some are major time sinks: hello Hulu and Facebook and Zappos!):

• Google
• Hulu
• Apple
• Amazon
• Facebook
• Zappos
• NPR
• Gore
• Lego
• Aravind
• Toyota

Enjoy!  Have a great weekend.

Truth vs. Myth: why a Hyundai is the new Mustang

I'm a big believer that brands are about what you do in the world, not what you say you do.  This often leads me to say things like "Subaru is the new Saab", or "Pontiac is the new BMW".  I heard a lot of agreement on the former but was virtually tarred and feathered for the latter.  But I stand by my judgments of those brands, because they really are delivering compelling experiences in a way that they didn't before, and arguably better than their vaunted competitors. When organizations focus on making really good stuff, then it's relatively easy to talk about that truth and have it stick in the world. 

Truth is much stickier than myth.

So here I go again:  the Hyundai Genesis Coupe is the new Mustang.  It pairs a sophisticated powertrain with a modern design approach to suspension (read: no live axle out back), and wraps it all up with some provocative styling.  It's a great example of an automaker really nailing it in terms of visceral, behavioral, and reflective design.  The reflective (designing meaning) part of that triad is being played out this weekend with the debut of this massively gnarly commercial during the Superbowl:

That's truly one epic lap, and a big leap forward for Hyundai. The Genesis is the new Mustang.

metacool Thought of the Day

via FFFFOUND!

Stuff I'm liking

Can I say that? 

"Stuff I'm liking."  Grammar?  I think it works.  It's somewhat Borat-ish, but I think it works.  Hey, if I have a blog, and I publish something to the web, then it exists, right?

Here's some stuff I'm liking, with commentary as to what I see in it:

1. Nuts, Bolts, and Jolts:  a wonderful collection of aphorisms and observations by Rich Moran.  It's an informative guide to surviving the hairball, and fun to read, too.  You may recognize Rich as the author of last week's fabulous thought of the day.  My idea octet of "organizational survival" books would start with Nuts, Bolts, and Jolts, and also include (in no particular order) The No Asshole Rule, Saint Joan, Orbiting the Giant Hairball, Don Quixote, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, The Knowing-Doing Gap, and Up the Organization.  I'm liking it.
2. Pink's Travel Tips:  Mr. Pink has a future in broadcast media, I think.  These are witty and they teach you something, too.  HAHU!
3. Creativity and the rise of optimism:  this essay by Paul Bennett (full disclosure: Paul is a colleague of mine at IDEO) is really inspiring.  If a blog post could be an anthem, this would be my anthem for 2009.  We have to be optimistic.  This one helps us be that way.
4. The Honda Fit:  I love the way it looks.  It's more Mini than the Mini.  It's a modern interpretation of space maximization within a tightly constrained footprint, and it's not beholden to stylistic flourishes from the Eisenhower period.  I dig it.  With a more hyper iVTEC or a turbo diesel mill in there, it would truly be one for the ages.
5. The Monocle Weekly:  I'm surprised how much I enjoy listening to content streaming over the web.  Ah!  It's like radio for your house; or, more precisely, I'm rediscovering the joy of listening to intelligent people go deep on an interesting subject, something I only ever experience when driving in my car.  I'm liking it.
6. Miracle on the Hudson:  we all know about the incredible feat of calm thinking and flying that lead to an Airbus being safely ditched in the Hudson.  Leave it to Bob Sutton to pull some very interesting team dynamics lessons out of that episode.  Fascinating stuff.

I'm really liking all of it! 

Where are we going to sell it?

I always try to treat a mundane food-shopping trip as an expedition to an exotic marketing laboratory.  Viewed through that filter, there's usually something interesting going on.

Case in point is this yogurt case at Whole Foods. Hanging out on the top shelf are some granola-type bars.  These particular bars are sold by a firm called Attune and are infused with probiotics.  So selling them in the yogurt section makes perfect sense: it's about being placed in a way that embraces the shopping experience and needs of the human at the end of the supply chain, rather than efficiencies of layout and inventory stocking.  For example, before I arrived at this display, I had no idea that you could get the outcome of yogurt consumption in a solid food experience.  Had these Attune products been located in the activity bars section, I would have missed them amongst all the brand shouting.

When it comes to innovation, there's as much or more that can be done with all of the layers of product experience around the core offering as with the core offering itself.  And in this day and age, running some experiments with three of the four P's -- place, promotion, price -- is likely to yield some quick and productive results.  Always ask, "So where are we going to sell this?"

More everything matters

In his latest column, Tyler Brûlé explains his simple, "everything matters" test to assess a hotel's capabilities: order a club sandwich.

He explains:

Focusing on the very basics, it starts by sampling the quality of 10 everyday ingredients (bread, lettuce, tomato, egg, bacon, chicken, mayonnaise, butter, potatoes and cooking oil) and how well (or not) all of these can be worked up into a club sandwich.

As with many things in life, if you can nail the simpler, smaller things, then the rest tends to fall into place. This is particularly true of hotels and how they deal with toasting bread, frying eggs, arranging lettuce, crisping bacon and cooking French fries.

Everything matters.

Quality in a switch

Sure, you can call me anal-retentive (which I'm not -- I think "perfectionist" is a more accurate term, but without the connotation of stasis that comes with it), but I love what I see in the photo above. I took it at a hotel I visited recently.

What do you see?

I see the mark of someone who cared. I see someone who was paying attention. I see a belief in quality and the pursuit of perfection.  I see a work culture where people are able to exercise their need to do good work.

All this in eight screwheads aligned on the same plane, plus four switches located correctly within their assigned cutout (if you've ever put one of these panels together, you know how hard this is to do).  Quality experiences and offerings are fractal in nature, and rely on the largest and smallest elements to all be in sync.  Being a guest at this hotel -- from the bed to the room to the food to the views -- was a marvelous experience, and looking at this panel none of that news should come as a surprise.

Again, everything matters.

Designing sticky messages

As I've learned over the past few years of teaching the Creating Infectious Action course at the Stanford d.school, it is possible to consciously design something to be viral.  If you have a remarkable offering and a system to spread the word, all you need to be viral is a sticky, memorable message.  Easier said than done, but at least there's a list of reliable design guidelines.  That's progress.

Last week Tom Perriello won the battle for the congressional seat of the 5th District in Virginia.  An underdog in the race, Perriello won the election in no small part because of effective messages, such as this remarkable commercial:

This is nothing if not a memorable, sticky message, artfully designed. It is so because Perriello hews closely to the "SUCCESs" algorhthym laid out by Chip and Dan Heath in their wonderful book Made to Stick. Deconstructing this ad shows us these component parts:

• Simplicity: this commercial is of NASCAR country, designed for NASCAR country.  As such, no explanation of the sponsorship stickers on this race car is necessary.  This is about taking money from people with a lot of money.
• Unexpectedness: when was the last time you saw a race car in a political ad?  When was the last time you saw a candidate ripping stickers off said race car?  Not quite riveting, but certainly memorable.
• Concreteness: each of those stickers contains the logo of a real company.  Instead of referring to a vague notion of "big oil" as many other politicians do, Perriello is able to be concrete without wasting his own breath mentioning names, which might be distracting from his bigger message, which is "Vote for Perriello".  He manages to be concrete without being boring.  Using the device of removable stickers also allows him to employ a quite visceral gesture which, when added together, implies a message of change agency: I'm going to remove all of these players from power to defend you, the little guy.  Look how I can tear them off and create a blank slate for the rest of us to build from.
  
• Credibility: Perriello wisely leads off with a statement about his opponent's campaign finances in order to establish his own fiscal and moral credibility.
• Emotions: NASCAR, NASCAR, NASCAR.  More American than motherhood and apple pie, there's nothing with more emotional appeal for his audience than a NASCAR racer.  Notice too the patriotic color scheme.  The car is red and white, while Perriello sports a blue shirt and a red tie.  When all the stickers are stripped away, you get a clean burst of American color.  It's not in your face, but it is there. 
  
• Stories:  this ad is just a series of stories.  I count three:  1)  his opponent taking money for his campaign from big oil and power lobbies, 2) we're paying too much at the gas pump, 3) he is taking no money from corporate sponsors so that he can fight for the common man.

While I don't know if the Perriello campaign used the SUCCESs guidelines in designing this commercial, as a finished piece it is a great benchmark of what a truly sticky message should be. 

Design thinking in the New York Times

The New York times ran a great article yesterday called "Design is more than packaging".  Of course, if you're part of the metacool community, you already know that.  But it is great to see this meme getting out there and sticking.  I'm very happy to see that the article was published in the Business section.  Cool!

Among others, the article mentions IDEO, my employer, and the Stanford d.school, my other employer.

A couple of quotes.

Tim Brown:

Design thinking is inherently about creating new choices, about divergence.  Most business processes are about making choices from a set of existing alternatives. Clearly, if all your competition is doing the same, then differentiation is tough. In order to innovate, we have to have new alternatives and new solutions to problems, and that is what design can do.

George Kembel:

It would be overreaching to say that design thinking solves everything. That’s putting it too high on a pedestal.  Business thinking plus design thinking ends up being far more powerful.

Well put, gentlemen!

"Thank you", not "Hey you!"

A pleasant surprise showed up a few days ago in my mailbox: the October edition of one of my favorite magazines, Monocle.  I wasn't expecting to see this issue because I mistakenly allowed my subscription to lapse. 

A second surprise awaited me when I opened up the shipping wrapper (Monocle ships in a protective packet):

As you can see, a paper flap was tucked in to the cover.  Here's what this paper flap said when opened:

When it comes to caring about all the little things that add up to a superior experience, this little flap is extremely telling of the care that has been poured in to the Monocle brand.

First, its language and form are consistent with the brand voice used across rest of the publication.  Who wrote it?  Likely a member of the editorial staff.  The tone and the layout read just like anything else branded "Monocle".  Most magazines forget their voice when it comes to this, the most personal of communications they ever have with a subscriber.  In this situation, why would you speak to anyone in anything other than the editor's very best voice?

Second, the content is not sales content.  It is relationship content.  They're speaking to me as an adult.  No weird offers, no tricky language.  No shouting.  No desperation.  Unlike many magazines, which start bugging you to renew months before the end of the subscription with exaggerated offers and wacky incentives, this statement is gracious, factual, pleasant, business-like, and polite.  Just the same as everything else at Monocle -- which is the point of having a brand in the first place.

Everything matters.

 

How did I not know about this before?

But now I do.  The remarkable, inspirational, crowd-sourcedable, springwise

A great source of inspirational kicks in the pants for all of us generative business designers.  Wow.

Push and Pull marketing

Reilly Brennan has a great post over at his blog about the need for better "push" marketing tools: Nobody has figured out push media on the internet yet

Here's an excerpt:

... push’s shortcomings in the internet era have driven us to a lot of pull. People have just become omnivorous pullers—a day spent checking bookmarks across dozens of websites. Of course, that’s not all bad. Pull can be fun—we want to hunt when we want it. Plus, I don’t really want a potato salad subscription—I just wanted one recipe.

When he's not thinking critically about the future of marketing, the multi-talented Mr. Brennan gets to test drive sweet rides like the new Corvette ZR1.  Which definitely qualifies as a "push" car. 

Marketing, sneezers, Breezers, and the Big Sort

I snapped this photo of three Breezer bikes outside a Palo Alto cafe.  Three women rode up separately and then sat together for a chat and some coffee.  This photo says everything about the state of marketing and product design today.  That is, marketing = design = marketing.  You can design a bike to market itself, and you can design your marketing to make your product design more meaningful.

I've written before about the great bikes designed and marketed by Breezer.  They are what they are: a turnkey commuter bike, all sorted out for you, ready to ride and fun to ride, with just enough aesthetic flourishes to make you look back at the bike once or twice once your reach your destination.  In a world captivated by spandex-carbon-fiber-titanium-tour-de-france bikes, the Breezer bring a little bit of the Dutch bicycle aesthetic to the US, leavened with some wild California hippie mountain bike DNA.  It's the kind of product that makes for happy owners, and happy owners like to tell other people about their happy experiences (as I'm doing now).  In the parlance of Godin, they sneeze, and other people catch the virus.  In this case, it's a Breezer virus, transmitted from friend to friend.

The good news is, it's easier than ever to take a remarkable offering and then get the sneezers sneezing.  Why?  Because of a pattern of behavior in the US which the author Bill Bishop calls the "Big Sort".  Here's an excerpt from an Economist article by the same name:

Because Americans are so mobile, even a mild preference for living with like-minded neighbours leads over time to severe segregation. An accountant in Texas, for example, can live anywhere she wants, so the liberal ones move to the funky bits of Austin while the more conservative ones prefer the exurbs of Dallas. Conservative Californians can find refuge in Orange County or the Central Valley.

Over time, this means Americans are ever less exposed to contrary views. In a book called “Hearing the Other Side”, Diana Mutz of the University of Pennsylvania crunched survey data from 12 countries and found that Americans were the least likely of all to talk about politics with those who disagreed with them.

Intriguingly, the more educated Americans become, the more insular they are. (Hence Mr Miller's confusion.) Better-educated people tend to be richer, so they have more choice about where they live. And they are more mobile. One study that covered most of the 1980s and 1990s found that 45% of young Americans with a college degree moved state within five years of graduating, whereas only 19% of those with only a high-school education did.

Severe segregation is a societal ill, but is in some ways a boon to marketers.  Make a bike that appeals to wealthy, liberal, educated, gregarious, retired boomers?  Super!  Now you can target them by zip code.  Once you get one maven in there with your offering, you can find creative ways to help that maven spread the word... and as they sneeze, the virus will spread fast and wide and deep. 

Again, the three key steps behind designing for (marketing for) infectious action are:

1. Begin with Desire: create something remarkable.  Do it to the hilt.
2. Weave sticky stories: design memes that are unavoidably memorable.
3. Design a System to Spread: select market segments that are heavily networked, and then design a system to spread your meme there

Co-creation means never having to say you're sorry

The Mini brand is all about fun and owner-specified (if not always owner-created) customization.  Take a look around Flickr and you'll see an amazing display of creativity.  Mini fans are taking the brand ball and running with it.

As a marketer, the tradeoff is one of control.  Traditional marketing communications, PR, and branding was all about control:  say this, don't say that, stay on the straight and narrow, conform to this set of brand guidelines or else.  Or else you'll lose your chance at a promotion to group brand manager of whateverthislatestthingisthatwe'retryingtoflog.  We can see this mindset at work in the current US presidential campaign, where the natural charisma of candidates is strangled by their handlers.  But the "new" marketing, as it were, is all about being open and releasing control.  It's built around trust, and works from an optimistic point of view which assumes that most everything done with the brand out in the marketplace will be good for the brand.  Brands that work in this new world are those which strive to authentic and speak from a position of truth rather than myth; when you are about truth, then even deviance is not really "off brand", it just adds an additional element of complexity.  And complexity makes things more interesting.

Such is the case with with this Mini I spied on the street.  If you're Mini, how might you respond to this case of owner customization?  Aside from the content, which may be too edgy for some folks, the customization has been executed very well.  The white of the roundrel matches the white of the hood stripes and roof.  The font used for the numbers is clean and modern.  Even the license plate was carefully considered: it read "VI VI VI".  If I were Mini, I certainly wouldn't try to shut down this deviance, or even venture to educate it.  No, I'd send this owner a coupon for 20% off their next Mini.  This car is brand-enhancing.  If anything, it raises the bar for clever customization among Mini loyalists, and as such is a wonderful example of creating infectious action. 

My new car is a...

... bike.  In fact it's this tasty number made by Breezer:

I've had the bike for about three months now, and have grown to love it on several levels:

• It's an integrated experience:  I could have spent a bit less money by cobbling together an equivalent bike from bits and pieces, but the Breezer works really well as a unified whole.  Its designer, Joe Breeze, has a strong point of view on what makes a good bike, and I can feel that as I ride it.
• It's fun:  I spent a significant percentage of my childhood free time messing around with bikes.  I lived for my BMX bike.  I was either jumping it off of tall things, riding it through deep pits of mud, fixing it and cleaning it due to the previous two activites, or finding a way to get moneoy tobuy upgrade parts.  Over the course of about six years I took it from being a $80 Huffy to being a mean, lean, nickle-plated jumping machine.  A Mongoose that flew through the air and even landed safely more often than not. By the time I was done modifying it, the only original parts left were the wheels (the original ones ran strong and true), and the chain.  I'm looking forward to hacking on this bike (because as Facebook has taught us, it's all about user-hackable platforms), and I just love the feel of the wind through what is left of my hair.  Fun fun fun.
• It looks killer:  Amsterdam is the New LA.  Or Paris.  In other words, the cool look these days is fenders plus bells plus black paint.  Forget spandex and your aero tuck on that carbon fiber frame; sitting upright and maximizing your coefficient of drag is the way to go.  Admittedly, I've been unduly influenced by the editors of Monocle on this dimension, but I see the general rise in popularity of the Dutch bike aesthetic as a search for consumptive sobriety for sombre times; the Prius is statement about remorse for over exuberant car-ness, and I think black bikes with fenders are like wearing Timberland boots in a world of Blahniks -- the durable, practical,sensible choice.  That happens to also look killer in its own way.
  

Is the commuter bike the new Prius?

Yes.

What's old is new again

I spied this vintage Honda Cub on the street today in Palo Alto.  And yes, that is a tasty Cayman S just behind it, looking quite gnarly crouched down on a lowered suspension and some expensive three-piece wheels.  But I digress.  Let's focus on the Cub for now.

As our societal context changes, value propositions that were of no value can suddenly gain back their value, and vice versa.  In a world of cheap gas, a Honda Cub is an inferior mode of transportation in many ways to a Flabigator XL SUV.  But expensive gas is enough to bring one out of mothballs and use it to carry quite a bit of stuff, as witnessed by the large trunk strapped to the back of this one.

Innovation is about finding ways to grow that are right for you.  Do the ideas need to be new to the world?  Not likely, especially since there are few new things under the sun.  It may be as simple as looking back to times past in search of analogous situations.  People are still people.  What worked then that could work now?

Brands are what we say they are: Brand Tags

Brand Tags is a website about something very near the absolute truth when it comes to the essence of brands.  It is truthful because it is not about positioning statements or a theories of meaning emanating from self-proclaimed branding gurus sitting deep inside corporate campuses.  Instead, it uses crowdsourcing to let all of us know what all of us really think brands stand for.

It is instructive and illuminating to peruse the catalog of brands.  For instance, this site helped me understand the gap I feel between my fondness for cars made by BMW and some aspects of the brand that surrounds them.  Here's what the crowd thinks of BMW:

I admire this site because it flips the fundamental equation of formal market research on its head.  Instead of a few asking the many to provide isolated points of data which are aggregated in private for the exclusive use of the few, this is about the many publicly commenting on the work of a few.  It's brand equity made transparent.  The internet changes the equation of one-to-many communications such as market research so radically that we have to question many of the market research methodologies that worked well for the past fifty years.

Enough sermonizing.  The battle mode is a fun time sink -- watch out!

Everything matters: great marketing from Virgin America

I received this email last month the night before taking a Virgin America flight:

Dear Diego Rodriguez             
            
Due to delays in the modification of our new planes, the inflight entertainment and select other in-seat services will not be available on your upcoming Virgin America flight. This includes the Red Inflight Entertainment system, which normally features satellite TV, movies, games, Google Maps and a food ordering system. In addition, the plugs at every seat for electronic gear will not be operational for the flight. Why are we sending you this message? We want you to be prepared to have your laptop or iPod fully charged, and ensure you have the latest magazines or newspapers to read while onboard your flight. We’ll do our best to provide some reading material onboard in case you forget.

We make millions of dollars in high-tech modifications to each one of Virgin America’s brand new planes and we appreciate your patience with us as we finalize this modification process across our brand new fleet. Thank you again for your patience and we look forward to welcoming you on Virgin America.          

The Guest Services Team

As it turned out, when I boarded the inflight entertainment system was working (they had fixed it, I suppose) so my low expectations were greatly exceeded.  I was a happy guy: happy to be on a clean airplane with an enthusiastic crew, happy to get something I didn't think was going to happen, and happy that Virgin knew how to reach me with the right message at the right time. 

This message feels like it was written by someone who had flown on a plane at some point in their life, and understood the importance of having something to do during the flight.  Like having reading material.  It is a far cry from the disjointed jingle-driven marketing drivel spewed by most other airlines.  No tag-lines or positioning statements here; this is marketing at its best: all about making my experience the best it can be, and showing a concern for all the small elements of the flying experience which signal that the big stuff are being taken care of, too.  Great marketing is an exercise in fractal experience design.

Q: what does our brand stand for? A: what does our space feel like?

The office of Lamborghini's marketing chief, Manfred Fitzgerald, is covered in a nice profile in Fortune magazine.  You can see a glimpse of it here, but unfortunately the best photographs of his office are only in the print magazine. 

Configured in raw aluminum, polished steel, black stone tile, and white leather, Fitzgerald's office does in fact look and feel like the embodiment of the current Lambo brand - which is something about German technical know-how and integrity draped in Italian mojo.  Audi-owned Lamborghini is the type of Italian car company whose marketing chief would most appropriately be named Manfred, in other words.  As is argued in the article, the aesthetic of the space informs the thinking done there which informs the greater brand of the company as embodied by its products.  Aside from the use of Eames chairs, the product of folks whose design sensibility sits in a place a world away from that of Lamborghini, it works for me. 

It also leads me to believe that imagining what one's brand-delivery knowledge working space should look like could be a great exercise for getting to the essence of a brand.  And perhaps a more effective exercise than coming up with keywords or images borrowed from stock imagery or from other brands.  For example, the workspace of the pre-Audi Lamborghini -- a chaotic, passion-filled brand -- would have been an old Emilian barn with a gas-welding setup in the middle of the room, spanners on a table, sheets of aluminum in a messy pile, and a pyramid of empty lambrusco bottles over in the corner.  And some loud opera playing off of vinyl.

Let's try some more to see if this works.  Close your eyes and imagine Apple's place.  You can see it, right?  It's not so different from Lamborghini's palace, except that people are wearing jeans instead of multi-thousand Euro suits, the floors are white instead of black, and there's a CNC machine in there carving something interesting out of a block of stainless steel.  Puma.  What would Puma be like?  I see it as an outdoor cafe in a hipster place like Miami, with multiple open-participation shoe creation stations where civilians (filtered by a hipster bouncer, natch) could help design future shoes.  Subaru's brand development place would be a heli-vac capable modular building transported around the world on a seasonal basis, always positioned out in the boonies where there's a good supply of muck, gravel, snow, and sheep filth.  Petter Solberg would have a permanent bunk bed there, always ready to roll, so long as he slept in his nomex coveralls.

These are the types of spaces where brand-creating folks should be sitting, not in some corporate cubicle-ville where the closest cultural wellsprings are a TGI-McFunster's, a parking lot, and the nearest highway.  Living in the brand in order to create the brand.  Virtually or literally, it makes sense.

Cybergenic is the New Telegenic

Cybergenic is the New Telegenic. 

Check out this awesome essay by Paul Saffo -- he really nails it:  Obama's 'Cybergenic' Edge

So many structural shifts are happening right now.  Most of the assumptions we have about how the world of power and influence works are based on paradigms dating back to the 50's and 60's.  New platforms and mindsets open up great value to those willing to work with them. This is an exciting time to be playing with the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life.

The new iPhone 3G is cool, but...

... a particular 59 seconds of the introductory demo was sheer brilliance.  At the Stanford d.school where I teach, I'm all over students like a broken record, repeating a mantra of "show, don't tell.  show, don't tell.  show, don't tell".  A great demo is one where you show how all your hours of process brilliance have created something truly remarkable, but the point of proof lies in only showing that which is remarkable, rather than telling us how you got there.  In other words, show, don't tell.

Take a look at the rhetorical brilliance of Steve Jobs in his iPhone 3G introduction here.  Forward the video to the 1:27:21 mark, and watch through 1:28:50 to see an awesome 59 seconds of demo magic.  Show, don't tell.

Great Marketing 101: Download Day 2008

Here's a cool example of creating infectious action being done by the folks at Mozilla: Download Day 2008

I found about it via Facebook.  Based on the pledge ticker at the Download website, it appears to be working quite well.

Infectious Action = Remarkable Offering + a Sticky, Compelling Message + a System Designed to Spread

 

metacool Thought of the Day

"The iPhone is merely a triumph of guts. It's a triumph of someone forcing   people to do things they were scared of, and thus completely changing the paradigm of a multibillion-dollar industry."

- Seth Godin

Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness

It's all about a brand that is based on a truth rooted in getting real stuff done in the world.  It's not about selling the sizzle, it's about selling a steak that sizzlers.  Hot!  And a juicy one at that.

What makes it all authentic is the relatively close tie between the WRX's you see pogoing around in this video and what you or I could buy down at the corner Subaru dealer.  They're a lot closer to the civilian models than anything you'd find in NASCAR, let alone Le Mans racing or even touring cars.  Effective marketing is about brands that are real, not fake.  Truth, not myth.

New York Times, meet Alltop. Your disruptor.

Personally, I haven't had much luck with RSS readers.  I suffer from the "weekend barrier" -- I'd rather not spend the time to curate my own collection of RSS feeds, and I often wonder what I'm missing out there that I simply don't know about.

Enter Alltop, a new experiment from Guy Kawasaki and friends.  I like it as brain food: it feels like the New York Times in terms of breadth, but deeper in passion due to the laser focus of each of the "contributors".  It's curated RSS, or perhaps even an edited newspaper, but with a radically streamlined business model, with each of the "contributors" having an individual revenue stream of their own design.  As such, Alltop represents a disruptive business model relative to the New York Times.  Let's see where it goes.

And yes, metacool is part of Alltop!  Definitely take a few minutes to wander through the various sections -- lots of cool stuff!

Presenting the Lutzinator

A while back I wrote about the crazies at Ducati tapping in to the power of co-creation.  By promising to use a  name submitted over the web for its new G8-based car/pickup, Pontiac is pushing that idea harder.  If you go to Tame the Name, you too can submit a name for this new product.  How cool is that?  Go ahead, submit a few. 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: when it comes to using the web to push the frontiers of marketing, the people at GM know what they are doing.  I love this initiative: good marketing takes guts, and Pontiac is about to enjoy a true brand renaissance.  They finally have fantastic product (but perhaps poorly timed, given $4 gas...) and it appears as though their marketing folks are working hard to shed any remnant of their screaming-chicken past.  Another decade of this kind of execution and Pontiac will be the new BMW.  I kid you not.

Messing around with virality in Facebook

I'm a big believer in knowing by doing.  So in preparation for my upcoming Stanford class on Creating Infectious Engagement, which will involve a viral marketing project for Facebook, I've been messing about a bit over in their part of the world.

This past weekend I set up a "I'm a fan of" page on Facebook for the Stanford d.school.  Using some tools built in to Facebook, I sent notice of this fan page to four key connected mavens, and have been tracking the membership stats over the subsequent days.  Here's what the curve looks like, tracking the total number of fans at the end of each day (or at my 10pm bedtime, to be more precise):

I'm not sure what to think about these results.  Any comments or ideas from Facebook and/or marketing gurus would be great. 

Stanford d.school viral marketing course rides again!

If you are a Stanford graduate student and want to get some sticky experience in designing stuff to be viral, please sign up for Creating Infectious Engagement.  This course is the third iteration of a vein of intellectual inquiry which began with Creating Infectious Action (CIA) two years ago, and became Creating Infectious Action, Kindling Gregarious Behavior (CIA-KGB) last year.  Is there a government agency named CIE anywhere on the planet?  Let me know about that one.

As usual, the d.school experience is all about team teaching, because it increases variance.  I have the pleasure of joining an illustrious, experienced, and fun teaching team for the class:  Debra Dunn, Perry Klebahn, Kerry O'Connor, and Bob Sutton.  We'll be doing projects for Facebook and the Climate Savers  Computing Project.

You can find out more about the class at Bob's blog.  The class is for registered Stanford graduate students and will likely be the most work of any class you've ever taken at Stanford.  If you are interested in applying to the class, please send a resume and statement to CIEapplication@lists.stanford.edu (no more than 500 words) about why you are interested in taking the class and will be a constructive part of it.  Additionally, please list your experiences, if any, with d.school classes.  Applications are due March 15 and admissions to the class will be announced on March 19.    Also, if you have any questions, please write Debra, Kerry, or Bob.

Brand evolutions

Here's some brain fodder to play with the next time you're stuck in traffic: Evolution of Car Logos

Just look at the evolution of the SAAB badge.  Amazing how much churn there is on the automotive branch of the tree for a brand which only emerged after WWII:

Myself, I like the 1949 badge the best.  Don't like the screaming chicken so much.  How does one say "Burt Reynolds" in Swedish?

As I look through this site, I have to admit that many of the older badge renditions are at least as compelling as their replacements, and often more so.  Having been a brand manager at one point in my peripatetic career, I sense that the rationale for many brand revisions or logo redesigns are rooted more in internal politics and the need to do something tangible for one's yearly performance review than in market needs.  In other words, most customers probably don't care if your new logo is slightly better than your old one, especially if they just finally got used to the old one, because it has only been the old for the three years that have passed since the last redesign.  As with management, sometimes the best marketing may be no marketing at all...

Anyway, it's fun stuff.  Thanks to Tim for pointing me to this link!

The most interesting blog post I've read in 2008

Mr. Rogers, The US Senate, Mary Baker Eddy, A Sneaker Sanctum: Just Another Day in the Neighborhood

Matte is the New Black

Last weekend, as I tended to my newest market offering's complex fluidic thermodynamic power systems in the wee hours of the morning, I flipped on the tube and watched more than a few laps of the 24 Hours of Daytona.

A Mazda RX-8 (pictured above) won its class, beating out a gaggle of Porsche 911's for the honor.  In no sense a stock car (see the video at the end of this post for a walkaround this full tube-framed racer), this RX-8 nonetheless points to the future of car design for us civilians: look closely and you'll notice that the paint isn't glossy.  Instead, the luscious carbon fiber panels on this machine are matte black, or satin if you will.  Wax not needed or desired.

We've been raised to believe that gloss is good, that shiny equals quality.  Those days are over.  Hear this now: the cult of the waxed car body is melting, and this RX-8 represents the tipping point.  Sure, beating the 911's at Daytona is a win for the ages, but sporting a matte finish and finishing first -- that's a tipping point.  If manufacturing and repair (how do you buff out a matte finish?) issues can be solved, I think we'll start to see a lot of matte paint jobs rolling around.  And a lot of them will likely be dirt-shedding nano particle finishes.  Even cooler.  We've already see matte paint on show cars from BMW and Lamborghini. 

Matte is the New Black.

Here's a video of the Daytona-winning RX-8 from the driver's seat (oh, the wail of a rotary motor!):

And here's an extra treat in the form of a most gnarly walkaround the car in the presence of race Nick Ham.  Check out the paint (shown to best effect toward the end of the video):

Nano is the new Turbo, part deux

This week's unveiling of the Tata Nano is yet another piece of evidence that "nano" is the new "turbo".

In our world of bloated, inane Flabbigators and ANC SL2455's and RSQ77 urban land yachts, the Nano is a refreshing point of view.  Instead of car design being done from an elitist point of view whose aim is to find ever new and novel ways to heat, cool, and pamper our fat asses, the engineers at Tata have said "here's all you need" and nothing more.  It's a populist design approach visited before by such iconic designs as the Model T, the Beetle, the Mini, the Cinquecento, and -- my favorite -- the 2CV.  Unlike those designs, however, I don't believe the Nano is the rational enough.  That swoopy windshield is a hollow attempt at style over substance: who needs an expensive, complex, Le Mans-quality aerodynamic solution when one's top speed (let alone average speed) is so low?  Something more planar would be simpler, cheaper, and easier to fix and replace over the life of the car.  Of course, reflective design is the lord of the manor when it comes to automotive sales, and what people really want is swoopy, I suppose.

And, doffing my hypocrite's cap, I can't help but think that the last thing the world needs is another car, let alone a popular, high-volume one.  However, if we're going to have more, they might as well be nano-ish in mass and form.  Where's the true cradle-to-cradle personal transportation solution we all need?  Perhaps I should get on that...

Another stab at defining marketing

A few weeks ago I asked for some help in whipping up a definition of marketing.  What ensued was a good online brainstorm.  That discussion helped me formulate this working definition of marketing, which I used for my MSI talk (a copy of which will be posted here soon):

identifying desirable experiences, then delivering them

It's not a bad definition, but not as good as the one I found recently at the HBS Marketing Unit department page:

Marketers concern themselves with acquiring and retaining customers, who are the lifeblood of an organization. They attract customers by learning about potential needs, helping to develop products that customers want, creating awareness, and communicating benefits; they retain them by ensuring that they get good value, appropriate service, and a stream of future products. The marketing function not only communicates to the customer, but also communicates the needs of the customer to the company. In addition, it arranges and monitors the distribution of products and/or services from company to customer.

I think that's it.  Should have started there.

Why modern racing sucks compared to LeMons

What appears to be footage from the taxi ride in from Logan is actually racing action from a recent round of The 24 Hours of LeMons.

Seriously folks, the racing featured in this not-so-serious contest for under-$500 racing "machines" beats the pants off of anything I've seen in my last two decades of 4am Formula 1 gazing.  The 24 Hours of LeMons works because it is designed to be fun for drivers, teams, and spectators.  Simple.  I imagine the design principles behind the series look something like this:

1. Make it fun for drivers
2. Make it wild and outrageous for spectators
3. Keep the cars simple and brutally cheap so that teams can have a good time at the race, too

What an indictment of the state of modern motorsports that, when it comes to creating an arena where the simple joys of competition can flourish, a hipster-doofus series administered by ace scribe Jay Lamm puts almost any professionally-managed racing series to shame.  Modern race series are deep-yawn, drool-running-down-your chin boring.  Boring boring boring.  I don't know about you, but the only in-car footage that compares to the stuff above would be something out of a WRC car.  Modern racing series can learn a lot from Lemons.

As a case in point, look what happens to cheaters at The 24 Hours of Lemons:

There are three main points to take away from this video:

1. That backhoe operator is an artist
2. The structural integrity of a BMW is not to be underestimated (how about those door hinges?!!!)
3. Any experience, be it a call to an airline reservation center or an ER admitting line or a trip to the DMV, can be and should be designed to be meaningful.  Look at the creativity that went in to making the act of disqualifying an entrant something worth talking about.  If you wanted a customer to feel good about interacting with your brand, you could do worse than to digest what Jay Lamm has done with Lemons and then reassess every point of interaction in the customer journey through your organization's presence in the world.

For example, consider the hum-drum treatment of cheaters in modern sports.  When McLaren was caught cheating in Formula 1 earlier this year, they were forced to pay a $100,000,000 fine.  Yes, 100 million dollars.  That's a steep fine, but the boys at McLaren were allowed to keep racing for the entire season.  It was all about the lawyers, not the fans.  If we learning from LeMons, a much more appropriate penalty would have been a hydraulic-clawed machine of some sort munching dainty MP4-22 carbon monocoques by the harbor at Monaco.  And then no more racing.  That would be a truly priceless penalty, and a crowd-pleaser at that.

The next running of The 24 Hours of LeMons will be next week on the 28th and 29th of December. 
 

metacool Thought of the Day

"It was design by dictatorship.  All else, this marketing, these focus groups, what have you, is bullshit."

- Mini Clubman chief designer, Gerd Hildebrand.

(I love this quote because it acknowledges the unique role which talents plays in the realm of visceral design.  If you have talented, highly-trained and educated designers, why would you second-guess their aesthetic judgment based on the input of folks off the street?  Yes, test the hell out of the behavioral elements of your offerings -- fit, function, ergonomics -- but leave the visceral, and to some extent the reflective meaning, up to the people who get it)

Oh what a WoW feeling

You may not like this ad, but I do.  Not just because I'm a fan (and owner) of Toyota cars, but because it's a great example of designing a message to spread. 

In this case, it is about tapping in to the seven million plus folks who play the online game World of Warcraft.  That's a lot of potential truck buyers.  If you don't play World of Warcraft, the ad is entertaining, but if you do play, the ad is just amazing.  And, it seems perfectly designed to spread around the place where World of Warcraft players hang out the most, that thing called the internet.  This is about designing for YouTube.

My only question is, I'm level 66, so can I get a Tundra instead?

Thanks to Carlos for showing me the video.

Help me out, please

Help me out here.  Last night I was putting together my argument for an upcoming speech about marketing when I realized that I don't know what marketing is about.  Or, to be precise, I do know what marketing is about (I have a very strong point of view on it, actually), but I don't have a good definition.

What is marketing?

Can you help me?  If you have a definition you'd like to share, please shoot me an email.  Or, better yet, please leave a comment below.  That way we can all riff off each other. 

Thanks in advance.

More fractal experiences... how everything matters

John Maeda recently had a remarkable experience in a restaurant in Minneapolis.  Here's a photo of what happened, followed by this commentary:

When sitting down at a restaurant in Minneapolis, I noticed the waiter replaced my white napkin with a black one. Apparently the tradition here is that if you are wearing black trousers or a dark skirt, the reasoning is that a white linen napkin might leave visible lint on your clothing so they immediately swap it for a black one. Such careful attention to detail surely develops trust.

A black napkin for black-robed laps feels just right, and is a world away from a crummy-looking nacelle on a passenger jet.  It makes an empathic (and emphatic) statement; we care about the way you'll look when you leave our restaurant.  And by making that statement, we say everything that needs to be said about the level of care poured in to the meal itself. 

Good experiences -- the drivers of good brands -- are fractal, and everything matters.

Everything matters

I flew on a name-brand airline the other week.  Airplanes are my reading room, so I packed my usual array of reading material:  The Economist, Monocle, and Octane. 

But who needs a couple hours of reading material when something as fascinating as this is hanging just outside your window?:

Where to start.  First, there's a bunch of mismatched paint that's been dabbed on with a brush clearly stolen from a preschool play center.  And there's the variety of panels -- some are deeper blue, some are more oxidized, so we can be sure that a variety of airplanes have been cannibalized to get this hunk of junk in the air.  Personally, I admire that look on the Millenium Falcon, but not so much on a device I'm trusting my life to.

But wait, there's more.  Let's look back toward the wing:

I applaud the airline for taking the time to locate, hire, and train the one individual capable of laying down a more dribbly line of caulk than yours truly.  And look at that grease swirl at the junction of the engine nacelle and the leading edge of the wing.  How artful -- you can't get that kind of fluidity of application by accident.  There's real technique at work here.

All joking aside, I actually don't blame the mechanics who work on this plane.  They're probably good people who went in to the business because they were gearheads who liked working on airplanes.  The root source of bad blue paint and the lack of time (and will) to do things right is more likely to be someone controlling a marketing budget who believes that cash spent on the rights to Gershwin tunes is more important than keeping the planes looking like the vessels of safe passage they need to be.  Where would you spend your dollars? 

I'm a believer in smoothing the transmission of the truth, so I'd spend the dollars it on matching paint, a new caulk gun, a buffing wheel, some rags, and the time and permission to do things right.  Brands are about truth, and that truth must be fractal.  Everything matters.  Or else everything comes untied.

Director's Commentary: John Barratt on the Boeing Dreamliner

Here's a great Director's Commentary centering on the new Boeing Dreamliner.  In this video interview, Fortune's David Kirkpatrick interviews Teague CEO John Barratt about the development of the Dreamliner's passenger experience.  I enjoyed hearing about the design process used to get to the final result, which looks quite promising.

Though I have to admit that at a personal level I'm a bit reticent to fly in a plane made largely of carbon fiber, I do admire Boeing's return to a structural paradigm pioneered by aircraft of seventy years ago, such as the innovative Lockheed Vega, piloted by the equally groundbreaking innovator Wiley Post.

I had the pleasure of meeting John at DMI's International Design Management Conference last year, and we will both be speaking at a Marketing Science Institute conference in October.

Why is the Sky high?

Before the Saturn Sky was released to market, I wrote an essay for BusinessWeek talking about why, if I were to buy a sports car, the Sky would be at the top of my list.  My point was that it's not just about the car -- it's about what the ownership experience should be and can be.  In other words, it's about brand, where brand is about what you do rather than what you say you do.

The New York Times ran an article today titled 2 G.M. Brands, a Similar Car, but Very Different Results.  It compares and contrasts the wildly different market fortunes of the Pontiac Solstice and the Saturn Sky, which share a common platform and the majority of their mechanical bits:

Sales of the Solstice are down 19 percent this year through July, and G.M., which apologized for not building enough Solstices initially, now has nearly a five months’ supply in inventory, double the carmaker’s average. Sales of Pontiac-branded cars and trucks are off 17 percent, compared with 9 percent for all eight G.M. nameplates, according to Autodata, which tracks industry statistics.

“It was such a radical departure from what people expected out of Pontiac that it created a tremendous buzz when it first hit the market,” said Wes Brown, an automotive consultant and a partner in the Los Angeles marketing firm Iceology. “It looks pretty cool, but ultimately it’s not able to overcome some of those barriers people have within their mind with regard to the brand image.”

Meanwhile, demand for the Solstice’s fraternal twin, the costlier and more angular Saturn Sky, has shown no signs of subsiding. G.M. has about one month’s worth of the Sky available, and many buyers still have to wait several weeks or months for their Sky to arrive.

From a behavioral design perspective, they're virtually identical but where they depart is in their visceral design elements -- the Pontiac is swoopy mango yogurt where the Sky is crisp Prada suit -- and in their reflective design elements.  The latter is touched on briefly in the article, but I think it's at the core of the issue here:  what people buy is reflective design and, by extension, the experience of what it will feel like to participate in the brand over time.  While I'm a believer where Pontiac can go (their new G8 sedan bodes to be a BMW 5-series killer), for most folks Pontiac is a golden screaming chicken decal on the hood of a muscle car piloted by a guy with a mustache.  Saturn is a group of people who will help your daughter out when her car has broken down in the desert.  In other words, Pontiac is about (the old, wrong) product, while Saturn is about a having a nice experience.

It's not just about product anymore.

Here's what a good "designed to spread" marketing message looks like:

From the masters at Apple.

Simple.  Concrete.  Sticky.