Design Forum

The Worst Brand Placement Ever

Elise Krieger — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:42:45 +0000

On a recent trip through LAX, feeling like a co-star in the George Clooney flick Up in the Air, I began the habitual routine: head to self check-in, find a seat near the front of the plane, drudge to security, get my identity squared away, enter the waiting game, strategize about which line is shortest at the security check and prepare my belongings for scrutiny. I’m pulling out my computer and liquids; taking off my shoes and jewelry; and—what’s this?! The security bins aren’t the normal smudged grey. Rather, each display a shiny, newly installed advertisement—for none other than the Skechers Shape Ups. Putting aside the misconceived brand marriage of health and wellness with Skechers, let’s consider the advertising locale: the airport security bins. At no other point during my airport visit do I feel more vulnerable, valueless and at edge than when standing barefooted with my personal belongings projected for the viewing pleasure of four complete strangers. While I grow increasingly more concerned about how the TSA agents stare at the x-ray of my purse like it’s this summer’s blockbuster while I’m waiting there shoeless, Skechers wants me to consider wearing Shape Ups. I almost feel mocked.

Mobile is the New Online for Retailers

Amanda Yates — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:01:22 +0000

They say that having no presence on mobile devices in 2010 is like not having a website circa 1999. So true! The digital age is in hyper-drive. 3G access continues to increase, and 4G is already here! Some stats say that up to 99 percent of the population will have some sort of data capability on their mobile phones by 2011. So what does this mean for retailers? It means the need for a whole new view to their digital strategies. When a shopper can enter a store, scan a barcode, see that the same product is cheaper at a nearby competitor and click a link for directions to take them straight there, the game has suddenly been changed, so to speak. There is an ever-expanding catalog of apps out there to enable this type of shopping behavior (in the store, in the car or on the run), and manufacturers like Apple are training customers via commercials and advertisements about how to use all these apps to simplify their lives. It might be easy to dismiss this trend given the relatively small percentage of people with iPhones or Droids today, but now is the time to start investigating and investing in individual strategies.

Moving Beyond Signs to Intuitive Wayfinding

Ethan Smith — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:36:51 +0000

When people ask me what I do, somewhere in the description I inevitably use the “S” word: signs. However, in today’s experience-based socially driven marketplace, brands, retail brands especially, need to move beyond signs and think about wayfinding in terms of the whole experience of the built environment, and how every element in a space can play a role in defining what we like to think of as intuitive wayfinding.

Intuitive wayfinding, means a customer or staff member is able to navigate a space without stopping to think about it, and does not need to consciously keep track of where they are in the space. If a customer needs to look at a directional sign to figure out where to go, you’ve already lost the battle for an intuitive wayfinding experience. The intuitive wayfinding experience relies on a system of well organized, strategically placed visual cues to guide the consumer to their destination. Space planning plays a key role in maintaining an intuitive navigational experience. In the planning stages, if your plan looks like a lab rat’s maze then there is a pretty good chance it will feel like that when it's built. However, a layout with the proper adjacencies, strategic departmental hierarchy, and ample common navigational walkways is well on its way to achieving intuitive wayfinding right from the start.

Q: When is Post Important to Kellogg’s?

Bill Chidley — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:52:21 +0000

A: When I’m shopping at my local Kroger. No, not the “Post” as in Raisin Bran; I’m referring to the physical post, or column, that is in the cereal aisle at my store. The scene is this: my wife asks me to go get the Multi-Grain Cheerios so she can shop in peace for 10 minutes. She says, “Get the big box, unless the smaller box is on sale,” adding, “The Cheerios are close to the post about half-way down the aisle.” If she wouldn’t have given me that navigational pointer, she probably would have bought herself 15 minutes of peace. The merchandise presentation in the cereal aisle is such a mess, so lacking in organization, I could easily have squandered more time, forced to scan every package, not finding what I was looking for. But since she gave me the post as my pole star, I managed to navigate past the lions and tigers and bears to the Cheerios. After a moment of anxiety while I scan the shelf for validation—Ta-dah!—I find the Mutli-Grain big box not on sale! Contrast this with my second mission, during which my wife gets only a few minutes of peace.

Story is King at Pixar

Mike Hampton — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 16:01:53 +0000

On June 18, Pixar Animation Studios released the third installment in their flagship franchise, simply titled “Toy Story 3." Now that the reviews are in, Pixar just missed the mark in producing the first movie trilogy to receive 100% fresh ratings on the popular movie rating site Rotten Tomatoes. A 100% rating is near impossible for any individual movie, considering the ratings on Rotten Tomatoes are not a single opinion but an aggregate of hundreds of movie critics’ ratings. Doing so for all three movies in a trilogy, or even coming this close, would seem to be an impossible task. And yet, they came within inches.

Also, this eleventh feature-length offering from Pixar has all the indications of another smashing financial success. While any individual moviegoer may have some negative opinions about some of Pixar’s movies, it’s hard to argue against the overall universal acclaim and the respective worldwide box office returns. So how does Pixar do it? Three simple words: Story is king.

3 Things Brands Just Don’t Get

Ryan Brazelton — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:12:42 +0000

The world knows I love Apple. I fiend over the stickers they give me when I buy a new Apple gadget. I’ll talk about why I love Apple with total strangers. And I’m quite sure my family and friends think I might be emotionally unstable with my constant pro-Apple rhetoric. But one of the reasons I like Apple, is I get Apple. And I believe that “getting” a brand is the all-important step that must be in place before we can love a brand.

We interact with thousands of brands every day, some by our choosing, some not. At any given moment you can step back and identify several brands you're engaged with—the one you're wearing, what you're using, what you're watching, eating...it goes on. What are these brands about? What do they stand for? Do you love them, hate them? Do you care? And ultimately, "Do you get it?" I would like to offer up a 3-step formula that leads to success and the coveted “getting it-ness." 1 Be Passionate. No, be wildly passionate about something, not 10 things. One great, brand defining something. What is the basic thing your brand does? It’s great when that idea is differentiating, but even if it,s not, what is it? And once that idea/attribute/principle is identified, talk about it, make sure it's not a secret. Internally and externally, it should be the signature thing that your employee or customer would say the brand is. 2 Simplify. Get rid of everything that doesn’t deliver on that one great passionate idea! Stop trying to do everything for everyone. I know, you want every 15-year-old and 55-year-old to enjoy your brand, right? Wrong, what you really want is a core set of customers that connect with your brand in a powerful way and so they can mutually feed off of the engery and passion both of them create. When that magic happens, an amazing thing happens. Those customers demand that their friends, family and anyone who will listen to them use your brand. But if the brand’s message isn’t simple, then no one will ever understand or care enough to be excited.

The Hot Wheels Brand: A Study in Eternal Coolness.

Scott Jeffrey — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:39:10 +0000

We are all students of brand in one way or another, and I believe we begin that learning early, in our formative years. I remember sitting with an Etch A Sketch for hours and being completely engrossed in little lines drawn in a field of silver dust. A few shakes and I got a completely new canvas. Amazing. Maybe that helped shape my future as a designer and if so, thank you Etch A Sketch. But I suspect there is another brand that, at the very least, helped shape my love and fascination for the automobile. Could there be a cooler brand than Hot Wheels? I admit to still having my very first Hot Wheels car, a red '68 Custom Mustang that is my sole prized possession. It is missing a hood, a bunch of paint, the wheels in the back are curled up like many did back then and it has some original dirt that I happily applied as a kid. It never lost a race. Somewhere, playing with that car flipped a switch in my brain and I've loved the automobile ever since. I could get philosophical about the Hot Wheels brand and how I think it mirrors many aspects of the time in which we live. About how the graphics on the packaging can be seen as an indication of trend and how it becomes a miniature testament to the actual car brands themselves. About how the proprietary designs from the Hot Wheels design studio draw from many aspects of modern culture. Ask any young child what you call the little tiny cars and I'll bet that you'll get the correct answer 9 times out of 10. The folks at Mattel have done a great job over the (40!) years of providing a consistent message, keeping true to their calling while managing to leverage their asset across a vast array of other products, from PJ's to fruit snacks and Saturday morning cartoons. It's a great historical brand case study and one that continues to be relevant.

Let’s be Honest: Brands Need to Evaluate their Corporate Citizenship Efforts for ROI

Jay — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:08:27 +0000

There’s little doubt about it, Corporate Citizenship has become a force within many brands and organizations. Some of these efforts are very large in scale and highly publicized (think Pepsi Refresh project). Others are as simple and small scale as creating an office recycling program. Either way, it seems as if people within organizations of all sizes and types are actively seeking out opportunities to be better corporate citizens. The momentum behind the movement seems so great that it almost seems assumed that something must be done by each and every brand and organization. One question must be asked, though, when considering whether or not your brand should engage in an activity; what is my motivation for doing this? That’s right, I said it. As much as it pains me to say, your brand better have very specific reasons for being a better corporate citizen, or you may be doing more harm than good. I’ll spare you the lecture that economist Milton Friedman would give on this topic. I’ll just say that anything that takes a brand’s eye off of the singular focus it was created to achieve makes the brand a little less competitive in its market and a little less viable as an ongoing concern. In an ever more competitive world, it doesn’t take much of a slip to lose your competitive edge and set you back. So, if you’re considering doing something in the Corporate Citizenship realm, you need to ask yourself a very important question. “What is my brand getting in return for this effort?” The problem I see with the body of knowledge on the topic is that nobody really knows how much these efforts drive purchase.

Beaver Dams and the Nature of Retail Design

Scott Jeffrey — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:25:39 +0000

Having read the article about the half-mile-long beaver dam in Alberta, Canada, it occurred to me that those beavers exemplify something frequently overlooked in the retail design business, the idea that it's okay to fail. You would have to imagine that over the reported 2800 linear feet of dam in what is basically a flat terrain, there's the likelihood that sometimes it just doesn't work the way they intended. The colony has to react quickly to failure to ensure the safety of their habitat. If any of you beavers are reading this post and would like to broaden your portfolio, by all means, give us a call. Failure is an option in design as long as it's smart failure and failing for the right reason. If it helps the idea move forward, then it might just net out the absolute best result. In today's market, retail brands developing a new design concept rarely have the luxury of time. Business pressure demands short design-and-build timeframes, followed by testing and refining.

Pay Attention CPG Friends, Pantene Does it Right!

Rhonda — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:26:50 +0000

While I spend my days understanding shopper behavior and applying rigorous research and analysis methods to help companies “grow categories,” I spend my weekends shopping like crazy. With my bank account being the victim of all of these great growth strategies! As you know, retailers and manufacturers are always finding new ways to create incremental growth or, simply put, make shoppers spend more. One of my favorite places to shop is Target. Before I even make it into the store I have generally blown $20 on the dollar spot. After piling my cart with a bunch of stuff I really have no use for, my second stop is always the shampoo aisle. Regardless of need, I always stop. Something about the colors and the arrangement of the shampoo aisle just makes me feel so clean and orderly and I generally end up picking up something guaranteed to fix frizzy hair or give me more volume. Well, much to my surprise, my venture into the shampoo aisle a few weeks ago yielded a fantastic new surprise! The new Pantene display! Aisle violators grabbed my attention as they organized the offering by color and hair solution. That’s right, hair solutions--easily found! And not only did the aisle violators frame up the offering, but the bottle packaging was new and perfectly coordinated with the signs. You can image my excitement as I quickly zeroed in on the “fine” solutions area. I left the aisle with a whole new system of hair care.