Amazing things are happening in China.  I recently traveled to Shanghai to witness the 2010 World Expo first hand. It was nothing less than astonishing.  I managed to see pavilions from North Korea (an altogether unique experience as it was their first appearance on the world stage), Iran, Belgium, the United Kingdom and India just to name a few.    

Disney World for adults 
The best way to describe the World Expo is that it’s a temporary and ambitious way to put the world on display, country by country.  Imagine a place that takes in on average 344,000 people per day, every day, for six months.  When I arrived on my second day around noon, the count had clocked 460,000 attendees.  Queue lines were outrageous, lasting up to five or sixhours for the bigger pavilions.  Some parts of the park were so crowded that I had to literally fight my way through masses of people.  Sticky humidity and sweltering heat made for a very exhausting experience.  However, when I passed the grey wall shrouding the UK pavilion and the iconic Seed Cathedral, all of those negative elements faded away.  

Project Dandelion 
Having seen a lot of great design around the world, the UK’s Seed Cathedral has to be one of the most incredible pieces of architecture I have ever seen.  The concept is elegant and awe-inspiring. When I walked up to this $38.4 million object, the subtle hint of the Union Jack appeared almost from thin air.  The pavilion led me through a story about a living and breathing green city before I reached the Cathedral interior.  Once inside, my jaw dropped!  Sixty-thousand fiber-optic cables were aglow from the natural light outside. Each fiber displays a seed, like a jewel crystallized in a fantastical cave of wonders.  The story continued outside as I exited the pavilion into an urban terrace.  Following the link from the “seeds,” I was directed to a collection of rare and odd plants.  The terrace itself is soft and blocks sight lines to the rest of the expo, allowing its visitors to truly detox from the long walk and surrounding noise. Sadly, I didn’t have a chance to lounge on the terrace as it rained during my visit. Fortunately, I managed to return the next day and do some sketches of this magnificent structure.  

When the Expo closes in October, the Seed Cathedral will begin the last leg of its journey.  At the moment, the plan for the pavilion is to distribute the seeds across various schools in the country, much like the seeds of a dandelion floating away in the wind. It is a poetic end to a fantastic story.  

What can brands learn from the World Expo and the UK pavilion?
It is critical to highlight the importance of story told through an elegant journey.  These days, brands have to scream to be heard but sometimes, the whisper of elegance proves just as impactful.

Ok, I have spent the last five years convinced that the marketing hype was just that—hype. Mostly from reading countless advertisements for LED lighting products that play on unsuspecting readers with questionable claims, such as Long life! Excellent color! High efficiency!  Brighter!

Well, what were previously exaggerated claims are now coming to be real. LED lighting products are here to stay. And the bubbling pot is about to explode. After years of refinements, and new industry regulation, the products are consistently better performers than the previous generation.

The US Department of Energy has developed a labeling program (I think it is voluntary) that provides a means of consistency for describing LED performance. It addresses Light Output, Watts, Efficacy, Color Rendering Index and Correlated Color Temperature. Or Brightness, Energy, Efficiency, Color Accuracy and Light Color.

It is a little like the nutrition labels on food products. And now I have confidence that the participating manufacturers have accurately represented performance of their LEDs.

Yes, they are here to stay, even in retail architecture. Smart engineers will find the proper application. LEDs are green and fit the sustainability profile—part of a surefire way to promote a green building effort.

Still a little costly in broad application, but they have some ideal applications. Check this one out from Evluma.

http://evluma.com/news/news-gsa_contract.html

There has been a tidal wave of automotive advertising flooding the airwaves the past few months with claims and promises of improved product quality, safety, style, gas mileage. Media spending is way up, with every manufacturer trying to entice customers back into the showrooms.  

But to what end?
Consumers hate car shopping and they don’t want to go back into the dealership. Big surprise—the shopping experience there is still one of the most frustrating, untrustworthy, and manipulative games you can be subjected to.

Add to that the fact that the recession has also caused most dealers to suspend investment in their facilities, and you understand why the thought of venturing into a dealership is bleak. Promising better on TV only to deliver the same old retail experience only fuels consumer frustration and mistrust.

Instead, consumers do everything they can to stay out of the dealership, with online research and shopping being the preferred norm. Now even purchasing online has gained popularity.

Successful brands like Apple, Whole Foods, IKEA, even Walmart, understand how to leverage the power of shopper insights to deliver game changing customer experiences that build brand excitement, loyalty and bottom line results.

Auto companies must do more to improve the customer experience in showrooms! And there couldn’t be a better time. With the  recent upheaval in the industry, the marketplace is ripe for someone with the courage to innovate and completely reinvent the paradigm.  Success will come to those who differentiate.

The upcoming flood of hybrid and electric car provides an excellent opportunity for change. Consumers already perceive these cars as different, perhaps in some ways even more like an appliance. A completely new retail and shopping experience could and should be explored.

Will the automotive industry ever learn?
Give me even one dealer out there—or a player outside the industry altogether—who’s ready to exploit a pretty obvious opportunity. They’d have more business than they could handle. That would be exciting to see.

Once. Twice. Yes, starting very soon, Apple will have done it for a third time: changed the way we buy and listen to music. Apple acquired digital music startup Lala in December and shut the site down in May, leading tech pundits to speculate on the coming of “an iTunes in the cloud,” once the streaming music service is incorporated into Apple’s business model.

Although Apple won’t comment on its plans, as a loyal Lala.com user and Apple fan, I’m fully expecting to enjoy a cloud-based iTunes experience in the near future, and I think it’s great that Apple continues to advance their retail strategy and break paradigms of the industry by sourcing great ideas, making them profitable and bringing them to a larger audience.

I look forward to having full access to my music library anywhere an Internet connection is available, as well as being able to add/purchase songs from any computer with the added benefit of instantaneous downloads to mobile equipment. I hope Apple is able to keep some of Lala’s unique features, such as letting customers listen to an entire piece of music for free before purchasing it. Also, I really appreciated being able to pay 10 cents for the rights to stream a song an unlimited number of times from the Web as opposed to downloading a song.  I think Apple’s genius lies in asking questions like: Why do I have to download music?

There wasn’t an Evolutionary War for a reason. In the pre-dawn of U.S. history, the new settlers wanted more than to just evolve the British rule, it had to be overthrown. A new start, a clean slate. Imagine the pressure that those founding fathers must have felt when deciding that enough was enough, let’s try something new. Today, many brands find themselves in the same place. The status quo isn’t working. It’s time to differentiate. But I wonder if the ideas of “revolution” and “evolution” aren’t being confused.

It’s easy to tell yourself that your brand needs something revolutionary, something that breaks paradigms and reveals new ways of talking to your customers. But all too often, companies follow the evolutionary path—a new coat of paint, a few new fixtures and a new sign on the storefront. A quick win here, a quick win there.

Starting your own revolution isn’t easy and that first step can be scary. One of the most important things to do once you’ve determined to change is deciding how far you can and are willing to go. Look at every facet of your brand, from the most obvious things to the very subtle.  Deep unbiased introspection will uncover opportunity for a new attitude, a new set of guiding principles, a new market space.

In retail, change is life. So overthrow the old paradigms.  Delve into your brand and find that crazy idea, the one that’s worth fighting for.