do you have a typical boring product? like say a printer. sure it prints in color, and printers are always getting faster / better / fancier. Still, advertising a printer has been semi-boring. HP has always had pretty good luck making a printer cool.

Check this out.

This is actually Student work. Found via my friend across the pond David Airey

Filmed, edited and directed by Matt Robinson and Tom Wrigglesworth.

The two designers are recent graduates from the Design Communication degree course at Kingston University, London, and they’re currently looking for experience within the creative industry.

Good luck in your search, guys. Love the video.

HP – invent on Vimeo via Johnson Banks.

Music © Round Table Knights.

Have you thought of all the ways you can make your product or service sexy?

What do you think of the new Microsoft Zune ad? They say it costs $30,000 to fill an ipod. Check it out.

Do you believe this doom and gloom story? Are you now thinking that an ipod is a bad idea and you should “rent” your music for $15 a month?

Here is my issue. Nothing to do with the apple fanboy in me, but I tend to call shenanigans on any advertising that is unrealistic and confusing (yes, I sit at home and call out these ads for the new windows laptop hunter ads, most ads for beauty products, ads for hyundai saying its better than BMW, etc. Just ask my wife.)

1. most people own cds, already completing some of their library.
2. once you buy a song, you own it. for life. until you delete it or toss out that CD.
3. who really ever fills up an ipod?
4. the people who CAN fill up an ipod, usually “borrow” (read: steal) music.
5. renting with the Zune pass is really throwing $15 a month away. Stop paying, and your music is gone. All of it.

So really, this ad is comparing apples to oranges. well, apples to microsofts if you want to be funny like I do.

This ad is like saying it costs $30,000 to buy a small car, and drive it for 3 years. but instead you can rent one for $350 a month. Ohh wait, that’s a lease. So maybe, just maybe, this Zune ad is genius?

Any thoughts? Does this ad make you want to toss your ipod and use a Zune pass?

Would you let your customers see a showroom / lobby / office in a complete mess? Piles of paper on the floor and desk? Broken lights, missing ceiling tiles, stained floors? No! You dress your best, your employees dress their best, and you keep your showroom / lobby / office in tip top shape. Or at least I think you should. Your website should be no different.

The demand for good web design is increasing, revealed a recent Webcopyplus online poll. Almost 25% of web users indicated “poor visual presentation” as the number one element that drives them away from websites. Only 6.6% of web users who participated in a similar 2007 online poll indicated “poor visual presentation” as the main reason to abandon a website. That equates to a 267% increase during the two-year period.

From Webcopyplus:

Our web content specialists believe the increased desire for quality design comes from the fact that Internet users have become increasingly sophisticated. Consequently, more of today’s Internet users understand that a well designed website makes it possible to achieve more, with less time and effort.

A total of 318 web users were asked what’s most likely to drive them away from a website.

• 50.9% indicated “slow load times”
• 24.8% noted “weak web copy”
• 24.2% specified “poor visual presentation”

In the 2007 poll, 51.2% of 258 participants indicated “slow load times” and 42.2% noted “weak web copy” as their biggest turn-offs.

 

So what does all this mean?

A website won’t fix your slow business. UNLESS your site is well done. Work with your designer / developer to address all of the above issues. Your website is often the first thing a potential client / customer sees. They are judging the quality of your organization, products, service, and reputation based on 30 seconds of face time online.

So make those precious page views count!

Yep. Hyundai is paying people to drive their cars

Now I am not really a big fan of these cars. I usually hear about the loans outlasting the car. It can’t feel good to be paying $250 – $350 a month on a car that is falling apart. 

But is this the new way to sell cars? Or is this just the little guy trying to make some waves in the pond?

Personally, and I dont want to sound like a snob here, but they would need to pay me double that, for a longer period of time to drive one. Otherwise I’ll stick to my used 03 and 04 toyotas with 80k+ miles each.

So a few weeks ago i posted some questions regarding the newspaper industry, and how to fix it. I think I have some solid ideas, that I will post later. But that post got me thinking. A new series of blog posts, on what would you do to fix a company or industry. Could be a fun exercise in creativity. 

So today I ask: If Sprint came to you for marketing / business help,

How would you fix Sprint?

(more…)

So we have been really exploring the use of twitter as a tool around her for Factor1 (follow us here factor1). The jury is still out on it being useful for us.

In my 2 week exploration, i find some people are litteraly just brodcasting white noise. Twittering to twitter, even if they have nothing to say at all. Its pretty annoying, and I un-follow those people quick.

Are you one of those people? Here is a quick tool to help you know. 

www.followcost.com

Ever feel like you are the last to hear about something? Maybe somone is talking about you or your organization online and you dont know about it. 

Here are some great tools to keep an eye on things. 

• Google Alerts
   Have Google email you anytime a specific term, or link pops up. 
• Twitter Search feed
  Yes, you know you can search on twitter. But did you know you can have an RSS feed update of the results?
• Technorati blog search
  Who blogged about you? And yes, this too has an RSS feed for the results. 
• Google blog search
  Same deal as technorati. 

You can never have too close an eye on whos talking about you. Listen, adapt, react as needed. But dont become obsessed about it. 

Any tools i missed?

iPhone rocked the phone industry with a revolutionary PDA / phone / smart phone. Ever since every phone manufacturer has been trying to be the next iPhone. 

I was really glad to see this today, Palm is asking for volunteers to review their phone. Palm, who has an upcoming device titled the “Pre”. Its touch screen, and has a keyboard, with a new lightning fast OS. In their pre launch stages, Palm is engaging the real world by asking for reviews to use the phone, and blog, twitter, and facebook their opinions. 

This is great. They are taking away their marketing control, and letting the masses say what they will. 

This takes Guts. 

Are you so confident in your product or Service to ask the real world to review you as loudly as they can? Do you want to know the results?

In case you havent heard, some yahoo made an application for the iPhone, called “the baby shaker app” that uses the motion sensing hardware for the user to shake the phone, to get the baby to stop crying. Disturbing yes. It seems the Media is blasting Apple for allowing the application / game to be sold on its stores. 

Why is it apples fault for some whack job who created an application like this? Isn’t it wrong that people bought it? How is this application any different than a rap song that promotes violence, drugs, killing cops and other illegal activity on the iTunes store? Is this application any different that a retailer selling a video game when the player is to kill someone for points?

Apple has since pulled the application. And I am glad they are trying to keep their store clean, but I still dont see why there is so much blame on Apple for the application. 

Apple’s real issue on their hands: They are being held responsible (even if its just by the media) to sell quality content. No record store, and video game store has been held responsible like this in the past. I mean come on, have you seen grand theft auto games, which award points for driving over people. So Apple, for what ever reason, is supposed to be the morality police when it comes to games they sell for iPhone. 

How to fix it: I guess embrace the fact that the media thinks you are the morality police. But now they need a stricter process for approving applications. We need a human to review all new applications, and follow a rigorous check list to make sure its not a potential PR issue for Apple.

Sure it will slow down the app approval process, and developers will have to wait in some sort of que to be approved. But it should avoid further PR issues.

Since the dawn of the internet era (the mid 90′s), experts have speculated that the world of paper would go away. Everything would be digital. No newspapers, magazines, brochures, even business cards. 

While a lot has shifted to the web, I still dont think the world of paper will go away 100%. 

Both the New York Times, and Seth Godin mentioned recently that newspapers are dying. Godin went as far to say that by 2012, no significant newspaper will be printed in news print. 

(more…)