Never get out of the boat: purple cow

Showing posts with label purple cow. Show all posts

Thursday, March 03, 2011

art wank

It's more often than not that those micro-interactions - the small details - are the things that add the flavour to an experience.

The tiny bits. The nice-to-haves. The little hidden extras.
The extra 1% that makes it different and/or remarkable.
The extra 1% that the others don't do.

The personality.

The sparkle that separates the merely very good from the awesome.

The things you are likely to pass along.

That's why this little function on the ipod (the O) that you are given to guide you round the awesome MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart tickled me.

Want the full critic-friendly details on a particular exhibit?
Hit the ArtWank button, obviously.

It could have just read 'info' and been ok.

[note: Delicate flowers who are likely to be offended by colourful language would be advised to steer clear of the subterranean underworld that is MONA.
There's plenty more and bigger confrontational material contained within.
Wee-wee and poo being recurring themes to name but two.]

MONA is the pet project of Tasmanian businessman David Walsh who commissioned architects Fender Katsalidis to design the museum, then filled the space with his own personal collection.

A mathematician by trade, Walsh made part of his fortune gambling (he cracked a formula that worked over and over) and built MONA on the site of the Moorilla Winery, which he also owns.

His fingerprints are all over that too, Moorilla also produce there own craft beers with the tagline 'not for bogans'.

Friday, March 19, 2010

dm piece of the century: the cardboard record player

Very cool bit of direct mail from Canadian recording studios and sound designers GGRP and their agency GREY, who mailed this 100% cardboard record player and record to prospects and customers. It's exactly that - a fully functioning record player made from cardboard, and a record.

HT to the daily what

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

a herd of purple cows

CowParade is a public art event that has been held in over 50 cities around the world including Paris, Tokyo, London and New York, and this year I was lucky enough to see many of the pieces in Margaret River WA.

Life size cow sculptures are painted and decorated by artists and set on display in various spaces, sponsored by businesses.

Margaret River is of course famous as centre of the wine producing region in South West Australia and many of the cows appear in the grounds of the winerys and other businesses in the area.

Public art considerations often include site specificity, community involvement and collaboration and somehow it's more inclusive and accessable in it's nature than it's gallery based cousin.

I bought a few bottles of wine too, funnily enough.

Monday, February 01, 2010

gurus of new marketing #979 : eric cantona

There have been better players, who've scored more goals, done more charity work and been better role models but when the late great George Best is said to have admitted he would he would have given up drinking to play alongside Eric Cantona, you know you are dealing with a true star.

Thirteen years since he last professionally kicked a ball (or a hooligan) and we are still talking about him.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

this beer is mental

I'm loving everything about the Scottish independent brewery BrewDog.
The style, the brand, the philosophy, the disruption, the attitude.
There is nothing mediocre about these guys.

They say:
Our beers are in no way commercial or mainstream.
We do not merely aspire to the proclaimed heady heights of conformity through neutrality and blandness.
We are unique and individual.

With beers named 77 Lager, Trashy Blonde, Punk IPA and Hardcore IPA what's not to love?

Last month they also launched the strongest beer in the world, the Tactical Nuclear Penguin.

Weighing in at an ABV of 32%, BrewDog’s ‘Tactical Nuclear Penguin’ beats the previous record of 31% held by German beer brand Schorschbraer.

And with their offshoot label punkdog they can offer personalised labelled beers.

Also through the Equity for Punks share scheme, they are looking for 10,000 fans to become part of the journey.

The web-ness was created by Aberdeen agency Hampton Associates, good work chaps.
I shall be cracking open a couple of Punk IPA's in your honour over the festives.

Friday, July 31, 2009

the product IS the marketing #542 Yakkay brainwear

If I was an upscale urban hipster cycling daily through the metropolis I would certainly be having one of these stylish and talk-about-able cycling helmet covers by Yakkay.

They call it 'Brainwear for smart people'.

Might just get one anyway for when I'm taking my tractor out for a spin.
The khaki 'Tokyo' is doing it for me, would go with my colonial Daktari safari suit.

hat-tip (literally) to Becky in the office.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

digital connections : timeless marketing classics

Graeme Harrison has asked a few people to recommend their choice of the most important or influencial marketing related books for a series of posts at his blog digital connections.
Here's what i wrote...

Seth Godin: Purple Cow

I first encountered Seth Godin’s ‘Purple Cow’ around 2004, I think it had been out for a year or so. At the time I was working as Creative Director with an online gaming firm, I had a gut feeling that we were approaching both the design the marketing of our product from the wrong angle.

I was under pressure to conform the look and feel of our games to look similar to the other casinos and gaming sites and the press ads, online ads etc were just not delivering the traffic.

I knew we had to do something but was not sure what.

I was pointed to ‘Purple Cow’ by the manager of one of the local branches of a well know book retailer. He was a convert and had used the principles of Purple Cow to turn around the fortunes of his store the previous year. He had been voted store manager of the year at the company’s conference and also went on to receive industry wide recognition at the national book awards as bookseller of the year.

I’ll have some of that, I thought.

In a nutshell, Seth describes ‘Purple Cow’ as:

‘a manifesto for marketers who want to make a difference at their company by helping create products and services that are worth marketing in the first place. It is a plea for originality, for passion, guts, and daring. ..Today, the one sure way to fail is to be boring. Your one chance for success is to be remarkable."

Some say that Seth Godin can be too simplistic (the advertising plannersphere may look down it’s nose at him) I prefer to call him accessible.

Anyone can pick up this book and get something out of it., and it gives you a framework for judging the worth of an idea - simply ask yourself ‘why is this idea totally remarkable? Why would anyone bother to tell anyone else about it? Where is the ‘purple cow’ in this idea?

I’d like to be able to finish off the story by saying I used the cow to transform the gaming company from also-rans to world beaters. No such luck.

But reading this book was the first step for me in realising that it was not enough to just make pretty pictures, I had to get interested in the ‘reasons why’. I also realised that this was not going to happen in the job I was in so I quickly left (see another essential Seth title ‘The Dip’).

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

thought for the day....

'The difference between ordinary and extra-ordinary is that little extra'

Thanks Sam.

Monday, January 05, 2009

three buckets

Clients often find it hard to swallow radical ideas if that's all they get to look at. It can be scary, even if they have the appetite for change. I'm finding this method - which i stumbled across in Ken Hudson's book The Idea Generator - useful for; generating ideas and selling them.
Ive adapted it slightly but it's the same thing.

Imagine 3 buckets:
Bucket 1 - Business as Usual.
Banner ads, microsites etc - the usual guff. Traditional methods easily understood.
Bucket 2 - Something a bit different, might be dipping toes into social web, engagement. Stuff like that.
Bucket 3 - Is the game changing, purple cow-ness. The out-there stuff that's going to get them noticed and talked about.

By aiming for bucket 3 when working up ideas at the very least your going to land a few in bucket 2.
And by presenting stuff in all 3 buckets clients can be more receptive to bucket 3 solutions when they can see why it's better/more innovative/remarkable than the business as usual.

pic credit

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

the product is the marketing - malmaison

On a recent jaunt to Edinburgh I stayed at the Malmaison by Leith docks.

First off, it's about 15 years since I've been round Leith, what a change.
Back in the day it was a bit of a no-go area but it's now been 'regenerated'- lots of nice bars and restaurants and half a million quid apartments etc.

A couple of things made my stay worth remarking upon.

All Malmaison hotels offer free, gratis broadband in the rooms. So what? I hear you say. Well try getting free web access in any other hotel chain. Unlikely.

In the bathroom theres a wee sign beside all the toiletries - posh body wash, moisturising pads, breath freshner, the lot - saying 'please take these away with you'.
Everyone nabs the bits from the bathroom in hotels anyway, but a nice touch to say 'go ahead'. Power showers too. Theres nothing worse than the dribbly weak showers you often encounter in hotels.

I ordered dinner in my room - posh burger and chips - the chips come in a tall cup thing wrapped in Malmaison greaseproof paper. A little design touch that tickled me.

I also loved the milk jugs at breakfast, it's a tall vase shaped white jug with 'cow' spots printed on it.

I could have stayed at the Holiday Inn accross the road and it would have been perfectly acceptable, but i would not have mentioned it to anyone after.
It's the micro-touches that make an experience worth talking about.

Good enough is no longer good enough, it needs to be better than that.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Purple cow spotted at Denver International Airport

Following on from the horse sculpture story below I enjoyed my brief encounter with Denver Airport.

As well as the mad tent exterior, internally it's been designed with the user in mind. The gates are all in a straight line A,B and C zones connected by a train. It's vrtually impossible to get lost.

And a couple of soft innovations made the - lets face it, normally pretty stressful - experience of airports a bit more pleasant.

The public address system on the gate connecting train was crystal clear perfect sound
and every announcement is spoken by a local celebrity tv babe (can't remember her name but I was told) and introduced by little musical motifs. Boogie-woogie piano for the doors closing announce, twangy guitar for the next stop announce and so on.

Some bright spark has thought, what can we do to add an extra bit of polish to this experience to make it just that bit better? - it's that extra 1% that makes it talkaboutable. Customer service as the new branding or something.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Electric Business

I spent Monday evening having a conversation with a group of small creative business owners - from the Surrey/Hampshire area - in Guildford.

Many thanks to Kate from the Farnham Electric Business Club for asking me to fill in.

I was asked to give a short presentation and kick off a discussion and braindump to see if we could collectively come up with some ideas and tactics around the theme of 'Know your Product'.
In retrospect I think I tried to squeeze a bit too much content into the presentation as I had to whizz through to allow enough time for the dialogue piece, and despite leaving my notes in the cab I just about managed to wing it.

My presentation was loosely themed around the value of conversation and connection strategies for small businesses with low or no budget for marketing.
I started off with a sort of case study of a piece of work we did at Weapon7 for the launch of Xbox360 which went viral via the Xbox fan forums. Using a fraction of the media budget it created a disproportionate buzz compared the more expensive media and showed how getting the early adopters and influencers talking can accelerate the spread of an idea.

I introduced gapingvoid's Stormhoek blogger outreach from 2005 and neatly segued in the launch of the Blue Monster label (how cool to be featuring it on day of launch) to demonstrate the influence of social media and show the value of unlikely partnerships, and followed that up with a look at Go Home Productions - how garden shed remixer's cgc ends up on MTV and remixes for David Bowie.

The homework for the group was to connect to me, join the conversation, start experimenting with new tools/tactics outside of traditional marketing and look into the kind of innovations that can develop the talkability of their product or service.

I also promised some recommended reading to get some thinking going, I'm going to list a couple of things here for those who have done the homework and looked me up.

BOOK - Seth Godin's Purple Cow , when I first read this about 3 years ago all sorts of lightbulbs started going off in my head.

PODCAST - to get enthused about all things new media you could do worse than Six Pixels

BLOG - Any of the links on my sidebar will lead you off to many more links.

And in the spirit of link-love heres the people who left me their cards at the end.

Claire Harrison, Fine Artist
Designer, Nick Cannons
Another designer, Andrew Cross
The Boiler Room, Guildford music and arts venue.

Whats the pic all about? On my way to work I usually buy a coffee off Mr Coffee, a van parked on the courtyard ouside new Spitalfields market. Despite having Starbucks, Costa and numerous other established coffee chains around them, Mr Coffee has a long line every morning. Instead of the usual boring loyalty stamp cards you get a free pair of pants with every 20 coffee's. Or if you just ask they will give you a pair anyway.