Take a visit to The Heart Attack Grill in Chandler, Arizona where an authentic customer experience is served up every day. You won’t find Jared from Subway dining here.
Last week the news media and the blogosphere were all abuzz about Skittles new “website”. The quotations are around “website” because it really isn’t a website, it’s a widget that sits on top of a series of non-Skittles sites - a siteless site. The widget points you to various social sites around the web, most notably Twitter, where you can see the communities comments about Skittles in real, unedited -time. Critics have declared this everything from “breakthrough” to “idiotic”. But all seem to agree that this won’t sell more Skittles.
What interested me through this whole affair was the headlines and abstracts that were popping up in Google News as I searched for “Skittles” last week. A large majority of the stories mentioned the name of the agency “Moderista!”. Modernista! was not however the agency that created this experience, it was Agency.com. Modernista! was mentioned because they used this same siteless approach to their very own website which launched a year earlier.
While most of the chatter focused on this brave move by Skittles, all of the subtext felt like the creative wind was knocked out of Agency.com’s sails in “adapting” this concept. Maybe the Agency.com folks felt that enough time had past or that the Modernista! audience was too industry-inside for anyone to care. In any case I wonder if Modernista’s phones might be ringing more than Agency.com’s this week.
Toxic assets, balance sheets, insolvencies, mark it to market ... the media is hurtling jargon and concepts at the public to try to explain to us what’s going on with our banking system.
If you’re like me you’re probably having a hard time making heads or tails of it all. The big ideas are pretty clear: people irresponsibly borrowed money to buy houses that the banks irresponsibly lent them, people are loosing their jobs and defaulting on their mortgages, housing prices are dropping, banks are in danger of going under.
However if you pick up the paper or turn on the TV you’ll see our nation’s leaders and the leaders of these financial institutions constructing phrases that are meaningless, and quite frankly intimidating, for the rest of us.
The authors of Made to Stick call this the “Curse of Knowledge” - this is when people who’s lives are immersed in complex concepts try to explain things to people who’s lives aren’t. This is a common problem of marketers - us agency folks often find ourselves guilty of it too.
This week’s episode of This American Life does a great job of breaking things down and explaining them in a way that we can actually understand. At the beginning of the program they claim that by the end you’ll understand things enough to formulate your own opinion on the current state of affairs, rather than just sit in front of your computer and watch the market drop with each frightening headline.
In fact they manage to explain to us what a balance sheet is in an entertaining way. The understanding of this fundamental (and very boring) financial concept is the first step in understanding everything else that’s happening. Not all of us have taken a class in economics folks.
This is a great example of how understanding and empathizing with your audience can lead to simplifying the complex for a more powerful (and even entertaining) delivery of your message.
You can download the podcast for free here.
I have to admit I was pretty skeptical of the whole e-book thing. The idea of carrying around a tablet-like device to read the morning paper just felt so 1993 to me. I just always had a hard time imagining myself curl up on a couch, relax on a beach, or ride on a train with an e-book. The hefty price tag on the original Kindle had me doubtful as well.
And let’s face it, our bookshelves say a lot about who we are. Could you imagine picking up someone’s Kindle at a party and skimming through their book collection?
Oh how wrong I was. Not only was the first Kindle very well received, but Sony followed suit with their own (sexier) model.
This past week my Twitter feed was abuzz with friends announcing that their Kindle 2 was en route, and links to very favorable reviews.
I also caught the above video from Geek Brief TV of the out of the box experience. Amazon has clearly put a lot of thought into the packaging and first time customer interaction. This is pretty impressive for a company that you don’t equate with design - and who’s product experience (website) is about as unemotive as you can get. Apple was no doubt a guiding light here - as well as on the new product design.
Don’t know if I’m ready to jump in. The price point for me feels like it’s more around $99. And yet I’m feeling the hype start to take ahold.
Beyond an appreciation of art, as creative and interactive professionals, what can we learn from comic books?
The answer is simple: storytelling.
Whether you are creating an immersive flash experience, a product finder, or a how-to guide you are weaving a narrative for the user.
Pitches, client presentation, creative briefs — all stories to be told.
In its most basic form comic books are story boards. Through masterful storyboards we can construct compelling, entertaining presentations and engaging user experiences.
Even if you’re not into comic books, I highly recommend reading Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. It really reveals the power of the medium and proves it through by telling its story through the medium. Apple Macintosh co-creator Andy Hertzfeld has called it “one of the most insightful books about designing graphic user interfaces ever written”.
Looking to dip your foot in? Here’s a list of a few graphic novels and series that I’m following or have recently completed. No men in tights.
Y: The Last Man
What if everyone (and everything) on the Earth with a Y chromosone spontaneously died — all but one guy and his monkey. Author Brian K. Vaughan explores what a world run by women could look like. The complete series is available in 10 trade paperbacks, and has been the most talked about comic book over the past 6 years since The Sandman. The movie starts filming soon.
100 Bullets
A crime noir series, that has a bit of a Quentin Tarantino feel to it with intricately woven layers within layers. The story centers around an independent group called The Trust that keeps the balance of power between a number of crime families. This series has been going on for ten years and is set to wrap up very soon with the 100th issue. Almost all issue are collected in trade paperbacks.
Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life
I picked this one up upon hearing countless praises from industry critics and comic creators alike. Set in Toronto, the story follows jobless 24-year old Scott Pilgrim’s love life and adventures in his band “Sex Bob-Omb”. Somehow creator Bryan Lee O’Mailey fuses a the simple everyday life of slacker with an all-out manga-style battle of the gods. I’ve only picked up the first one, but will definitely be picking up the four others that are currently out.
The Walking Dead
How many more zombie tales can be told? I’ve never been a big fan of the genre, and the premise of this one wasn’t even anything new. But yet again the praises couldn’t be ignored. I read the first trade paperback and wasn’t convinced, but was urged by a fanboy to “stick with it, it gets better”. I’m glad I did.
