Walter Landor Talking First Moment of Truth – 50 Years Ago!

Posted on September 6, 2010 by slowmack

Design story: The Decanter from Landor Associates on Vimeo. My friends over at DOXA turned me onto this video. I am struck my a number of things in it:

1. There is nothing new under the sun.

“At the moment of truth at the store” was spoken by Walter Landor in the film some 50 years ago. This is the bedrock of Shopper Marketing, which I spent 10+ years working in thinking that P&G’s A.G. Lafley was to be credited for this idea – or at least popularizing it. This entire video is the exact same process for great packaging design that exists today. They even have a simulated store environment to walk shoppers through to research in context!

2. How well dressed EVERYONE is in this film.

Yes, I’ve seen this a thousand times and Mad Men is awakening everyone to the fact all over again, but I was surprised by the shop guys. An ascot, ties and great watches abound. The couples in the focus group rooms are dressed to the nines. I know from traveling abroad that Americans are usually perceived as consistently underdressed because of our love of denim. I don’t know, but seeing real people (not actors on TV) at band saws and turning lathes in a shirt and tie. They seemed to be working on something important. It made their work seem special. Somehow more significant and dignified, even if it was just a glass decanter.

3. The craftsmen involved in all of this seemed to have great jobs.

All of the handwork involved in the making of models, and the tools and skills needed (french curve anyone?). These hand skills are fast waning in our digital age, if they are not gone already. Watching this reminded me of watching a Swiss watchmaker at work. It also made me thankful that the best design schools in the country still require hand skill development as a foundation of design. Yes, the computer has taken much of the tedium out of so many parts of the design business, and it has even given us capabilities we never dreamed of, but in the world of visual thinking, hand skills are paramount. Perhaps it’s just wistful nostalgia, but we seem lesser for the loss of them.

4. How much of the process has remained the same.

The film is dated in terms of shooting style, soundtrack and narration to be sure. And even the end solution package designs seem quaint. But make no mistake, the strategy, the philosophy and the process have not changed. Without passing judgement on the merits of this particular product, you can still marvel at how sophisticated the mechanism of product development and advertising was back in the golden age. It seems that all our advances on the media side of the business have not yielded much advancement in terms of approach or process. I find that very interesting.

Social Media does not a Brand Make…

Posted on May 25, 2010 by slowmack

I just saw a question about branding from the inside-out on LinkedIn‘s Future Trends group, and I felt compelled to submit my two cents into the dialog. I’m including here for any who are not in that group.

******* ******* ******* ******* *******

Inside-out branding is the only way.

It all starts with identity — the core identity — of the organization. What is its reason for being. Because every company ships its culture. And culture is built from a shared identity and vision. Otherwise, why would a company exist? It is a group with a shared set of operating assumptions (i.e. values and identity) rallied around a common cause (i.e. a vision). When that identity and vision captures the imagination of anyone outside the company, a brand is born.

I think consumers today are craving authenticity in branding, but they are not getting it much. I think they are in places like TOMS Shoes or charity: water or Every Monday Matters, but they are not getting from the P&G‘s of the world and you are seeing subtle rumblings today that are going to trigger a tsunami at some point in the near future. But when a company knows who they are and where they are going, then they have a great chance.

Of course, there are tons of market dynamics that need to be overlaid onto this regarding consumer needs, attitudes and behavior. Then there’s competitive issues regarding the category the brand is entering. But these are technical issues and secondary to Identity and Vision.

The problem with the practice of branding is that the practice of branding today spends too much time on consumer and category dynamics and ignores Identity and Vision. In fact, it thinks of Identity purely in terms of logo and collateral design. Those are secondary. Get the foundation right, and the house has a better chance of standing.

It is interesting to see how many people are responding to the LinkedIn question with answers about Social Media. Granted, most of them are social media consultants who are looking for a way to promote their business. But this kind of student body left thinking is what the Adjective Marketing business is all about. Bring out a new book – everyone follows. Here comes a new media vehicle – everybody jumps on-board.

Social Media is a sets of sites and tools that empower anyone to listen and engage in conversations with an audience. Brand-building is a discipline born out of the Identity and Vision of an organization. These are not the same thing. I guess the marketing profession will keep answering every question with social media until something new comes along.

DIY web 2.0 agency presence (without a staff or an agency)

Posted on January 21, 2010 by slowmack

Yeah, I know…poor me, huh? Okay, so first things first – we have the url secured and the WordPress template (I’m using Thesis from DIY) loaded and functional. But I don’t like the design. And I’m not an official designer. I started life as a Creative Director, but I’m a writer more than an artist. Which means I have dangerous opinions about design, but I’m not officially qualified.

Here, I’ll have the design department work on it – except there is no design department. This means that for now, I’ll have these photos to the right (okay, I got those out of the way) that I don’t like and cannot do anything about. And I’m not crazy about Georgia, I’d rather have Helvetica Neue or something from HF&J foundry (see just dangerous enough), but I don’t know if they’ll run everywhere.

It’s one thing to work on the brand strategy and advertising campaigns. It’s quite another to sit down with no incredibly talented teams to fall back on and just do the work your self. I don’t know if understanding how to get Google Analytics running for my blog will help my work with clients, but it just might.

Here’s the tools I’m using (so far anyway):

Setting up a WordPress site for my blog, my agency (TBD), and a writing project I’m working on — eventually, I’ll have a couple of the start-ups I’ve either founded or that are clients on there as well.
I’m using the Thesis template by DIY. It’s elegant, and has nice design tools although not the WYSIWYG of a Squarespace, it also doesn’t cost. And I’m anxious to see version 2.0.
I’m wiring the WordPress site into my LinkedIn and my Twitter accounts. I’m trying to migrate Facebook back to just personal stuff instead of work stuff. Perhaps that is old fashioned, but so be it.
I’m considering using Posterous (and now Post.ly) to help with posting (and because I’m interested in all of these automation sites). It integrates well with WordPress – and I have a Tumblr site for the random things I see and like.
Instead of building out a robust personal site, I want to use other social sites to showcase client work (on Virb, Flickr, etc.), and then share presentations (SlideShare) and whitepapers (Scribd) that I’m working on as well. More for the experiment of it than because I think it will work beautifully.
I’m using Google Analytics to monitor (the currently non-existent) site traffic, and I’ll register the site with Quantcast just for kicks.
What am I missing?
Ah, sharing on Google Reader and probably a few other items.

At TBD, we talk to clients all the time about social media – what it is and isn’t, how to and not to use it – but I am seriously impressed with the people who just started on their own, learned as they went about it, and did not quit.

Not quitting is a big deal. More on that later.

slowmack.com

Confessions of an Idea Junkie

Tag Archives: Design

Walter Landor Talking First Moment of Truth – 50 Years Ago!

1. There is nothing new under the sun.

2. How well dressed EVERYONE is in this film.

3. The craftsmen involved in all of this seemed to have great jobs.

4. How much of the process has remained the same.