Firebrand

Nowadays, small companies are beginning to compete with larger companies. With social media, everyone has a voice. For the last few decades, the brand with the loudest voice won. Now, the voice that is most repeated is the one that wins.

In industrial design we talked alot about the democratization of design in the last decade. Good product design was a luxury of the rich. In the past, you only had an easy to use, beautiful CD player if you could pay for a Bang and Olufsen. Now you can go to Best Buy and get a Sony Plasystation 3 that can be the jewel of your living room, and be the best CD player you could ever want and do hundreds of other tasks. You can go to Target (if you are in the USA, soon to be in Canada) and get a Michael Graves tea pot that used to be a working sculpture only people in a higher tax bracket could afford. Target has been a great leader in the democratization of design, as well as IKEA. Unfortunately the quality has not followed the beauty and ease of use in these consumer products.

A similar movement is happening with marketing. There are avenues in which small companies can get their brand’s message out that have never been there before. Facebook gives any business the ability to do hyper targeted advertising based on demographics, psychographics and declared interest. That level of targeting was only available to very wealthy companies in verticals with high customer lifetime value. Google has made billions through giving people the ability to target their ads to people with declared interest at the moment of interest.

But even those services can eventually be crowed out by brands with the biggest pockets. What can’t be crowded out is social media’s natural effect of amplifying word of mouth. Yelp and other social review sites are the greatest example of this. I personally have found small business restaurants with great food and service using Yelp. A particular barbecue restaurant in Etobicoke comes to mind. This was one that was a 4 star recommendation on Yelp about 10 kms from where we were. The food was delicious and they over serviced us. We talked to the couple that owned and ran the place and they said that most of the traffic that they were getting was from Yelp and other restaurant review sites. Here is a mom and pop shop competing with deep pocketed chain restaurants and getting mind share and customers. Kelsey’s could throw 10s of millions of dollars into an advertising campaign that wont change that their food and service is spotty. And a mom and pop BBQ shop can take way business by concentrating on product and service.

This is what marketing was all about: connecting great products with people in need. We got sidetracked with mass media giving the rich a large megaphone. But now we have given millions a voice, and together they have a voice loud enough to drown out that mass media megaphone. But this means that if your product is sub par, your not going to get any traction.

The cream will rise to the top, just as well intended all along.

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an award winning industrial designer who works with large multinational brands everyday designing retail displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.

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Game changers are products that make an otherwise healthy looking product sector look like it had been stagnating for years. They take industries in completely different directions, leaving competitors behind. I want to put the the Nissan GT-R and iPhone, because it shows the power of flagship products.

Nissan GT-R

The Nissan GT-R has made it look like the sports car engineers in other company’s have been sitting on their hands for the last 10 years. The only new car comparable (4 wheel drive, dedicated sports car) is the Audi R8 which has performance figures of 0-60 in 4.6 seconds, 187 mph top speed, and 1.01 g in the corners. The Nissan GT-R has performance numbers of 0-60 in 3.5 seconds, 195 mph top speed, and 0.99 g in the corners. So the GT-R tromps the R8 in acceleration in and is on par in cornering. Both have performance number you would expect from next generation, $120,000 (US) supercars; but wait, the GT-R isn’t a $120,000 supercar. It’s a $76,840 supercar. To buy a car faster than the GT-R on the Top Gear test track, you will have to spend $191,700 on a Porsche 911 GT2 or $198,000 on a Lambourghini Galardo LP560. But those cars you wouldn’t drive to the office in a snow storm like you could the 4 wheel drive GT-R.

Enough car talk. The Nissan GT-R competes with cars 2 1/2 times it’s price. How? Well I believe it is because of two reasons: working smarter and not harder, and taking losses on each car for the marketing value. The GT-R team of engineers and ex-race car builders had a clear mission. They built a car to be the fastest for anyone, anywhere, any time. Every componant is tuned to be fast and efficient. The supercar’s body was wind tunnel tested so each wheel is pressed against the road with aero downforce, and only then it was styled. It also has a judicious dose of technology, namely the extremely advanced 4 wheel drive system. But the GT-R doesn’t have anything new from cars in the past. It’s no compromise componants just work together cohesively.

The main contributor to the GT-R’s value is the loss Nissan is absorbing based on the marketing value of having the fastest, cheapest super car. Nissan’s previous performance model badges (SE-R and Spec-V) have lost their value of late, but the GT-R supercar would bring a reputation of extreme performance to a GT-R performance line. I wouldn’t be suprised to see a Sentra GT-R, Altima GT-R and Maxima GT-R. The people interested in cars like those would be well aware of the GT-R, and would pay the premium to have even a small piece of the GT-R supercar credibility.

Car people know about this car. Car people are a valuable group to covet, because they have extreme influence on car purchases with their friends and family. Even if Nissan doesn’t leverage it with a performance line, the GT-R has established Nissan as being masters of engineering and technology. Those brand perceptions will transfer to all Nissan cars, whether or not they have anything to do with their supercar big brother. That is a true flagship product.

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an industrial designer that works with large brands everyday designing displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.

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Hopefully, we will look back at the turn of the millennium and laugh at the stupid clam shell, vac formed plastic packaging. You know the type I am taking about; the clear plastic job that you can’t get open without some sort of sharp implement to open, and even then it is a struggle. There are even tools you can get at Home Hardware to open these packaging nightmares. I know the reasons for this packaging: theft reduction, mass production and durability for shipping. But that doesn’t undue the harm it does to the user experience. Design Critique: Products for People podcast has a great cast on designing the packaging experience.

Amazon's 'Frustration Free Packaging' innitiative

What inspired this article was the Amazon ‘Frustration Free Packaging’ initiative, just in time for the holiday season. The frustration free packaging eliminates the clam shell packaging or complicated boxes with zip ties and plastic trays. This is great to start customers out on the right foot, and keep the positive experience. It also turns out to be more green, using post consumer recycled corrugate and eliminating the mixed media so people are more likely to recycle the packaging. I know alot of brand managers would shutter at loosing that graphical packaging to introduce the product, but the product itself is the real asset that people are looking for. For online purchases from places like Amazon, if you could reinvest the money saved on 4 colour packaging and copacking into a proper instruction manual that people would really have a proper user experience.

We treat brands as we do people; we begin and foster relationships. A great brand experience should be akin to a love story. If advertising is the flirty first meeting, and the website is getting the number, then the packaging is definitely the first date. We all know the importance of the fist date in relationships, but we downplay the impact of the packaging in the user experience. Your not getting off on the right foot if someone struggles to free their product from it’s cumbersome packaging and then deal with the waste that is 5 times the sized of the product.

The model in this space is Apple. When you come home with you iPod, you don’t open it… you reveal it. There is hardly any graphics or packaging material, but the experience is obviously the design focus. The iPod is the first thing you come upon, centered and nested like a jewel. The USB cord, headphones and instructions are laid out simply. It is such an experience that many people I know keep their iPod box on display; talk about valuable advertising space and compelling endorsement. I was also very impressed with the Jawbone packaging, but haven’t experienced it myself.

Have a good first date of customer experience; design the packaging experience and eliminate these torturous types of packaging.

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an industrial designer that works with large brands everyday designing displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.

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Hyundai Genesis taillights

BMW 3 Series taillights

They say immitation is the sincerest form of flatery. The new Hyundai Genesis’ taillights are definately inspired by the previous generation BMW 3 Series. I am of two minds on this one. Good design on the high end of any product category should trickle down, and I would tell a company to take inspiration from companies that embody the brand values they aspire too. But where is the line? I would say this is well intended inspiration, but the front fascia says Mercedes all the way. I think Hyundai can find their own design style, that can still reference the high quality German design without going over the line. Where ever that line lies.

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an industrial designer that works with large brands everyday designing displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.

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People think of brands the same way they do people; we are neurologically hard wired to deal with interpersonal relationships. The people you have representing your brand have such a strong impact on your brand because of this. Those people you put in front of a camera or microphone become the face of your brand in a very real way. Their mannerisms, tone of voice and other non verbal communications have direct consequences for your brand.

I personally am dealing with such a perception right now as a customer. I don’t want to be petty, so I won’t name names but you may be able to follow along if you are a fellow Canadian. A national Canadian food supplier have been running ads for their holiday specials. The ads have the company’s executive chairman talk about the value of their products. Nothing wrong with that. The problem lies in the combination of poor writing and his delivery style which makes him come across as condescending. In one of the ad he commands people to drop what they are doing and go and buy their dessert; probably meant to come across comical and cheeky, but the way it is delivered almost makes me want to go in a baby punching tangent! (Dane Cook joke.) That ad changed my perception of this spokes person, who I never had a problem with in ads in previous holiday seasons. But now whatever I here him say, I perceive the message as cold, greedy, elitist, commanding, and ridiculous. These perceptions will probably translate to the brand after the holiday season. While most people probably don’t feel as strongly, I am sure many if not most feel the same way in some form or another.

It doesn’t just have to be jerks that can have a negative effect on your brand; there is also wimps and sleezeballs. I jerk is someone that creates an anger response in people. Obviously you don’t want someone to respond to your brand with anger. A wimp is someone who doesn’t seem to be confident in themselves or their position. This is equally as damaging to a brand because if people don’t think that the brand has confidence in their products then customers wont have the confidence to invest in them. A sleezeball is probably the most common. This is someone who does not come across as trustworthy. We see people on TV who are obviously just being paid to endorse or represent a brand, with no feelings about the brand otherwise. This is why infomercials often don’t come across well. We see people over acting and faking enthusiasm to endorse a product they haven’t heard off before this commercial.

If you are allowing someone to represent your brand, be very careful of how they are percieved by people. Ask a handful of people how they react to an ad, podcast, press release, or whatever. It may be worthwhile consulting a behaviour psychologist about the non verbal cues a spokesperson is giving off.

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an industrial designer that works with large brands everyday designing displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.

Please comment!