Firebrand

In Seth Godin’s latest book, Linchpin, he describes Krulak’s Law:

The closer you get to the front, the more power you have over the brand.

Krulak refers to General Charles Krulak, a general who theorized that with the new era of cell phone cameras and online social networks, the field soldiers would have more impact on how the military is perceived than anyone. This is an important insight in a war where part of the mission is winning over hearts and minds. One soldier who act biligerantly towards a local can permenantly damage a brand.

The same is true with your business. Someone who woke up on the wrong side of the bed can have far reaching impacts in your brand. That could be a You Tube video highlighting your poor cleanliness. Someone could upload a photo to Facebook of one of your servers yelling at another customer. Someone could tweet about how one of your customer service representatives giggled when they described their problem. We h

But this problem is also an opportunity. With great front line people servicing customers, you brand can be enjoyed by customers and can grow and spread. Someone can share on Facebook a great experience with a phone centre agent that tirelessly worked to solve their problem. Someone can send a picture of the beautiful meal they were just served. Someone can write a 5 star review on Yelp based on the friendly staff of your bakery.

How to get there is to hire the right people and get them excited about your brand and about doing their very best they can for their customers. We are going to be doing a set of posts on Internal Branding, but if you are looking for guidance on this Zappos is the model.

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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.

Interact with the Firebrand community – Please Comment or Email.

The views expressed on this weblog are mine alone and do not necessairly reflect the views of my employer, FX Displays.

1. Funny spokesman
2. $100,000 budget for a set
3. Talking tige…

… there is no recipe for a viral video!

The most powerful medium of this time in marketing is also the most elusive. It’s the viral video. If we knew the recipe, than advertisers would be leveraging them so much that they would loose power and ability to spread. Much like mass media advertising, there is only a certain amount of space for viral videos. In stead of air time, it is mind share. The public has a very set appetite for viral videos, and when blasted with too many, they tend not to pass it along.

One company that gets it is Old Spice. Old Spice has hit the holy grail in that they have had so many successful virl videos that hundreds of thousands of young men looking at their You Tube channel to see what they come up with next. They are the fifth most subscribed sponsor channel of all time. Their videos have an unfair advantage towards going viral because of the 300,000 or so views a video gets just being on the Old Spice channel.

Another thing they have been able to do that eludes most viral videos is stay on message and on target. Their ads speak directly to the product and in a way their target market of young men respond too. Most company sponsored viral videos have nothing to do with the company or even the brand, except a 5 second logo flash at the end of the video. All of Old Spice’s videos talk about the product, and they don’t even comically over exaggerate the features of the product. They just associate it with fictional gods of manliness. They don’t say that if you use Old Spice, that you will instantly become a pillar of manliness. In fact they say that you will just smell like one? That association plays to the product attributes and the aspirations of their target market.

That leads to the most important part of a viral video: speaking to something visceral at the core of a segment of people. If it doesn’t hit someone in the gut in 30 seconds, than they wont pass it along. A common misconception is that a viral video has to speak to everyone; quite the opposite. It needs to speak to some people deeply. With Old Spice, that deep sentiment is the need for young men to feel manly and desirable. With Nike’s “Write the Future” video, it was the cultural diversity and cultural pride of the World Cup. With the Tom Tom’s Darth Vader recording studio video, it was about seeing someone who is known to be serious in a comedic way. Wit Hi Tecs “Walk on Water” video, it was making something you knew was impossible seem possible.

A more simple thing to learn from Old Spice is that you need to take alot of swings of the bat to hit a home run. They produce alot of videos. For every video that Old Spice has that goes to 3 – 6 million views, there are 2 that are at about 1 million views or less. When you strike gold, you aren’t going to know exactly how and why or if that is even repeatable. But the why doesn’t matter, the video going viral does. You just need to experiment.

Another repeatable thing Old Spice uses is brevity. Thirty seconds or one minute and that’s it. The principle reason Old Spice does this is to fit into the time slots of video services intro / outro slots. Most viral videos are around 2 minutes 30 seconds, but being brief gives you a higher percentage of being passed along. If people feel like they are committing their friends to watching a long video, it had better be captivating. A short video is just a snack.

Something also it keep in mind is directing your cinematography so that the video can be understood when viewed small. We are getting the opportunity to have HD video now, but that doesn’t mean people are watching it in HD. They are watching it from their Facebook news feeds, or huddled around a 19″ monitor in a cubical. Make things large, graphically simple and only have one area of focus on screen at a time.

Consider using an audio logo like Old Spice, but we already have a post on that.

While creating a viral video may seem like a black art, it is doable. If you don’t think that you can make something that can get to 5,000,000 views than just remember that if it reaches a few thousand people who are your direct target market, than it was valuable. Happy experimenting.

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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.

Interact with the Firebrand community – Please Comment or Email.

The views expressed on this weblog are mine alone and do not necessairly reflect the views of my employer, FX Displays.

People have relationship with brands not only because of what they offer with their product or service, but also how being a part of that brand makes them feel. Brands that have strong personalities are the ones that capitalize on this. Whether this is the fun, playful, young-hearted Disney brand, or the macho, competitive, manly brand of UFC. People feel they have the personality traits of the brand they are using or affiliating themselves with.

This was confirmed once again with a study from the Journal of Consumer Research (see this article for more details). In the study, participants were asked to walk a mall with the bright pink shopping bag of Victoria Secret. The control group was given a plain pink bag of a similar style. People with the Victoria Secret bag reported to feel more feminine, glamorous, and good-looking. In another study, people reported feeling more intelligent and like leaders when they used a pen with MIT engraving.

This verifies what we already knew. What was a new discovery is that the personality adoption effect was greatest people who believe that their personality cannot be changed through their own self improvement efforts. People who believe that they have some control over their personality traits do not report personality changes from brands.

People who feel their personality flexible would not see the need to use brands to augment their personality. These people wouldn’t see the value in fashion; they would feel that their attire would not have an effect on how they are perceived. They believe that if they want to change how they are perceived, they will work to change their personalities.

It is a strange paradox: people who feel their personality is more fixed actually more flexible. But people with brands augmenting their personality probably feel like they are being perceived as having the brands personality traits, not as if their personalities actually have changed. People who feel their personality is fixed would be more exercised at using brands to change their personality or the perception of their personality at least.

You may think this is tricking people who feel bad about their personal into buying products to feel better about themselves. Quite the opposite. The marketing to brand something with certain personality trait is adding value to the product itself. Helping people express themselves or feel better is an admirable goal.

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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.

Interact with the Firebrand community – Please Comment or Email.

The views expressed on this weblog are mine alone and do not necessairly reflect the views of my employer, FX Displays.

Microsoft unveiled their new Xbox design this week at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), the gaming convention. The new hardware is packed with a 250 GB drive, and Wifi (a long time coming.) But what I want to focus on is what is on the outside. The old design was done by the industrial design / branding firm Astro Studios; a firm I am a fan of and take inspiration from. I don’t know if they deigned this case as well. Let’s analyze the industrial design:

- This is clearly is under the same line of thinking as the Alienware hardware. Nothing wrong with that, particularly because Astro also did the design for Alienware. This is a strong difference from the pervious Xbox which was tidy and refined. The new design is more Mitsubishi Evo if the old design was an Audi.

- Speaking of cars, the case design is like a car in that it has a belt line. A belt line design element on a car is the corner on the side that divides the sheetmetal pointing down from the metal pointed up; because above the belt line is reflecting the blight sky and below is reflecting the dim ground, it creates a high contrast line that can be used graphically on cars. This only works on shiny exteriors particularly using black, which the new Xbox case features. The line angles up to the back, and creates a nice graphic appeal to the otherwise boring side the the case. The fins and shape of the air intake on the right side reference the belt line, creating a dynamic yet tidy appearance.

- The logo debossed on the sides of the case look too small, and out of place. On the right side it references the air intake, but on the left side there is nothing anchoring it to where it is positioned. It as a straight horizontal element looks awkward so close to the angles belt line. I would eliminate the logo altogether, or move it to the bottom or the top to reference horizontal lines.

- The chrome button looks striking against the graphite colour of the case. But the brightness of the button drowns out the signature green-yellow glow around it. Maybe the glow is more prominant when you see the unit in person. I would like to have seen the green glow in more places, as it is the basis of the Xbox branding. It would have been nice to see the logo on the front of the case lit up.

- The choice to switch from a light gray ro a grapite black is an interesting. They have had a black case before with the Xbox Elite, which was also a funny choice. With the original design, I credited Astro for have a very strong link between the branding and the case design. This black distances the branding and the product. It also moves it towards the look of their principle rival, the Playstation 3. This was change probably driven to distinctly distinguish the new model from the old one for marketing purposes.

- The awkward hump on the top of the old case is eliminated… hallelujah. Let’s hope the overheating and red ring of death problems are gone as well.

- The unit looks like it can still stand or sit on it’s side again. A nice feature to have. As nice as it would be to have people proudly display this in their living room standing up, I imagine it will be used on it’s side 90% of the time.

- The case overall looks like they have designed some cost out of it, with only 1 finnish, has shallower injection molded parts and eliminated some parts. This is a good example of how a tidy, inexpensive design can look better if you understand your restraints and design a nice visual concept around them.

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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.

Interact with the Firebrand community – Please Comment or Email.

The views expressed on this weblog are mine alone and do not necessairly reflect the views of my employer, FX Displays.