Firebrand

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.

—

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.

—

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.

Sometimes when you browse a corporate site that they are making an concerted effort to make sure that you don’t see the price until you are already invested. Usually these sites want you to give personal information, have a sales representative contact you or dedicate time to starting the process.  This is especially true in subscription services.

This is not okay. As marketers, we reserve the right to try to explain the value of our product or service before we say the prices. But asking someone to spend their time and attention on something is far different than mentally locking people in before allowing them to see the price.

The basis of our economy is based on rational decision making balancing value with price. By withholding the price, you remove one half of the equation. When they are finally allowed to see the price the equation has changed. Now the cost is balanced against the value of the product or service plus the loss of the time / personal information / effort if they do not take the service. This is subversive, and gaming the system. It takes paying from opt in to opt out, which uses our human preference towards opting in against us.

One example of this is eHarmony. In the first level of their website has no mention of the price of the service. They ask you to sign up and give your time and most personal information to take their personality profile before you see the price of the service. The price of the service is based on how much time you sign up for, and is not determined by any of the personal information you gave. There is no reason to withhold the pricing information other than to have us already invested in the service before we pay for it.

The whipping boy of poor sales and marketing critics, the car dealer, uses the same tactic. They withold the final price of the product at the last minute of the sale, often pocketing profit through fees. When I was looking for a used car at the end of the last year, I experienced this first hand. Dealers would want me to appraise my trade in before car even before letting me test driving their product. One sales person verbally strong armed us into his office after a test drive. I would never have bought a car with him no matter how good the deal, because he had destroyed our relationship with him and thus his brand. I apprehensively bring up used car dealers, but would you like your business to be using the same tactics as a used car dealer?

If a company is confident of both their value and their price, than they will present both alongside each other. At FireBrand, we are all about long-tail branding excercises based on respectful and valuable relationships with your customers. This hurts your brand. If you start your relationship with your customer by tricking them, some will hold you accountable for that.

—

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.

Have you ever heard of those little, square, black and white symbols that people have been using in Japan for years? No? Well they are called QR codes and they are coming to western culture and marketing in full force. It’s time to get to know about them.

Definition: QR codes (or Quick Response codes) are a new form of bar code that can be quickly decoded. QR codes are most known for use with mobile phones, where they can be scanned by a cell phone camera link to a web page.

History: QR codes were invented by a Japanese automotive parts company called Denso in 1994. Denso used them innitially to track parts in their manufacturing process. QR codes have the potential to contain much more information than typical bar code. There are also features in the bar code that allow the decoder (ie. cell phone) to see position, scale, allignment and version / format information. There is also redundancy built in so that damaged or hard to read codes can be scanned. QR codes can store 4,296 alphanumeric characters or 7,089 numbers. It was adapted to mobile marketing in 2003, and is called ‘mobile tagging’. The QR code has ISO standardization.

Competition: QR codes are the leading standard in use with mobile phone, or so called mobile tagging. But there are also other standards and proprietary solutions that give it competition-

• Data Matrix: The second leading standard. Can hold only 2,335 alphanumeric characters or 2 kb. Data Matrix was patented by Acacia Technologies, but the patent has expired.
• Microsoft Tag: A code that uses triangular sections arranged in a square that uses Microsoft’s High Capacity Colour Barcode (HCCB) technology. Microsoft Tag uses 4 – 8 colours to encode more ammounts of data. Contrary to the name can be black and white as well, but with less data storage.

Next we will talk about the current applications, and talk about future applications.

—

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.