From The Dialog Box Collection

If everything communicates then nothing communicates more than your product itself. And digital products, cold and technical as they are underneath, can be made very warm and filled with personality and human-ness.

Dialog boxes are great for this. I collect them (well, screenshots of them) and will begin to share them here, from time to time.

This one is from the Customer Relationship Management tool we use at Rassak. It’s called Batchbook. I loved the little ego boost the product gave me when I uploaded my first batch of contacts. This is instead of saying something boring like “processing, please be patient.”

This is a company that knows about customer relationships and the emotions that drive them—and they are baking that knowledge into their product design. Awesome. BTW, Batchbook is also making a little lemonade here. They are turning a negative (having to wait because they can’t process names that quickly) into a positive (feeling good  because you have a lot of contacts).

Tweet This Post

Oh, That $370

I was just looking at plane tickets from Barcelona to New York and came across some digital branding/communicating that, while quite possibly effective in the near term, can in no-way be helpful in the long term.

This is just plain (no pun) obnoxious. Though I do feel for these guys. They are in a brutally competitive sector and, no doubt, using a big bold font for the inexpensive ticket prices combined with small, light-gray font for the taxes and fees, works in the moment (sometimes). And a lot of companies do it, to varying degrees. These guys just took the cake on this particular search.

But it cannot work over time. It does not build trust. It destroys it.

$141 of sizzle, $370 of fizzle

This reminded me of a conversation I recently had with a marketing head for a well-known online brand (not in the travel sector) that has used aggressive pricing and taken a direct, make-the-sale-now approach to their marketing (and therefore their brand) since their earliest days. They are starting to explore  a more comprehensive brand that is built on other benefits and personality traits of the company– because people aren’t buying their story as much any more–and because competitors are beginning to use their story against them.

Tweet This Post

“Creative Risk” … Seeking Ideas and Data

I’m slated to give a talk at Gild International in Barcelona in December on the topic of Creative Risk. My thesis is pretty straightforward: the more competition you have, the more creative you have to be to get noticed and win.

Playing with the theme of risk, I’m planning to take a quick look at the types of risk investors (especially VC investors) think about when looking at companies to back (or not). I’ll then introduce a less-talked about type of risk: creative risk—basically how adept a management team is at leveraging creativity to win. I created the little graphic above for the talk. I might adjust as I get feedback and refine my thinking.

Any thoughts are much appreciated. I’m looking in particular for cases with data… examples of companies that have taken creative risks to stand out. Examples I’m playing with right now are:

• DoubleTwist’s placing of a highly competitive ad ON an Apple store — and their handling of the fallout.
• Mixx using creatiivty in their user interface to fight against competitors — and what appears to be some success in their usage numbers.
• I’ll look at how Microsoft has chosen to deploy creativity more now that they are seeing real competition from Apple — and how some think this is bad idea.

Either leave comments or mail me at barak@rassak.com

Thanks so much

Tweet This Post

If Decline Had a Window Display

"Decline" could not have a more apt window display

Guru of gurus Theodore Levitt once wrote of “marketing myopia”… a condition in which CEOs don’t see the broad set of opportunities around them. The cure — seeing one’s company differently — can mean growing into more markets. Not broadening one’s horizons, however, can seriously hurt and even kill a company. The classic  example are the buggy whip manufacturers who were so focused on their market they did not see the opportunities (or ultimately the threat) of automobiles to their businesses.

I spent the weekend in Venice… a truly, truly beautiful city—but one in which you can almost taste decline. Tourism does well there as an industry–something like 20 m visitors pass thru per annum. However the local population is dwindling. Locals now number an astonishingly miniscule 60,000. That’s half than it was 40 years ago. A local housing official has said there will be nobody living there by 2046 and that Venice will become Europe’s Disneyland—all visitors, no real inhabitants. The implication being that Venice—once the center of an important empire—needs to look at itself differently.

One glaring image of decline (corporate decline) caught my eye on the beautiful Piazza san Marco: an Olivetti typewriter store.

It was so gorgeous in its time that it’s  elegance is still present even as the store stands empty and dusty.  An electric cable hangs unplugged and unattached to any device in a window.

A designer for “decline” could not have made a more apt window display.

Here are some snaps (click them for detail). The final ones of a row of red payphones — taken just a few feet away from the shop — struck me as ironic on a couple of levels.

One, Olivetti is now part of the large Telecom Italia, owner of the payphones. So Olivetti lives and is making products for our times—but it lives within a company  that also must be VERY careful of marketing myopia.

Two, the blurry old man is not using the payphone. He was looking for change left behind. He found none.

Tweet This Post

Flatteryspam

Flattery has it’s uses. I’ll admit that. But for it to work it had better be genuine — not just an empty, meaningless compliment. Here are a couple examples of flattery that, well, just come up flat. It’ll get these people nowhere (at least with me).

The first is an example of a new kind of spam that’s been showing up lately at this blog—in the comments. It is hardly ever caught by the spam filter. This means I have to read it to decide whether to approve it for publishing or not. The first couple of times I was almost fooled.. but the language is almost always the same. I don’t understand the strategy behind such spam… if I figure it out I’ll let you know. [Update ... spammer strategy: if a blogger approves the comment then the link in the comment to the spammer's website helps increase that spammer's search rankings]

I don’t know If I said it already but …Cool site, love the info. I do a lot of research online on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I’m glad I found your blog. Thanks, :)

A definite great read..Tony Brown

Here’s another example… this is a money-making venture built on flattery–with a dose of faux-officialdom thrown in. And I bet it will work for them but I’m afraid I’m not going for it. Rassak just received this email from the “Board of Review” of the “U.S. Commerce Association” with the rather fancy (sounding!) address of 2020 Pennslyvania, Ave in Washington DC. Here’s part of the email I got:

I am pleased to announce that Rassak Experience has been selected for the 2009 San Francisco Award in the Marketing Consulting Services category by the US Commerce Association.

In recognition of your achievement, a 2009 San Francisco Award has been designed for display at your place of business. You may arrange to have your award sent directly to Rassak Experience by following the simple steps on the 2009 San Francisco Award order form. Simply copy and paste this link into your browser to receive your award:

Each year, the US Commerce Association (USCA) identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and community.

We’re then offered one of two awards (the “crystal” one is more than 8 inches tall.. cool!!!). And for just $199 (a reduced price, mind you) we can buy both awards.

I'll definitely go for this offer... one award for the SF office, one for the BCN office :-)

Tweet This Post

Please Introduce Yourself

Please introduce yourself here… I’d like to know who you are… and other readers would too. Do so by leaving a comment. You can even leave a video comment if you like! Who are you?  Plus, why not share a link or two that gives others a sense of you. Go for it! I will post a permanent link to this post on the side of the blog, so future visitors can always get to it. [Foto credit: lu_lu (Luis Markovic)]

Tweet This Post

Endcap or Gravestone

Here’s a snap I caught in Heathrow a couple of days ago. An endcap (you know the coveted display case at the end of an aisle in a retail store) that is either celebrating/remembering or exploiting an artist’s life. Or perhaps both. You decide. 

Don't Stop Till You Get Enough

Tweet This Post

Comment Prize for February (Oh.. and for January and December Too)

It has been fun to see response to this blog. Sadly.. I have been a little lax in awarding prizes. Sorry! But let me get caught up.

The February comment prize goes to Sean McPhetridge. He writes in response to a post about communicating to instill fear vs. communicating to instill calm.

The January prize goes to Jeb Buffinton writing in response to a post titled “The Hardest Part About Communicating: Listening.”

December’s prize goes to Heather Zenone writing in response to a post on the role of communications in creating culture.

The prize: each can choose from one of the the following books:

• Made to Stick, Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
• Outliers, The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell
• Inside Steve’s Brain, by Wired’s Leander Kahney

Tweet This Post