So beautiful I am lost for words….

Is it an ad, is it a tribute, is it just so beautiful, beautiful, beautiful that I am lost for words………? Lovely work Sydney Opera House.

Be inspired further with the ‘making of’ video here.

Can you be too easy?

The famous Staples 'Easy Button'

Can you be too easy? Well, your mother might disagree but the answer is an emphatic NO – you can never be too easy.

It’s all too easy to forget, but making things easy should be at the core of everything we do: easy for consumers to understand why they need our products; easy for customers/retailers to place orders and sell heaps of product; easy for consumers to buy what they want when they want it. All it takes is approaching every task you do by asking the bold yet simple question: “what can I do to make this easier”.

A great example is from author Jenny Blake and her recently launched book ‘Life After College’, introduced via the always interesting TheDominoProject. Jenny’s book is positioned as “an essential manual for every graduating student and young professional. It features practical, actionable advice that helps people focus on the BIG picture of their lives, not just the details”.

Getting great reviews and recommendations is key to a successful launch of any book (or product!) and it seems so often that brand custodians just cross their fingers that bloggers or other reviewers will take it upon themselves to spread the word. Jenny is doing it differently, by creating a resource on her website full of all the information that any blogger, reviewer or salesperson could need: check it out here.

She goes beyond the standard bio details, expanding to including sample tweets, emails and varying length synopses to promote the book, which can be easily copied and published in any medium. There are links to the book trailer on YouTube and links to the facebook page, as well as more formal and also quirky information about Jenny and links to previous interviews. Jenny is acknowledging that her supporters are busy and even with the best intentions getting time to create a mention promoting her book is tricky. Some will take up her suggestions verbatim, while others will edit a little to personalise: we all know that it is much quicker to edit an already prepared document than to start from scratch.

There are two key benefits here: firstly, the easier (and quicker) you can make it for people to spread the word, the more people will take up the opportunity. Secondly, through giving suggestions of how to word the comments, Jenny begins to create a consistent theme in how people talk about her book, resulting in a clearer, more focused message. Jenny’s approach recognises what we already know from our own lives: we are busy and the easier it is to get a job done the more likely we are to do it and do it well.

Making things easier can apply to absolutely everything we do, big or small:

• Is it easy to go through the checkout process on your site- do you force endless data entry and password setting up, or do you give shoppers the opportunity to buy quickly when they want to?
• When you submit your expenses to your boss do you write her name and the date in the approval box, so all she has to do is sign it?
• Is it easy to get into your shop? If the door is super heavy get it fixed, or if you cater to mums make sure a pram can navigate inside easily.
• When you get into work do you make sure the photocopier is stocked with paper so it doesn’t run out in the middle of a rush later in the day?

I love this statement from Eric Schmidt, EC of Google, (who interestingly Jenny Blake used to work for) describing their approach to employee benefits (note my bolding): “The goal is to strip away everything that gets in our employees’ way. We provide a standard package of fringe benefits, but on top of that are first-class dining facilities, gyms, laundry rooms, massage rooms, haircuts, carwashes, dry cleaning, commuting buses – just about anything a hardworking employee might want. Let’s face it: programmers want to program, they don’t want to do their laundry. So we make it easy for them to do both.”

Just taking those few seconds to ask the simple yet revolutionary question of “how can I make this easier” can change your world. So who do you know who’s making things easy? What have you done to make your world easier?

Has beauty touched your world today?

I’ve been getting to grips with Vimeo for an upcoming project on the Opinioniste blog (mmm… more to follow soon) and came across this gorgeous video. We’ve all seen countless recipe books and cooking shows which promise to show you how to cook something beautiful. Here is something beautiful which also shows you how to cook: how I wish cooking shows were more like this!

Whilst it’s perhaps missing a few key details, I think it prompts us to ask the question ‘how can we can communicate with our consumers in a way that is beautiful, as well as practical.’

The video is from a husband and wife creative team at ‘Tiger in a Jar‘: worth a visit.

So who have you seen creating something beautiful?

Are you brave enough to bare your brand’s soul?

WhenIGrowUpCoach.com

Have you ever tried to talk with someone who is formal and stiff? It’s hard work and not very entertaining. When people relax and their quirky, unique natures are revealed, they are much more interesting – it’s those odd bits that make us intriguing.

In the business world too often “professional” gets translated as formal, and that can very soon become boring. As few businesses these days can claim a monopoly on what they deliver, they need their branding to stand out and safe and boring can quickly become undifferentiated.

Let’s have a look at a great example of allowing your brand to really have a personality.

Michelle Ward is the “When I grow up” coach. A life-coach, but one who focuses on “help(ing) creative people devise the career they think they can’t have – or discover it to begin with!” Michelle explains in more detail here, and also has a great explanation here of what coaching is.

There are a couple of things that Michelle is doing brilliantly. Firstly, she is very clear about who she targets. Being clear about your target market is one of the biggest challenges for any brand or business: I think it’s so hard because by choosing to define your target it can feel like you are turning other consumers away. Of course when you get it right what it means is that you are more effective at making conversions to purchase.

Secondly, her brand and business is distinctive. There have got to be a million life-coaches out there (it looks like a massive growth area on the internet) but Michelle really stands out as she is unabashedly putting herself and her personality into her work. Now the concern here is that a potential customer might look at her site and think, “that’s not going to suit me”, and the ‘sale’ will be lost. And that might be so, but it looks like there have been many more people who find that she stands out and they are really able to connect with her style. And for those it doesn’t appeal to? Well, it’s better to find out early that it is not a good match, and it just means that there is space out there for another type of coach who is different in their approach. The most important thing is to be authentic: Michelle’s branding works because it is true to her.

As an interesting comparison have a look at Marcus Buckingham’s site. He is an amazing writer and presenter who focuses on helping people identify their strengths, and as a result work more successfully and smarter: he explains it himself here and if you haven’t come across his books I recommend them. For such an inspiring man, his web site feels very formal and old-school corporate, and as a result, a bit ‘flat’. Now obviously the targets of these businesses are different: Marcus clearly is targeting big corporate business, whilst Michelle is focused on creative individuals who are wanting to move away from corporate life, yet there is no reason why both can’t bring their brands to life in an engaging, inspiring way that is still relevant to their target.

Another fascinating business which puts its personality out there ‘loud and proud’ is Photojojo, an online store & blog about all things photographic. Have a look at this job spec for a role they are recruiting for: the energy of the company just leaps out, and it feels like it would be a dynamic place to work.

So the point here is not to imitate Michelle or Photojojo, but to be inspired to dig into your own brand and business, identify what makes you unique, and then be proud to put it out there.

Getting Tossed with Jamie Oliver

Jamie Oliver

Have you ever had that experience when you remembered something so basic that you were surprised that you had ever forgotten it in the first place?

My epiphany this week was courtesy of Jamie Oliver, and his “30 Minute Meals” show. The way he builds a salad is interesting – make the dressing in the bowl, pile the salad leaves etc on top and then toss the whole lot with your hands just before serving.

Which made me realise that I had somehow forgotten the difference that tossing a salad with the dressing makes. I have been pouring the dressing on top, and then forcing myself to consume the “good for me” salad – after watching Jamie I tried his technique myself and the results were revolutionary: what was my boring old salad was suddenly full-flavoured and tasty and just delicious. Getting your hands in is a bit mucky (and yes you need to wash them first!) but it does the best job.

Loving this on a couple of levels: firstly, my salad tastes great, so bring on the healthy eating. On a broader level, it’s inspiring to find someone standing out in the super saturated cooking show/cookbook world by reminding consumers of the basics, but also doing it in a different, practical way.

So how does it apply to the brands and businesses we work on? It’s worth examining what we assume our consumers already know, as sometimes revisiting the basics and communicating them can be more powerful than a newfangled innovation.

Does your brand know how to say ‘Hello’?

Today let’s have a look at the amazing Etsy, and two things they are doing fabulously. Firstly, customising the consumers’ experience through serving a different home page specifically for new visitors, and secondly, how they are communicating that change to their current users.

Etsy have done some exceptional work in creating a highly engaged online community, and once again they are raising the bar. To quote Wikipedia, “Etsy is a social commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items as well as art and craft supplies.” Whilst certainly a commerce site, the focus is definitely on the social, with an emphasis on highlighting the uniquely individual nature of the products, and importantly, their sellers: shopping and selling on Etsy is a very personal experience. Esty does some great work in creating online and offline communities which in turn create amazing engagement with the site. If you haven’t come across Etsy before have a look here for an intro.

Our focus today is on a new initiative they are trialling for their homepage. The insight is that a new visitor to a site has different needs to a regular visitor: more focus on ‘what is it?’, ‘how does it work?’, and ‘give me a connection quickly’ (a reason to dig more deeply, or to come back) before I click onto my next search: sounds pretty basic really. Clearly many brand owners try to cater to this with varying degrees of success by incorporating elements which talk to the new and repeat consumer throughout the site, but how many brands really live this by presenting a customised experience to a new visitor?

Etsy are in the process of trialling a completely different homepage for a new visitor. The details of the change are discussed here. I love the ‘Taste Test’ tool they are featuring on it: reminds me of a more PC version of the “which girl is better looking” game from “The Social Network”. It’s worth a go and interesting how a spin of this revealed a whole new world of objects I wouldn’t even have thought to look for.

Etsy’s approach to executing this change is interesting too: in their announcement they are sharing the change, the reason why, and how they are going to trial it: letting seasoned (and highly engaged !) users be part of the process. It would have been so easy for the Etsy team to have just made the change and got on with it, but they recognise that if they take their community along with them they will ultimately get a better result: building higher engagement with current users and more effective conversion from new visitors.

So how do you customise your consumers’ experiences with your brand? Offline and on, show me who you think is doing a great job of this.

Help Me!

Help I have a headache, from Help Remedies.

Do pharmaceutical brands need to be so boring? An intriguing brand arrived in my inbox this morning courtesy of Contagious Magazine. Products from the pharmaceutical industry seem unified in their loud, blustery voice as they force their way into being the essential salvo to every little ill. Effective as this approach is (these are BIG brands with BIG spends and profits to match) when everyone is doing the same thing it becomes boring, and when boring translates to low engagement, ultimately a weakness.

So let’s look at someone who is doing it differently: Help Remedies is a US based company which offers a tight range of simple, practical essentials which can fix a headache or protect a cut.

The packaging is fantastic: clean, clear design, with very straight forward naming “Help, I have a headache” is the name of the headache pills, “Help I can’t sleep” for sleeping pills, and “Help I’ve cut myself” for sticking plasters: you get the idea.

They have taken the sleeping aid even further by ‘helpfully’ suggesting different dream ideas, and these are brought to life beautifully in some otherworldy ads which I am sure are generating some great viral. Read Contagious Magazine’s take on the ads here. It would be interesting to know how mainstream the media buy is.

Pricing is super-simple: each product costs the same (although with a differing number of pills per pack) – this is spot-on for a brand promising to help simplify things.

The “bored?” page is worth a look, bringing to life the brand with some clever, very obscure help for a variety of esoteric ailments – actually more than some, I liked that there were a lot of things to play with on this page, these dalliances are not just some add-on from marketing, they are central to bringing the brand to life in a less traditional way. The “I’m Sleepy” is addictive! On the home page try clicking on all the packs to make them all disappear, and then see what happens: it’s touches like these which flag the design and advertising backgrounds of the founders.

This irreverent approach to the category is refreshing, I look forward to seeing what they do next.

Nourish yourself: Nourishing Quarter Restaurant in Cleveland Street, Redfern Sydney.

A Wordle image using text from this post.

I love when someone forges their own way: in so many areas the offer is almost identical, and the crowded hospitality industry is a perfect example. To experience someone doing it differently, go visit the folks at Nourishing Quarter (NQ).

They describe their fare as a “fusion of unique Latin American ingredients with exotic Asian and Mediterranean soul foods”. It might sound a little ‘crowded’, but what you get is gorgeous fresh food rich in flavour and with amazing textures. This is a no-meat zone, but as the food is so flavoursome I found I didn’t miss the meat at all. It really was a meal quite unlike the usual restaurant fare, and I will definitely be back. To read a review of the restaurant follow the link to the very clever “Not Quite Nigella”, or check out the NQ web site.

Interestingly, I think the restaurant review is a much better representation of the restaurant than their own web site, with much better food/location shots and descriptions – perhaps a word with Lorraine at Not Quite Nigella to help redesign the site?

The First Emperor and his Terracotta Warriors

Exhibit Guides from The First Emperor, Art Gallery of NSW

I saw this wonderful exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales just this week, and it really was fabulous. The soldiers were majestic and imposing and the objects found in the tomb exquisite, yet for me the most mind-bending element was the sheer age of the exhibits: it is incredible to think that these objects were being used over 2000 years ago, and that they are still so beautiful. That, and the bloody ruthlessness of the era: the thanks all those fabulous artisans received for working on the tomb was to be buried alive in it! Thank goodness we live in what is (mostly) a much less blood-thirsty time.

The layout of the exhibition was great, with dark, moody lighting and each room presenting a build on the one before it. The ability to move around the Terracotta Warriors and see them from all sides was fantastic. One minor challenge was the difficulty in reading the descriptions of the objects. I know a lot of thought goes into creating these, yet it was interesting how a very crowded exhibit changed the game. In a not so crowded room the signage would have been perfect, but in the context of a very crowded exhibit you had to be standing right in front of the window to read the descriptor, which combined with some people who seem to read VERY slowly created some stagnant queues. There is a lovely energy when seeing these exhibitions, a mix of anticipation and enlightenment, and it was a shame to hang around in a queue just waiting. One idea would be to see these captions positioned higher up in the cabinets, so they can be viewed even if you haven’t got a position right in front. It’s an interesting consideration in that what works well in a normal exhibit can be less than optimum in a very popular (read crowded) one.

I’d also love to see some drawings of how the objects were used: for example. whilst it’s good to be told an object is a (horse) bridle buckle, it would also be interesting to see it in context, so show me drawing of what it looked like on the horse.

Just minor points, as overall the exhibition was wonderful and well worth seeing. Make sure you also check out the exhibits in the Asian gallery, as the contents from some other tombs are on display there. It all ends on 13th of March 2011 so move quick !

Do you have your essentials? A look at ‘My Essentials Alyce Platt”

Today I am looking at a web site –”www.myessentialsalyceplatt.com.au“. I remember her as the barrel girl on Sale of the Century, but she is also an actor, singer and now designer. This site has just three products, a lightweight sun-wrap (think kimono’ish with multiple ways of tying), a dress and a monocle/magnifying glass cut into an interesting shape and worn as a pendant on a necklace (for reading tiny font on mobile phones and menus – very clever and much more glamorous than squinting and complaining about bad lighting).

The thing I love about this site is its focus: just three clever products (with a few different colour/fabric combinations) which have been created because someone thought “why can’t I get that?” So many sites are overwhelming with their offers, yet this tight range is simple and easy to understand. The interesting thing is that she doesn’t seem to have specific manufacturing or design experience – she had the idea, created some drawings and went off and found a manufacturer. Of course the inspiration in this is that if she can do it so can you.

That said, she does have the benefit of some pretty well-known friends (plus her own profile) to help spread the word in mainstream media – but people who are not famous manage to sell things everyday too.

So, what do I like?
Great focus, simple and well executed idea and site – pricing is accessible (I know that’s always a subjective one) – clear pictures of how the outfits look in the different colours as well as a “how to wear” info sheet.

What would I change?
More information on what the fabrics feel like: even better, include videos showing the fabric moving/being worn. It can be tricky to know how fabric will drape from a static shot, and when shopping online any uncertainties can be a block for your shoppers: they need to say “I want it now”, rather than a “I’m not sure, I’ll think about it”.

Make it easy to tweet, facebook or blog it on: add some links/widgets for these on the front page: even though the target market looks a bit older these guys are still online and talking.

So overall, great idea nicely executed: I hope it does well.

Note: the image at the top is created by entering the text from this post into the very cool Wordle site.