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bike expression
Who says there's no room for personal expression within the constraints of bureacratic stricture? If you wanted to find an analogy for brand management (and why would you?) ; think about this. There must be fairly clear and straightforward guidelines concerning what a bike on the road should look like. And yet the variety of actual bikes on the road is enormous. The average 'brand bible' is much more wooly, so different implementations of brands must be much more various than this. And yet, it doesn't matter. This is still, obviously, a bike.
starbucks jumps the shark
You know the idea of 'jumping the shark' - the precise moment when a TV show passes it's peak and starts the inexorable slide to rubbishdom.
I think Starbucks has jumped the shark in the UK.
This is the Starbucks in Leicester Square in London. It's a huge place, almost underground, not a lot of natural light. Tons of tourists and it's got this crowd-control-type barrier to direct you where to queue. That to me is an indication that Starbucks has forgotten what its selling. Which Howard Schultz always used to say was something to do with ambience and quality. This kind of barrier says 'Post Office' or 'DMV' to me, not ambience and quality.
This is exacerbated by the fact that employees staff in the UK know nothing of the Starbucks 'traditions' (I don't know what else to call them). But you know that way that Starbucks people think they're a little better than ordinary service employees, they're barristas, they're special. (even to the extent that they get all hoighty-toighty with you). That's part of the Starbucks experience in the US, and you don't get it here. No-one here knows much about Starbucks, they all think they're just working at MacDonalds.
This is going to be a problem for Starbucks.
weird ideas that work
just read weird ideas that work by robert i. sutton. good round up of thinking about creativity and innovation in organisations. not a ton of substantial new stuff if you work for a creative business, you can whip through it in a night, but lots of good quotes and anecdotes.
quotes:
"to invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk" - thomas edison
"discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different" - albert szent-gyorgi
"I went to Berkley (rather than Caltech or Stanford) because it had the worst computer facilities of the three. I figured it would force me to be more ingenious" - bill joy
"creativity is a consequence of sheer productivity. if a creator wants to increase the production of hits, he or she must do it by risking a parallel increase in the production of misses...the most successful creators tend to be those with the most failures" - dean keith simonton
"the best engineers sometimes come in bodies that can't talk" nolan bushnell
"fail early, fail often" - david kelley, ideo
"every strike brings me closer to the next home run" - babe ruth
"i can't ask my customers what they want. they haven't been born yet" - an engineer from Xerox PARC
thoughts:
from weird ideas that work (page 11):
vu ja de - when you feel or act like an experience is brand new even if you've seen it a thousand times before. first used, pejorativlely, by Karl Weick about a group of smokejumpers who died in a fire because they forgot what they knew. But forgetting what you know can be very useful for creatives.
ikea family
i bought these at ikea a few months back. ikea must be a gift to work on as a planner. they sell 3d representations of their core target audience, right in the store. who needs audience insight when you've got audience dolls?
time, clock of the heart
an original idea for a clock. really well executed.
why not?
this is from the lift in border's on charing cross road. this isn't rocket science, it's not even that original. it's just one of those good ideas more brands/companies could do if only they could be bothered. that's what i like about Borders, they always seem to be making a bit of an effort. infact that's the only real difference i can discern between great brands and ok brands. it's not about the quality of the ideas, or the leadership or anything, it's that great brands make more of an effort. in the fabled words of ddb; they 'try harder'
brands in our bathroom
i was bored last night. my family were away. there was nothing on telly. so i thought i'd take a picture of every brand in our bathroom. just to see what there is. it was interesting. this whole album is just some of it. there's a whole basket of bath toys in there too which i didn't get around too.
it made me realise how long stuff hangs around in the bathroom. and what i'd pay for a multi-purpose product - imagine the clutter you could avoid if you could find a hybrid toothpaste/hairgel/shaving cream/floorclean/antiseptic - all in one big tube.
