If your job has any involvement with Web site development and you have 40 minutes spare I strongly suggest watching this short presentation by Jeffery Zeldman. This presentation has no jargon or geek speak and is highly business orientated. It contains information on Web designers, good design practices and better project management.

Click here to view the presentation

What I like the most about this presentation is Zeldman helps bring the roles and development of Web sites more inline with good marketing practice. Good marketing is about customer orientation, finding out what your customers want and delivering it to them. We have to remember that with Web sites there is interaction between your business and your customers and your brand values in image and service (Marketers familiar with the seven P’s think Physical Evidence and People) should be carried through.

If you don’t have time to watch the presentation then here is a quick summary of points Zeldman makes:

• Research suggests that education still plays a small role in Web designer ability and self teaching is still essential to establishing needed skills.
• Understanding and respecting your users experience of your Web site is critical and may require research to understand fully.
• Good Web site design is transparent because the most important factor is delivering the right information to the user.

All Cookies & Java clients should have now recieved a Christmas gift of cookies and muffins, if you haven’t recieved yours yet then please contact me.

A touch point is a term often used to describe any opportunity a business has to communicate with its customers. We are all well aware of the traditional common touch points in advertising from print adverts in shop windows to direct mail through the letter box to short adverts on the television. However most touch points are formal and rarely is there the opportunity to break out of the hard sell strategy and into some informal creative marketing. The big question is are you going to wow your potential customers this year and build stronger relationships with your existing client base.

Informal touch points are a rare and valuable opportunity, there is no doubt that creativity sells and improves brand value but for most businesses, especially in B2B markets, these moments are hard to find and often not capitalised on. The unfortunate truth is that many businesses see Christmas is an awkward mid winter obligation rather than an excuse to show their creative side. Christmas is one of the few events you can guarantee will happen each year at the same time for the same duration, you have the best part of a month to communicate directly with all types of clients with whatever message you choose - there’s really no good reason to miss out.

So how can you get more out of Christmas and be more strategic, here is a list of tips:

1. Avoid the hard sell - Never blatantly use Christmas to directly promote your business and products, this is likely to do more harm to your brand than good.
2. Be creative and stand out - The majority of businesses send out generic card designs each year that show little effort or planning, show there’s more of a human side to your company and demonstrate how well organised you are.
3. Add a personal touch - Genuine signatures and hand written cards show you can find the time to put special effort into all your customers.
4. Support your brand - If it fits your brand be funny, be sophisiticated or be classy, creatively use your products and demonstrate your feel for style and quality.
5. Show respect - Demonstrate an understanding for culture and tradition by celebrating the season without offending others religious views but still entering into the spirit of things.

Right now you should already thinking about Christmas 2009 as the time to plan for this year has already passed by. What will you be doing this year to stand out from your competitors?

Please note I will be on holiday in Florida from Oct 23rd to Nov 10th, I will be checking my email when possible.

Who said this wasn’t a Mickey Mouse business.

For a limited time Pizza Hut is rebranding itself as Pasta Hut to help promote a change in the resturants menu. Fighting an image of selling high fat unhealthy foods the chain is now offering a wider range of pasta dishes and other more healthy items.

What on the surface looks like a huge change in company policy and a fresh start is clearly little more than a short term publicity stunt which has already generated an admirable amount of press attention to help get the message across that don’t just sell pizzas.

Even more impressive is the addition of a Pasta Hut micro site which communicates the new menu, allows visitors to vote on the name change, enter a competiton and share the news with their friends. There is little doubt that the general opinion of consumers will be to return to the old name.

Expect to see the restaurants flooded this weekend with customers all taken back by how everything is really the same.

To visit the microsite and vote click the image below.

Today my Cookies & Java branded polo shirt arrived and I took the opportunity to fire up my new lighting set up. All I need now is a decent model, this guy was a nightmare to work with! Seriously though I have always been a big fan of branded clothing as it’s a good way of showing how serious you are and is the next best thing from walking around wearing a sandwich board to advertise your business.

You know, mistakes happen, it’s only human. Sometimes when you are in a small business making a simple mistake can seem like a catastrophe. Oh to be one of those huge corporations that have six figure marketing budgets, they never have these problems right? Well I hope to show that even the big boys get it wrong from time to time.

This is the first of my Epic Marketing Fail series of posts, I hope to share the occasional big corporation marketing anecdote when I can because it can sometimes seem like they get everything right - well they don’t. In this post I will describe how in 2004 McDonald’s tried to target health concious consumers with a product even more seemingly unhealthy than their standard burger.

Firstly though I want to say I don’t have anything against McDonald’s, in fact I -LOVE- McDonald’s and think the Big Tasty Burger is an all time classic. I myself once had a McDonald’s Taste of America burger every day for a week. I chose to write about McDonald’s because they are one of the seemingly most invincible business to consumer companies out there.

The objective

In 2004 journalist Morgan Spurlock released his documentary film Super Size Me. For this film he spent 30 days living on nothing but McDonald’s food and had to Super Size his order whenever the the counter staff recommended it. During this time he investigated and criticised McDonald’s for advertising to children and producing a menu of products with very little nutrition and very high fat and sugar content. The results of Spurlock’s documentary caused a lot of negative press for McDonald’s who were already seeing their burger sales floundering with very little growth. McDonald’s needed to quickly do something about their unhealthy image and increase sales.

The strategy

In 2004 McDonald’s undertook a huge marketing strategy to ditch their tacky fast food image and be perceived better by customers. The answer was to re-brand all McDonald stores and advertising so it appeared more bistro like. All over the world stores gained new colour schemes, new uniforms, new promotional material and new décor. Most importantly of all though was some new additions to the menu in the form of a new Premium Line of food, most important of all the relatively healthy option of salads.

The problem

The press were fast to report on these new developments and dived into the nutritional data to reveal a horrible truth. The Caesar Salad with croutons and dressing had a higher fat and sugar content than their standard burger. This was a dream come true for the press who quickly told the world how McDonald’s had managed to make a seemingly healthy product grossly bad for people.

Of course the reality was that McDonald’s had done a respectable job of trying to change perception, they did offer healthier options, their marketing had changed and the restaurants were a nicer place to eat. However they had let their product development take priority over the risk of negative PR. Their objective was to be perceived as more healthy but in the process had focused to much on trying to make their healthy food tasty enough to appeal to burger fans.

Smaller fast food chains could probably have launched such a product with no repercussions however McDonald’s should have known they would be scrutinised on nutrition as this was a fundamental issue at the time. In some ways you could say they tried to have their cake and eat it and in the process sprinkled it with high fat cheese and mayonnaise to try and make it taste better.

Have you got a story about how a huge corporation managed to make a huge marketing mistake? I’d love to hear it.

With the ongoing threat of a looming recession marketers cannot be blamed for adopting a pessimistic forecast for the next few years, however those who market tactically will be doing better than ever.

The general feeling when an economy takes a down turn is that everybody will be worse off, but it’s important to keep in mind that the wheels of industry will keep turning and consumers will still be spending. Those businesses with flexible market plans should be preparing for dynamic change and the chance to increase market share over those slow to adapt.

Some businesses do better in recession

It can be hard to imagine but many businesses do very well in times of economic despair, it’s important that business owners and marketers adopt a ‘one mans muck is another mans money’ approach. The fact is that many businesses will simply do more business, these businesses will those that are already targeting the market affected by recession. For instance debt management specialists, repossession services and auction houses will all benefit directly from those hit by the credit crunch. There will be indirect changes too, crime will increase and as a consequence the demand for security services will increase too. At the other end of the customer profile scale will be those who choose to invest differently, perhaps to more tangible safe assets like rare materials and resources.

The key factor the optimistic marketer must keep in mind is that the demand for products and services will be out there, it’s just that what is in demand will change.

Some businesses will suffer

We are already seeing business suffering as the credit crunch tightens, unsurprisingly it it those who targeted borrowers the most who have been affected first. Any business with a marketing plan built on the principle of credit based goods and services is going to find the market place tougher and tougher. It is important that marketers think beyond typical financed items like houses and cars and onto the abundance of consumers using credit cards to purchase lifestyle items. These consumers will be some of the hardest to profile because their erratic spending habits will be harder to analyse. These could be teenagers on mobile phone contracts, students buying cinema tickets or office workers buying coffee.

Fundamental marketing physics: For every market change there should be a marketing reaction

Those that suffer will be those who do not see demand for their products and services changing and fail to keep in the customers line of sight. Car dealerships based on easy credit deals will have to rethink their offering, car manufacturers will have to rethink their product line. There will be many who sit back and do nothing and when business slows down they will blame the market, these people will struggle to survive.

Those that will benefit will be those who embrace the market change and adapt to suit new demands, some will critically analyse their offering and their customer profiles and see real opportunities emerge. But what should companies analyse?

• What history can tell us - The economy climbs and falls constantly,  look at past recessions to see who failed and who survived and why.
• Our own trends - As part of ongoing marketing analysis and control what analytical data can you call upon to see if there is any obvious trend. For instance sales data may show increased demand for certain products and services.
• Market research - What are potential customers saying and do they plan to change their spending habits.
• Current strategy - When was your current strategy developed and when was it last reviewed, having the wrong strategy now could be more damaging than ever.

What is your situation? Do you plan to feel your way around economic change by being reactive and hope to make it through or do you have a proactive stance and plan to make the most of it? Do you have an interesting story to tell already about seeing demand increase from an unusual new area or a tale of those who have already failed to adapt?

The image below shows a shot I’ve created of a quick change machine tool on a brass surface lit by one light and shot through a 35mm camera at ISO100 through a 120mm lens. As you can see the different materials such as the stainless steel bearings and machined aluminium parts are nicely highlighted in this environment. However none of this scene exists in real life, it exists purely in 3D space as it’s entirely computer generated.

I’ve done quite a bit of product photography for clients and have learnt a lot in a past few years about studio setups and lighting, I also have a long time love affair with computer generated 3D environments and wanted to see what can be done with the latest ray tracing software. I’m sure you’ll agree the results are impressive. The image below is a virtual recreation of a very basic setup using paper as a back ground and infinity wall with three carefully positioned lights, most people I have shown this to have mistaken it for a real photography.

I created this experiment because I believe many manufacturers have a need to show promotional images of products but cannot due to the following reasons:

• The product exists only as a three dimensional drawing in software and is yet to be physically produced
• It is at prototype stage and unsuitable for photographing due to a rough production process or scuffs and marks from testing
• The product is too large to fit into a studio or has expensive logistical issues
• It needs to be shown in an environment that isn’t possible to create in real life
• It needs to be shown in an unrealistic orientation such as floating mid air
• The product is yet to be patented and the manufacturer cannot risk any prototypes leaving their hands

To achieve this I first obtained a three dimensional drawing file from the manufacturer, in a format which is supported by most modelling applications such as SolidWorks. For this particular assembly I had to spend some time separating the individual parts however it’s usually possible to supply these already separate. Something that’s important to note here is that sending out this data could potentially supply a competitor with the blueprints to make the product; therefore if the data is sensitive it would be wise to remove any critical unseen components from the file.

With the latest ray tracing software it’s possible to apply materials that will be rendered just how they appear in real life, reflecting, refracting and absorbing light as they should. For this I spent a lot of time specifying material surfaces which behave correctly. Once happy with the materials I created the various scenes shown on this page which could be used as PR shots, advertising images or exhibition materials. Let’s say you wanted isometric style images of products for your online catalogue, again the orthographic projection would be hard to reproduce without a sophisticated camera lens and setting up the scene to be exactly the same each time you photographed a new product very time consuming.

The costs are comparable with photography too, particularly if a 3d CAD model already exists and especially further down the line when the product is modelled, materials applied and scenes set. The environment is saved as digital data and can always be recalled and used again or modified slightly. Plus, if the need arises, there’s the option of animating the product to show how it operates.

There is a temptation for manufacturers to try rendering products in their own CAD software or they are told their design agency can do it, however the results are often poor due to lack of knowledge/experience and will often turn out something like below.

Another way this can be useful is for manufacturers who need to visualise how a product will look with different materials/coatings used, for example if a product would look far more appealing if certain components were made from stainless steel or anodised aluminium. Here is the same product with different materials applied.

So whether you need to get a moody PR shot in print before your product hits the production process or show your components made from crystal or glass so customers can see the inner workings 3D might be the answer for you.

Brand – The values associated with a company such as quality, reliability, creativity and innovativeness.

Brand identity – The tangible elements of how a company is represented such as logos, shapes, sounds and smells.

Why owning an iPod feels good, before you touch the product

Anyone who’s bought an iPod in the past few years will probably remember the day they first got it, and in particular the experience of opening up the box for the first time. This relatively inexpensive part of the product (the packaging) brings an enormous amount of good feeling toward the Apple brand before the consumer even touches the actual item they’ve paid for.

With the iPod Touch for example the box is a heavier than usual card, it’s finished in a slightly satin dark grey gradient with minimal design and is tastefully adorned with metallic spot colour and embossing. The top of the box slides off in the same style as a jewellery box and has a soft foam lining to the inside which protects the iPod Touch that’s presented boldly underneath. Even the stick on manufacturing label on the reverse of the box is printed white on black to match everything else. Considering the demand for the iPod Touch and iPhone Apple could be handing them out in food bags and saving themselves money, but Apple uses the opportunity to bring quality and style to their brand.

When you buy a Harley Davidson from a dealer, rather than sticking a sign on your bike that reads “Sold” they hang a sign from it that reads “Another dream has just come true, please respect the owner by not sitting on the bike.” For the price of a printed A4 sheet of paper something that could have ended a potential sale becomes something that could trigger one.

Your brand identity is out there representing your business like a sales person shouting from the roof top 24hrs a day. It says a tremendous amount about your real brand values and cannot be ever brushed under the carpet. When a customer receives your email, picks up your brochure or views your Web site they see your brand identity as an example of your eye for detail, quality and style.

The worrying thing is its unlikely customers or even staff will ever tell you they think you’re brand looks bad, telling a business owner their brand looks bad is like telling them their children are ugly, nobody wants to be the one who says it.

If the market place was a party and your competitors were in attendance, would you feel a little under dressed?

Why brand identity is one of the first things you should gain control of and not the last

A company going to market without a clear and controlled brand identity is like a salesperson going to a meeting in just their underwear; it’s unlikely your customers would see it as professional.

Sadly the situation is many companies view brand styling as extortionately expensive and only available to the huge corporations that can afford it. The reality is brand styling is affordable to any size company and certainly should generate a return in brand value at least.

The real challenge is managing implementation and retaining control.

Introducing the Brand Style Guide

A brand style guide is a document available to all members of staff which empowers them with a set of guidelines and templates they can use to make sure all their material maintains the professional feel you want your customers to experience.

This guide can be anything from a few pages outlining logo use and type faces to a huge resource with associated template files and printed media such as letterheads and branded envelopes.

Brand style evolves over time, or the brand dies out

Sometimes being consistently average looking is at least better than being inconsistently good looking (or so my mum tells me). Sadly, like anything style related, being exposed to your own brand day in and day out can take the magic out of it an the shade of the brand grass on the other side of the fence can often seem a better pantone green. However this is not cause to wipe the slate clean and start again, overly keen changes to a brand identity can be like replacing a key character in a soap with a new actor, it can alienate and confuse people.

However some very well established and well recognised brands have drastically changed their style by allowing it to take an evolutionary process over many years. Rather than changing the style for the sake of it, they have been updated to stay looking modern but while still retaining familiarity with customer. Quite often those ‘old’ logos we recognise have changed a lot more than we think.

Brand styling, the possibilities are endless!

Brand identity is something that you can keep adding more and more detail too, I know a Managing Director who painted all the skirting boards and door frames in his factory to match the pantone shade used in his company logo. I know a Creative Director who sent back his new Mercedes because the letter spacing of the company initials were wrong on his private number plate.

The fact is brand styling is something all organisations should regularly revisit, develop and implement to stay competitive. It’s also something that can apply nearly everywhere such as:

• Letterhead design
• Brochure design
• Web site design
• Building signage
• Exhibition stands
• Business stationary
• PowerPoint presentation design
• Product branding
• Packaging design
• Email signatures
• Business card design
• Vehicle graphics

Five things you can do right now

1. Choose one font and make sure you use it for everything your company sends out. This can go for emails, sales letters, company documents, PowerPoint presentations etc
2. Proofread your sales material and check you consistently use the same terminology. If you type Web site as ‘Web site’ and not ‘website’,’ web site’ or’ Web Site’ then make sure it’s always typed like that.
3. Make sure every member of staff knows what to say when answering the phone, be it “Hello Joe Bloggs Limited how may I help you?” or “Good morning, J.Bloggs”
4. Pick the single Logo file everyone is to use on documents. Make sure everyone has a copy.
5. Gather up all your sales material, brochures, leaflets, catalogues and letters, put them on your desk and walk outside facing away from the building. Put yourself in the shoes of the client, turn around and walk back in, look at the material and ask yourself “Is this good enough?”