Author Archives: Diego Rodriguez

metacool Thought of the Day

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"It’s the vehicle’s design that first forges that emotional bond between product and consumer… So often it simply boils down to this:

‘Do I like the way this car looks or not?’ 

And I think that’s part of the reason this industry is headed for a new golden age of design. That’s great news for all of us who dream about beautiful cars and trucks. It makes it a very exciting time to be in this business. Because we’re getting back to what it’s all about: Building the stuff that dreams are made of."

– Bob Lutz

Designing Meaning, Creating Value

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John Maeda of MIT’s Media Lab wrote a delightful post about meaning and design, and how deep meaning can be embedded into a designed offering.  And as he tells the story, meaning can even be designed into something as mundane (yet vitally important) as a restroom door:

There is nothing more powerful in the visual vocabulary of an artist than the power of establishing contrast.
Anything big and fat appears bigger and fatter when placed next to
something flaccid and skinny… Thus the contrast
between the Mens Room and Ladies Room at The Plaza Hotel reaches epic
proportions in this architectural statement that doubles as a political
statement of old… Nothing could be appreciated in a simpler way than these
gilded restrooms of New York City.

Chew on that stew of thoughts for a moment: how could you use the concept of contrast as a way to embed helpful, behavior-shaping information into your next design, be it a website, a camera, or a flower vase?  I love Maeda’s notion of contrast because of its all-encompassing nature; it demands that one consider all the levels of design that create meaning: visceral, behavioral, and reflective.

Coming May 26: Seth, Lies, and metacool

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159184100301_aa400_sclzzzzzzz__1_1Tap this one into your calendar: come May 26, Seth Godin will grace the pixels of metacool to talk about (among other things) his new book All Marketers are Liars.  This appearance is courtesy of the Business Blog Book Tour.

Since I’m a market-centric kind of guy, please let me know what topics, issues, themes you’d like to see Seth address (if he wants to) during his metacool sojurn.  I’m all ears. 

Until then, check out Seth’s blog about the book.

Bu’wicked Virtual Marketing, revisited

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Earlier this month I pondered the existence of the Bu’wicked Special in Polyphony’s GT4 video game, and whether this was an intentional product placement by Buick or just a happy accident.

Ford gets it.  They played an active role in placing the new Mustang in GT4 (and also the Ford GT, which is an integral element of GT4’s branding).  In a recent Automotive News story, Killol Bhuta, assistant marketing manager for the Mustang, said, "One out of every four Mustangs we sell is
to an individual under the age of 34.  Chances are very
good they are also game players".  Myself, my first test drive of the Mustang came in GT4. 

What are all the virtual places where your offerings could live in order to help people understand your brand?

What’s Good Enough?

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My post last week on Venture Design sparked an interesting discussion about the topic of "good enough" in the world of innovation.  Victor Lombardi made this point:

Some recent experience with teaching product development to the "linear
business types" taught me to be careful with explaining the concept of
"good enough." For example, a business analyst I spoke with pointed out
we should only develop a product far enough to exceed customer
expectations; anything further is wasted development money and results in
lower profit margins. To him, this was "good enough" design. But this
thinking can lead to, for example, series of incremental improvements
and leave a company vulnerable to a competitor’s breakthrough design.

Here’s my perspective:  "Good Enough" is a worldview.  It’s a way of approaching challenges where the appropriate solution path is not obvious.  In that situation, 50% accurate information today is an order of magnitude more valuable than 100% accurate data tomorrow, because having that data allows you to take action now, and the act of moving takes you one real step closer to a workable solution — perfectly accurate info is always a day away.  Perfection equals paralysis, and the way to reach a more innovative mode of existence is to accept "good enough" as permission to go ahead and get stuff done.  Life is short.

In reality, taking a "good enough" approach to developing your offering is the key to reaching greatness.  Per Victor’s point above, if you view "good enough" as a one-shot deal and ship a turd to market and leave it there to fester, you’re only fooling yourself into a state of perpetual mediocrity.  But, if you say "this is good enough today, and I have a plan for good enough in a week, a month, a year," then you’ll be iterating your way to success, learning all along the way.  The first generation iPod was a "good enough" effort done quickly, and it taught Apple a lot about a new (to Apple, at least) marketspace.  Subsequent iPod offerings capitalized on those lessons learned — real information from real customers in a real market.  The "good enough" worldview allows you to stand on the shoulders of giants of your own making.

(metacool disclaimer:  the AMC Pacer pictured above should be used only as an educational example of how a "good enough" offering not tied to a strategic development plan will result it in a mediocre turd.  Yes, the Pacer influenced the design of the Porsche 928, but there’s no accounting for taste)

Lessons in avoiding assholes, part 2

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My previous post on the importance of avoiding assholes as a way to be more innovative is the single most popular post in this blog, so in the name of creativity, progress, and better workplaces everywhere, here’s another serving of asshole-bashing.

Dan Pink’s blog has an interesting link to a study done by economist Armin Frank, who studied the effect of close managerial supervision on employee motivation.  His conclusion is not startling to those of us who have labored under an asshole, to wit:

"Anyone who is suspicious of the willingness to work of their employees
is in fact punished by poor work levels; whoever is optimistic and
gives them free rein is rewarded."

I really believe in this.  I spent my formative career years doing skunkworks R&D inside of the old, original incarnation of HP.  I had an enlightened manager who always got the best out of his engineering teams.  We didn’t have any weekly supervisory meetings — you just worked to do your best, and when you had a question or needed some guidance, you’d stop by his cube.

One cold, rainy February day he  happened to walk by my cube (hadn’t seen each other in weeks) only to catch a whiff of raw Bondo, the automotive body filler (of course, I was wearing a gas mask).  Toxic fumes!  I was using it to create a quick prototype of some mechanism I had sketched up, nothing that I wasn’t used to doing in my college dorm room 12 months earlier.  What did he do?  Well, he didn’t pull the asshole maneuver and tighten the "circle of trust" noose upon my neck by forcing me to start clearing every little work decision with him.  No, instead, he just said (calmly),  "There are very few things that will get you fired here.  Working with hazardous materials inside of an office space is one of them.  Cool stuff you’re working on, by the way."  And then he strolled away.

For this guy, for this kind of leader able to make this kind of optimistic, trusting gesture, I redoubled my efforts to get the prototype to work. 

Outside in the rain.

Brand Fractalness

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As my good friend Alex pointed out to me today, "How could these guys NOT start a cool company?"

The dude with the Superman "S" on his chest is Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia.  You know the rest of the story.

How much of your organization’s brand is in you?  And vice versa?  Patagonia still vibrates in sync with every fiber of Chouinard’s body.  That’s brand fractalness — I think if you’re doing things right, you are your offerings, and your offerings are you and everyone else who produces them and adopts them into their own lives.

Bu’wicked Virtual Marketing

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First things first: this is not a post about cars.  This is a post about good marketing.

Do you know this car?  Not the make of car — it started life as a vanilla 1962 Buick — but this car, which its owner/builder calls "Bu’wicked"?

Chances are you don’t, unless you own a PlayStation 2 and are an avid player of Gran Turismo 4.  But there are millions of video gamer ten-year-old kids who positively worship this car, even though it’s a Buick.  Why?  Because it’s fast fast fast fast, and stomps Jaguars and Corvettes and Porsches around the world’s (virtual) racetracks like nobody’s business. 

But how, you may ask, does a crazy old Buick hot rod wind up parading around a 21st century video game?  Chalk it up to a clever promotional strategy on the part of the producers of GT4, who awarded its builders, Ted and Sue Richardson, the honor of having their car digitized and placed in the game after it was awarded Best in Show at SEMA last year.  In the game, the car ends up looking like this:

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Gran Turismo introduces cars and brands to kids and young adults who don’t own cars.  In many ways it’s the ultimate marketing sampler machine — play hard for a while and you’ll have the (virtual) money to buy and drive any car on the planet.  It made the Subaru WRX and the Mitsubishi Evo into total cult cars in the US even though they weren’t yet sold in this country.  So when those cars were finally introduced here a few years later, they sold like hotcakes.  I’d wager very few marketers think of video games as part of their promotional mix, but the smart ones are already out there using them to tell authentic stories about their products. 

Is some clever Buick brand manager ultimately behind the GT4 Bu’wicked?  I doubt it, but if I were a marketer trying to put some luster back into that brand, I know what I’d be doing, and it has nothing to do with big, expensive magazine ads.