1. New Ideas Blog:

    A posting of thinking we like.

  2. TV makes boring products interesting at scale.

    A company Thought for the day.

    Category: New Ideas Blog Comments Off | July 1, 2010 by Pat Hanlon

  3. Boxed Water Is Better

    A company called Boxed Water is Better is challenging a long-standing status quo and betting that hipster environmentalists will buy in and drink up.

    Boxed Water is Better describes itself as “part sustainable water company, part art project, part philanthropic project and completely curious.” The water cartons are made from 76 percent responsibly harvested trees – far more eco-friendly than the ubiquitous plastic water bottles. Along with being made from “green” materials, the cartons are shipped flat to filling facilities to save money and energy. The product can currently be found in Southern California, Michigan and the Chicago area; the company plans to donate 20 percent of its profits to support clean water and forest conservation organizations.

    If boxed water catches on, it would leave just one notable holdout. Somehow, though, the idea of a cold box of beer just doesn’t seem to go down easy.

     

    Category: New Ideas Blog Comments Off | June 30, 2010 by Pat Hanlon

  4. IBM Blue Gene/P

    It all started a decade and more ago when relationships suddenly became symbiotic. Then we started hearing a mélange of Silicon Valley-speak including ping, and double-click.

     

    [For the unsullied, ping is the email equivalent of following up, tapping you on the shoulder or kicking you in the shins, depending on the situation. “Double-click” is meeting-speak as in, “So let’s double-click on that idea...”]

     

    Next, biology started entering our vernacular. Relationships became symbiotic. Companies were imbedded with strands of DNA. People, departments and processes morphed, and things started “happening organically”.

     

    Now the two linguistic variants are merging as IBM Blue Gene/P (yes, that must be a pun) hits the data cloud. More advanced than one of its predecessors, Deep Blue, which challenged chess master Garry Kasparov in 1997, the Blue Gene is part of a series of IBM supercomputers able to handle data in terms of petaFLOPS, or 10 to the fifteenth power. An upcoming supercomputer in the Blue Gene series, Blue Gene/Q is projected to reach 20 Petaflops sometime in 2011. 

     

    In related news, IBM’s new Watson supercomputer has all the answers. You can ask it a question (have you seen Hal in the Kubrick film “2001”?) and Watson responds with the answer. So, rather than search engines like Google where you are given a research path and have to find the answer(s) yourself, Watson plucks the correct answer. Rather than chess, Watson plays “Jeopardy”. We hope Alex Trebek is pleased.

    Category: New Ideas Blog Comments Off | June 29, 2010 by Pat Hanlon

  5. Was Wallstreet Kingdom primal branded?

    Leonard Van Buren in Berlin wrote us last week to ask if Wallstreet Kingdom was the result of our Primal Branding methodology. We don’t know if we’re being punked, but we checked it out anyway.

     

    The Dutch-based elite luxury house of WallStreet Kingdom was established in October 2008 by designer Christian Adriaanse (pronounce: Adrians). Adriaanse and the brand goes straight for the power grabbing greed angle of Wall Street as deftly as American Apparel’s Dov Charney goes for the sex angle, claiming an “appreciation for Wall Street, capitalism and entrepreneurship in general”.

     

    WallStreet Kingdom’s $500 “Stripes of Pride” shirts sport the vertical stripes and white collar sometimes seen in the financial houses. 

     

    Primal Branding builds communities around a belief system that includes seven critical elements: creation story, creed, icons, rituals, lexicon, nonbelievers, and leader.

     

    This creates the brand narrative that defines the brand—including brand vision, strategic positioning, product design and development, even communications.

     

    Our systemized brand engineering goes through what we call the primal code. While many marketers operate some pieces of code mentioned above, it’s the constellation of all pieces working together that creates that head-snapping WOW moment most brands struggle to achieve. It’s what differentiates Nike from also-rans, Starbucks from Seattle’s Best, YouTube from Vimeo.

     

    Although we are geographically unable to visit WallStreet Kingdom’s Europe-based retail locations, we did take a look at their web site. There’s an extensive story on the site that covers WK’s beginnings. And like many creation stories, it is a story against all odds and the world at large.  Starting during the onslaught of the 2008 recession, when retail was frying pan flat.

     

    “The timing couldn’t be worse yet couldn’t be better. It was the moment.,” pipes Christian Adriaanse. “The moment to launch the most luxurious fashion brand in the world. My dream for years. Not cowardly looking for other ways…Stripes of Pride. Celebrating capitalism. Promoting happiness and supporting freedom. Calling my brand WallStreet Kingdom.”

     

    There are plenty of opportunities for a credo, from Stripes of Pride to flamboyant “the most luxurious fashion brand in the world”.

     

    The other parts of a belief system are easy enough to find. Any reader can identify them on the WK site.

     

    The interesting thing is that Adriaanse pinpoints the object of any belief system—that is, to create community, and a group of people who feel they not only believe, but belong.

     

    “Whether you’re living in New York, Tokyo or London, Shanghai, Moscow or Dubai,” writes Christian Adriaanse. “You are connected. We are connected…Wearing WallStreet Kingdom and showing its distinct black-gold features actually says ‘I agree’ and ‘I belong’.”

     

    Whether or not Wallstreet Kingdom succeeds or not is still a question mark. But like Ecko, American Apparel and other upstart brands, it has the right marketing mechanics in place to succeed. It just might become a primal brand.

    Category: New Ideas Blog Comments Off | June 28, 2010 by Pat Hanlon

  6. Apple iPhone 4 launches

    We spotted people standing outside the Apple Store in Manhattan’s Meat Packing District yesterday, waiting for their new Apple iPhone 4. (The cabbie shouted, “Why are all those people standing in line?!!!) Later on TV news, we watched as Apple employees actually cheered customers as they entered the store, which begins to make this a cult we wonder if we want to be a part of. We’re still waiting for the iPhone to be hooked up with Verizon–which is still the world’s best cellphone system in terms of quality and coverage. Speaking from personal experience, Verizon has worked all around the world, including Africa, India, Mexico, even Tokyo (where nothing works). iPhone plus Verizon? That’s an app worth talking about.

    Category: New Ideas Blog Comments Off | June 25, 2010 by Pat Hanlon

  7. Is Kindle obsolete?

    Is the Kindle effectively dead in the water thanks to iPad launch? In smartphones, the industry divides history into “before iPhone” and “after iPhone”. If that is any indication, then the answer is yes.

    Category: New Ideas Blog Comments Off | June 24, 2010 by Pat Hanlon

  8. Forget cupcake craze, try macarons

    We first saw them in Paris, then in a Hayes Valley shop in San Francisco. Now they’re everywhere you go in New York City and elsewhere around the world. No, we’re not talking about the outcroppings of cupcake shops like Crumbs. We’re talking macarons. Those divinely-colored, brilliantly delicious European creations.

    The names themselves are nearly edible:  not just white chocolate, cassis and passion fruit, but also Violette Flower, Rose et Lichee, and Nutella. One place to try is Macaron Café on West 36th Street east of Seventh Avenue.

    Category: New Ideas Blog Comments Off | June 23, 2010 by Pat Hanlon

  9. Does irrationality have an upside?

    In his The Upside of Irrationality Duke professor in behavioral economics Dan Ariely provides the follow-up to his Predictable Irrationality best-seller. It has long been known that achieving financial success alone is not satisfying to the human spirit. (A thousand novels, movies and plays use this point as their underpinning.) So it is not without surprise that Ariely suggests that actually owning a Ferrari (as opposed to imagining owning a Ferrari) does not provide long-term satisfaction. Unless, he points out, we share that satisfaction with others. Sharing satisfaction with someone we know/love intensifies the emotional juice of ownership beyond the mere paper title. This hits upon an important constellation of points: imagined ownership versus actual ownership, personal possession versus shared benefits, not to mention that ambition, success, greed and all of our other wants are basted in emotional juices that we still do not fully comprehend.

    Category: New Ideas Blog Comments Off | June 22, 2010 by Pat Hanlon

  10. ‘Chevy’ no longer consistent with Chevrolet brand message

    In its eagerness to provide a consistent brand message, reports today’s New York Times, General Motors’ legendary Chevrolet division sent a memo to employees suggesting that is order to provide brand consistency, they cease referring to Chevrolet as ‘Chevy’ and henceforth stick to ‘Chevrolet’. Even though, as the article points out, the Chevy is one of the world’s best-known, longest-lived product nicknames.

    In related news, McDonalds is renaming its Big Mac to ‘Big MacDonald’. Apple is dumping its iMac name for ‘iMacintosh’. And to help consistency of its own brand message, ‘Coke’ will only be serving Coca-Cola.

    Just kidding.

    Chevrolet has apparently forgotten Oscar Wilde’s famous quote that consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

    Category: New Ideas Blog Comments Off | June 10, 2010 by Pat Hanlon

  11. Thumbers

    The text generation of teenagers who continually text their friends using their thumbs (some send over 200 text messages per day) may be the first generation who does not instinctively use their pointer finger to ring the doorbell or press the elevator button. Perhaps they should be coined the Thumb Generation.

    Category: New Ideas Blog Comments Off | May 28, 2010 by Pat Hanlon