• Refresh Everything: Egregious Brand Coat-Tailing – Hey, we're a beverage company whose red-white-blue circle logo has elements in common with the a popular red-white-and-blue "O" logo connected with hope and change. Why don't we create a new logo for ourselves that evokes both, let's create a viral-esque phrase like Refresh Everything (get it? He's promising "change" but we promise refreshment?!!!) and let's plaster the logo all over buildings in major cities and take out full-page ads in the newspaper and beyond. All inviting you to a site that does…well, something or other about hope and dreams but either way, we've got our name on this thing going on.
• HOPE photo in San Francisco – Part of series that is now all over the city .

• PETA (hopefully tongue-in-cheek) attempts to rebrand fish as "Sea Kittens" – Sorta reductio ad absurdum re: my latest interactions column, Poets, Priests, and Politicians
• Rug company Nanimarquina brings global warming to your living room – "If there is an iconic image that represents the natural devastation of global warming, it is the lone polar bear stuck on a melting ice flow. Now eco rug company Nanimarquina has teamed up with NEL artists to create a beautiful ‘Global Warming Rug’ – complete with stranded polar bear floating in the middle of the sea – to represent the most pressing issue of our time. Rugs have been traditionally used throughout the ages to tell stories and communicate messages, and we think this is a lovely, poignant new take on a time-honored tradition." What effect does it have when an issue like global warming gets iconified and aestheticized like this? Does it drive home the seriousness of the situation, or make it more palatable?
• Asch conformity experiments – (via Eliezer Yudkowsky) Asch asked people about similarity of height between several lines. Confederates answered incorrectly and this influenced the subject themselves to support this incorrect answer.
• Confirmation bias: the tendency to seek out information that supports what we already believe – (via Eliezer Yudkowsky) The 2-4-6 problem presented subjects with 3 numbers. Subjects were told that the triple conforms to a particular rule. They were asked to discover the rule by generating their own triples, where the experimenter would indicate whether or not the triple conformed to the rule. While the actual rule was simply “any ascending sequence”, the subjects often proposed rules that were far more complex. Subjects seemed to test only “positive” examples—triples the subjects believed would conform to their rule and confirm their hypothesis. What they did not do was attempt to challenge or falsify their hypotheses by testing triples that they believed would not conform to their rule.
• Overcoming Bias – Blog by Eliezer Yudkowsky and others about (overcoming) biases in perception, decisions, etc.
• Hindsight bias: when people who know the answer vastly overestimate its predictability or obviousness, – (via Eliezer Yudkowsky)
  Sometimes called the I-knew-it-all-along effect.
  "…A third experimental group was told the outcome and also explicitly instructed to avoid hindsight bias, which made no difference."
• Planning fallacy – the tendency to underestimate task-completion times – (via Eliezer Yudkowsky) Asking people what they did last time turns out to be more accurate than what they either hope for or expect to happen this time
• Cognitive Biases in the Assessment of Risk – (via Eliezer Yudkowsky) Another example of extensional neglect is scope insensitivity, which you will find in the Global Catastrophic Risks book. Another version of the same thing is where people would only pay slightly more to save all the wetlands in Oregon than to save one protected wetland in Oregon, or people would pay the same amount to save two thousand, twenty thousand, or two hundred thousand oil-stroked birds from perishing in ponds. What is going on there is when you say, “How much would you donate to save 20,000 birds from perishing in oil ponds,” they will visualize one bird trapped, struggling to get free. That creates some level of emotional arousal, then the actual quantity gets thrown right out the window.

  [I am not sure that's the reason why; I think there could be other explanations for the flawed mental model that leads to those responses]

• Conjunction fallacy – (via Eliezer Yudkowsky) A logical fallacy that occurs when it is assumed that specific conditions are more probable than a single general one. Example: Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.

  Which is more probable?

  1. Linda is a bank teller.
  2. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

  85% of those asked chose option 2 [2]. However, mathematically, the probability of two events occurring together (in "conjunction") will always be less than or equal to the probability of either one occurring alone.

Daisy Sour Cream has supposedly been offering Fresh Thinking on their foil seals for several years, but I just noticed it, and was pleasantly surprised. They took an opportunity to create a front-of-house experience when I was expecting a back-of-house experience. They’ve used printing technology to enable a richer experience: they aren’t simply reinforcing their logo after you’ve already purchased; they are providing content that plays emotionally at the most emotional point of usage – when the product is first opened (I’d suggest the multisensory stimulus and associated anticipation is more emotional than eating it, even).

The foil seals on our containers do have a functional purpose – to keep our products their absolute freshest and safest for our consumers. But we wanted them to do more than that. So a few years ago, we created our “Fresh Thinking” foil seals, featuring uplifting, positive thoughts from Daisy. We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we do creating them.

Previously:

• Observational Ephemera
• Swallowing innovation
• What Is The Loon Smoking?
• Fruit 2.0
• Vernacular design – where form ignores function

I ordered some tripods from REI and in the package was a nice bonus: a mini Clif Mojo bar. Although my purchase was not outdoor recreation related, REI reminded me of their positioning with an appropriately positioned freebie; a outdoor recreation lifestyle snack.

I received this promotion from a local plumber. In addition to the more typical description of services offered, he provides a striking summary of his personal brand attributes: insightful, mature, courteous. Those are desirable characteristics in any professional setting; they are provocative when highlighted by a plumber.

I blogged previously about our research with a wine brand. The other day I was in the store and saw that the packaging redesign, informed by our work, is on the shelf!

Landor did the design work in creating the new Stone Cellars package, informed by our exploration of how Beringer’s customers were thinking about, talking about, and making meaning with wine and its packaging. One piece that emerged very strongly was that the folks we were talking to really wanted to associate a sense of place with any wine they had a relationship with, and that is prominent in the new design.

Stone Cellars, before

Stone Cellars, after

And on sale, too!

We’ve seen coffee cup sleeves used to carry advertisements:

Last month, there was a sleeve around my copy of Metropolis magazine. Is advertising in the magazine no longer effective?

What’s next?

Banded bird, © Dan Soltzberg 2008

Previously: Forced Engagement

During a recent trip to Florida I took some time to check out the Disney-founded community of Celebration.

The experience was much more subtle that I had expected; perhaps the true nature emerges more through residency than driving through. Overall, it felt a lot like The Truman Show – a set that made everything a bit too perfect and while one can appreciate just how nice everything is, it lacks a certain organic naturalness.

The town theater is achingly new, yet completely retro. There’s no funk here.

The downtown area is beautiful, branding is kept to a minimum.

Starbucks, the Americanized faux-Italian experience (so faux and so Americanized that you can enjoy it without knowing where it comes from) seems to fit right in (but then Starbucks is the ultimate brand for fitting in everywhere and anywhere).

These electric vehicles were ubiquitous, some turned into rolling advertising vehicles (as has happened with the PT Cruiser, the New Beetle, the Mini, and the Smart Car). I imagine the retirement communities in Florida have a wider general adoption of those vehicles and that’s part of the reason they are seen in Celebration.

Chick-Fil-A branding at a church event.

And about 2 miles down the road, familiar sprawl returns, highlighting the contrast. I think that’s the tallest Starbucks sign I’ve ever seen.

Previously: Florida Faux, part 1

Also: Orlando pictures; Miami pictures.

Amnesia café, Bloor St., Toronto, July 2008

Insomnia café, Bloor St., Toronto, July 2008

These two places are across the street from each other. I guess you won’t remember what happened, but boy will you be tired the next day?

I had to replace one of the toilets in my house recently. On the advice of a friend who’s a builder, I went to Home Depot seeking an American Standard brand toilet.

Replacing a toilet is surprisingly easy. It’s really quite something that the toilet is such a simple device, considering its significance in enabling modern life to be as pleasant as it is.

I had bought all the pieces I needed separately, and by the time I finished my installation, had forgotten that I’d bought a seat that was also made by American Standard.

I experienced a little warm flash of joy when I raised the seat of my new toilet for the first time and saw that the logo on the bottom of the seat matched the logo on the toilet itself.

That I would feel spontaneous pleasure at having the brands of components on my toilet match–is it not testament to the primacy of place that branding and labeling have in our culture?

That this positive feeling was caused by something I never could have told you I cared the least bit about–something that seems so silly to me that I’m chuckling inside as I write this–really shows the power of the larger culture to influence emotional responses.

It also illustrates the necessity of being in real places with real people doing real things, if one wants to witness these types of dynamics.

The coda on this little story is an ironic one:

Does it matter to me that my American Standard toilet was made in Mexico? Not really. I’m just happy that the logos all match.