Posts tagged “label”

ChittahChattah Quickies

  • Slot Music – it’s more than just a new format – Here's SanDisk's ecosystem approach (for digital music, not digital books, but still, it's illustrative). Leveraging their technology, they've begun putting digital music on solid state media (i.e., SD cards and what-have-you) that will go into multiple devices. They are piggybacking on the ecosystem of slots that already exists. I think it fully matures as an ecosystem when other other plays start making products, services, and accessories to support this standard.
  • New Yorker cartoon – “This one, when you open it, smells like the Times.” – Cartoon by Leo Cullum showing a sensory-enriched Kindle. Thanks to Tom Williams for the pointer!
  • Book Display Norms – Jan Chipchase – To what extent does the form, peruseability of books facilitate the behaviours around where they are sold?
  • San Franciscan Reads Finnegan’s Wake Aloud, In Public – In the aftermath of the Finnegan's Wake Book Club dissolution.

ChittahChattah Quickies

  • Reasonable Consumer Would Know "Crunchberries" Are Not Real, Judge Rules – Judge England also noted another federal court had "previously rejected substantially similar claims directed against the packaging of Fruit Loops [sic] cereal, and brought by these same Plaintiff attorneys." He found that their attack on "Crunchberries" should fare no better than their prior claims that "Froot Loops" did not contain real froot.

    (via BoingBoing)

  • A Manhattan Writing Of Six Therapists – “Everybody comes in with their own stories, and they can be so staggeringly original,” said Bonnie Zindel, the psychoanalyst who started the writing group seven years ago. “We all need stories to make sense of our lives, we’re all wired to tell stories, and nature gave us that. For us, we wonder, ‘What is the story that our patients are telling?’ There are mother stories, father stories, ghost stories and the eternal universal story of a child trying to separate from its mother.”
  • 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive – Read this post now, it won't last long! Most of our readers – including people like you – are already choosing to look at this post.

    (Lone Gunman, I'm giving you folks credit for this and look forward to you reciprocating, thanks!)

ChittahChattah Quickies

  • Henry: High earner, not rich yet – [Blogging this purely for the acronym]
    "HENRYs, an acronym we'll use to describe people whose financial situation can be summed up by the phrase "high earners, not rich yet." (I coined the term for a Fortune story in 2003 on the alternative minimum tax, or AMT, the bane of the HENRYs.) Put simply, the HENRYs are the bulwark of the professional and entrepreneurial class that drives the economy. Look in the mirror, Fortune reader, and you'll probably see a HENRY."
  • INFLUENCE AT WORK – Proven Science for Business Success – Robert Cialdini's business site for his work on persuasion
  • Robert Cialdini designs program where utility customers get smileys or frownies on their bill in comparison with neighbors – Last April, it began sending out statements to 35,000 randomly selected customers, rating them on their energy use compared with that of neighbors in 100 homes of similar size that used the same heating fuel. The customers were also compared with the 20 neighbors who were especially efficient in saving energy.
  • Coca-Cola Deleting ‘Classic’ From Coke Label – The Coca-Cola Company is dropping the “Classic” from its red labels in some Southeast regions, and the word will be gone from all of its packaging by the summer, the company said Friday. The font size of the “Classic” has been shrinking in the last decade, and the company removed it from labels in Canada in 2007.

    The language on the side of the label where it now says “Coke original formula” will change to say “Coke Classic original formula.” “Every place else in the world it is called Coca-Cola, except for in North America."

Putting research results back on the shelf

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.

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Stone Cellars, before

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Stone Cellars, after

And on sale, too!

Meet The New Authenticity

I’m a believer in the power of authenticity (as well as the greater power of inauthenticity). Fake blogs (aka flogs) were a bit of a scandal recently. Predictions for 2007 are focusing on this as well.

Companies not acting in an authentic and honest way will be subject to the wrath of the newfound consumer voice.

The buzzword for 2007 will be authenticity and it will become a driving force for businesses.

But what is authentic? What is inauthentic? The eye of the beholder makes the final determination.

Here’s a story: we were doing in-home interviews last month, getting reactions to product packages in order to understand the important visual elements and cues (in order to inform an upcoming redesign). One package had a label with a jagged edge, meant to suggest torn paper. It didn’t look like real torn paper, it looked like a manufactured torn edge. Some people really liked it, but one person called it as unacceptably fake. He pointed to another packaging label that he had purchased, as this one had a more realistic-looking torn edge, where the paper was frayed and small threads and fibers were visible.

He was very clear that both of these edge treatments were done by machine; that no paper was torn by hand. The vernacular of the jagged paper was completely unacceptable. The more realistic (as he imagined it) frayed edge was the right way to do it.

It’s a bit of a post-modern take on authenticity, where it’s more of aesthetic that supports suspension-of-disbelief, rather than some extremely absolutely True and Real version. What does the way it looks let me comfortably accept into my reality?

How do you know what is authentic? How do you know that what you are creating or selling is authentic?

Attention to detail?

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A videotape from Fuji. The front and spine labels that come in the package should fit the indented area perfectly; at least that’s my expectation based on decades of buying magnetic media. But these ones don’t. I figure that they switched suppliers of either labels at some point and decided to stick with the remaining supply of the other.

99% of the time it wouldn’t matter, but I was actually delivering these tapes to a client, and that little extra edge of unprofessionalism was kind of a bummer.

A toy for someone you love

Here’s a nice toy – your very own cuddly facehugger from the Alien movies. I’m sure you remember how it wrapped around the guy’s face and laid an egg in his stomach and then the egg hatched and burst through his chest.

Now you can get your very own.

I saw this in a toy store in Toronto and have been meaning to post it here, but was finally spurred to do so when I saw it on we make money not art via this blog (who points out there is a chest-burster toy as well. Nice.)

But what I’ve got special for you is the warning label on the package.

Choking hazard!

Series

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