Here’s my laugh of the day, from Maslow and Branding

Remember back in your Psych 101 class when you learned about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? Bet you never expected to see it again in the business world

WHAT? Maslow is an overwhelmingly cliched and over-used structure in the business world. I wish I had a nickel for every variation and reapplication of Maslow that I’ve seen. I don’t take issue with Jennifer’s points specific to branding (frankly it was hard to really get to them, with that intro), but to claim some sort of clever uniqueness for bringing this into branding (or anything) is really silly.

Cliche aside, I did present a basic version of the hierarchy to my Design Research students this week, showing them that they can (and should) design for all sorts of needs, and as they do research, they’ll see interesting ways that the needs are related. One group is looking at nutrition, and obviously food is an amazing category for physical, emotional, and other types of needs all occurring at once. I’ll note that I went through a whole thing about how it is indeed cliched and once I had shown it to them they were guaranteed to see it a dozen other times in short order, and that it was absolutely over-used in business.

Funny, then, to see it presented this way so soon after.

This report from CES considers how poorly electronics companies address their female customers, who make about as many purchases as men.

Only 1 percent of women surveyed said they thought manufacturers had them in mind when they created a gadget. And electronics companies don’t do a great job communicating a product’s bottom-line benefits. “It might very well be meeting my needs as a consumer, but I don’t know what you’re saying,” said Hallie Deakton, a publicist from New York, after listening to a day’s worth of industry announcements. “You could be rocking my world, and I wouldn’t know it.”