Should I stay or should I go?

It's fine for a 1980s era Clash song of the same name but not for a sign that's meant to help to navigate safe passage across the street.

















The display somehow manages to overcome its binary wiring, showing two different commands simultaneously.

The result it confusion and hopefully immobility on the part of the casual observer, at least before resorting to the a prudent back-up of glancing both ways along the street.

We've commented on confusing signs recently. This fine example was encountered recently on the streets of lower Manhattan, NY.

Eccentricity Goes Mainstream

How times change.

It used to be that wearing anything that did not match - particularly something worn as part of a pair, such as shoes or socks - was considered at best odd and usually, far worse, as eccentric.

What used to be viewed with suspicion and lurked at the fringes of pop culture has now been brought into the mainstream.


































Little Mismatched offers a line of, well, mismatched footwear and clothing and in doing so seeks to convert a behavior that had conferred the unwelcomed status of social pariah into a desirable one of confident self-expression. With appeals such as 'How mismatched are you?' the brand seeks to competitively incite the prospective buyer with a dare.

It's a great example of how mass marketers seek inspiration from the margins to mine new commercial opportunity.

An Accident Waiting to Happen

The headline in the ad plays to a persistent perception: insurance is a necessarily evil most people feel they'd rather live without. Promoting a claim to the contrary is going to do little on its own to improve that situation.

It seems harmless enough. An insurance company 'selling the category' without any evidence as to why the viewer should believe this advertiser"s claim over any other company.

But more damage will materialize over time. Why? The industry continues to raise expectations - with messages such as these - while failing to deliver on them.

If that sounds like a harsh assessment, one has to look no further than the average insurance policy against the background of chatter about insurance companies on many blogs and in chat rooms.

The reason why dissatisfaction and distrust are so pervasive in this category is because when it comes to claim time, most policyholders do not get what they feel they should be entitled to.

We at OFD think there are two contributory factors:

1) People don't really understand the full extent of the policy they have bought. Such policies are notoriously difficult to decipher (look no further than the length and language of your car insurance policy). The result is that many people only come to realize the nature of exclusions and deductibles once they are at claim time, when such discoveries are too late.

2) The pervasive imbalance of power between policyholders and insurance companies is magnified at claim time. Insurance companies hold all the cards: they make a determination which is imposed on the policyholder, who has no redress nor ability for arbitration. This fuels the perception of a lack of fairness and a feeling of inequity that's not hard to find on the internet, the legion of stories of people feeling literally cheated by the unequal relationship.

There are opportunities for the taking in this category. We're not suggesting that insurance companies open themselves up to arbitration necessarily (that would be a bold move indeed). But we do believe that the existence of such an unequal relationship - both in understanding of terms and in settlement mechanics - represents space for an enterprising brand to forge greater differentiation in this otherwise highly commoditized category.

Endowment Effect

This comes from a fascinating article in the June 21st issue of The Economist about what drives attachment.

Simply put, endowment effect suggests that once someone owns something he places a higher value on it than he did when he acquired it.

In a ingenious experiment, students were reluctant to trade a coffee mug for a bar of chocolate even though they did not prefer mugs to chocolate when given a straight choice between the two.

The experiment was repeated with primates with similar results. When presented with a choice, 60% of chimps preferred peanut butter to frozen juice bars. However, when they were endowed with peanut butter, 80% of them chose to keep it instead of exchanging it for fruit bars.

Our evolutionary past may explain it. Giving things up, even when an apparently fair exchange seems to be on offer, was just too risky. These days there are contracts, rights and other ways of enforcing bargains. Animal societies have none of these mechanisms.

In a brain scanning study carried out recently (using functional MRIs) the pattern and location of activity observed suggests the endowment effect works by enhancing the salience of loss. If this is true, it suggests that a shrewd tendency persists even though we have evolved our culture and environment to where we no longer need to rely on it.

I can only imagine the searches that this posting will turn up in elsewhere, given the title it has, no doubt of disappointment to most readers.

An Age of Insecurity and Opportunity

When it comes to brands making statements about us, there are a couple of ways to interpret them.

The first is that they serve as nothing more that confirmation; of something we already know and believe.

At OFD we take a different anthropological interpretation.

Such statements are valued precisely because we don't ourselves believe them and being confronted with the idea gives us a permission to believe that we can't find our way to on our own.

Navigating the duty free area that one literally cannot avoid after clearing security at CDG airport in Paris, we encountered this fine specimen:



























At first glance, it seems faintly absurd and rather arrogant that a brand - any brand - would be so presumptuous to tell us we are unique. How can a brand know us after all? On the other hand, it is precisely because so many people don't feel special that being told we are is so appreciated. Affirming our worth makes us feel good and makes us feel warm and fuzzy about what is showering us with affection, in this case a brand called Magnifique.

L'Oreal has gone as far actually referring to worth in the platitude is directs to women: Because You're Worth It.

While insecurity is bad for people it is, in a sense, good for marketers for it creates an urgent, self-directed need for resolution across a number of aspects of people's lives and how they define themselves. The needs are not latent, rather they are very pressing because they are concerned with issues that matter to us a great deal: whether we are successful, whether we are beautiful or handsome, whether we are good parents or not, to name a few.

The Inevitable Chatter About AIG: Part Two

This served up by Ad Age today, affirming that blogs and other on-line content are indeed not favorable to AIG, in part due to the company continuing to promote its strength at a time when in was in question.

The Inevitable Chatter About AIG

AIG has been touting its strength for a long time. It's not surprising that the web is alight with the irony of AIG's bail out by the Fed. The Consumerist is only one site enjoying that reckoning that AIG is facing, whose commercials seem shockingly brazen given this recent news.





AIG is not alone. There are plenty of corporations that play a dangerous game indeed; their Houses NOT in order they continue to shape perceptions in a wholly different manner, oblivious - or arrogant - to the new consequences of the transparent age in we which we live, with the surfacing of inconsistencies that will emerge through fuller, freer distribution of information.

We have William Caxton to thank in 1476 for the first major revolution in free-thought. He developed the printing press which allowed the spread of ideas in written form, which expanded discussion and conjecture and the quality of thinking with it.

We have the internet (at least web 2.0's incarnation) to thank for further dramatically shifting control of debate and distribution of ideas out of the hands of 'producers' to ordinary people.

Klimpton: hotel as playground for adult fun

Why should the folks at the W have all the fun?

An in-room closet hanger recently suggested guests unleash their 'wild side'; to put on the robes - a wrap for men and a camisole for the ladies - and follow their instincts.






















Permission to play is an inventing part of Kimpton's suggestive selling. There's a time and place for adults to step outside of the boundaries of what they know and experience something new. They might even learn something about themselves in the process.

If couples leave with that kind of experience, the memory must certainly halo back to the brand. Not a bad accomplishment in mid-priced hotels segment offering a mostly undifferentiated fare.

Running towards what you should be avoiding

So this is a mighty confusing sign. And one with potentially fatal consequences.

Imagine for a moment you can't read English.

What does the image suggest to you?





















The reasonable take-away is that one should AVOID the stairs in a fire. It suggests that it will bring you closer to the very thing that you should be running away from.

The opposite interpretation is of course intended: that the elevator should be avoided and the stairs used in this kind of situation.

All of which goes to show it matters where you put the flames. Would it have been that hard to put them over the shoulder of our universally recognized stick figure?

An attempt to encourage virtuous behavior backfires

An ad on the side of the Muni subway in San Francisco. It seeks to create a little more social harmony by giving people a reason why they should be nice, in this instance, road users being more courteous to each others.

















It seems reasonable. Give as good as you get. A cosmic harmony of goodwill will be returned. But that's precisely the flaw. It creates an unsustainable expectation. If we are encouraged to behave in a specific way from a literal expectation of reciprocity, then when it doesn't happen the behavior will collapse.

The strategically smarter approach would have been to create value that's not so literally dependent on other people's cooperation.

The Liberty Mutual Campaign in a case in point. (Let's put aside the issue of how feasible it is for an insurance company to build its business on a platform of responsibility when the underlying format of a policy and the claim resolution experience are destined to violate it and therefore dash expectations it has helped create.) If this kind of approach had been leveraged for 'social issue' communication, we at OFD think it would have been more compelling.

The premise of the Liberty Mutual commercial is of people doing some small act of good for the sake of it, which happens to be seen and inspires people to copy, in a 'Pay It Forward' kind of way. Enacting the behavior does not require reciprocity. The motivation to give comes from an acknowledgment and understanding of life's interdependency, one in which we might not be aware of how the connections are made, but taps into the truth that they are, and that it benefits us. So it gracefully dodges the flat-footed rationality of literal reciprocity which the 'social issue' communication is rooted in and which trips it up.

Message perfectly fits the medium: Part Two

Jet Blue telling people not to fly?

Has the brand gone mad?

It has not. It's an example of great placement, the nature of which contributes to the message and compels engagement. Positioned by the side of the road - where traffic is destined to fly by - provides a counter-point against which the communication works even harder.

It's part of Jet's Blue marketing campaign to create an aspirational identity for people who use the brand. These passengers don't fly. They have more traveling discretion, for they are jetting. The merits of the strategy aside, this is delightful placement indeed.

Message perfectly fits the medium: Part One

There is something inherently alternative about wildpostings. The term “guerrilla’ is applied to this medium after all.

So it made our OFD culture spotter smile to see this communication recently during the Olympics.

















It features a man hurling an incendiary device at some unknown destination, housed in what very much looks like a coke bottle. The sporting apparel he wears bears the Nike logo suggests he’s an athlete, one which resemblance discus throwing from a distance.

Nike is known for its guerrilla marketing at sports events whose sponsorship it is locked out of. But this must sure be parody, a brand hijacking one presumes.

Couched as chocolate

What a visual treat this outdoor board delivers.

Who would have thought that associations from these two categories could be combined so effectively? There is something succulent and tantalizing about the way the couch is half wrapped, suggesting a thrill in the reveal.

Removing packaging is a sensual part of consuming the product. Several companies understand this. Apple in its superbly crafted boxes that laptops are packed in. GM puts a ribbon over the handle of its used cars so the buyer must break the seal before getting in.

Perhaps this furniture brand could benefit from such thinking and enhance the consumption experience of its product before it's even sat upon.

Good Design: When Packaging is The Product

The problem with much packaging is that it is designed to become obsolete: it often ceases to be useful beyond getting the product home. This is particularly true of furniture and lighting.

This idea is debunked by Light2Go. The packaging is fundamentally part of the lighting device.
























The packaging that houses all the contents.....



















......becomes the external shade when used as a hanging lamp and as an internal structure when used in the desk lamp configuration, shown here.






















The result is reduced waste. The 'life' of the package is long - as long as the lamp is being used. Now that's good responsible design.

It was bought at the gift shop at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which we at OFD think is quite apt. After all, anything that subverts and overcomes the limitations inherent in traditional design thinking, without compromising form or function is art indeed.

Use another brand's colors at your peril

Quick! What company is promoting its breakfast fare?























If you thought the Golden Arches, it's understandable.

After all, McDonalds is associated probably more than any other brand with breakfast eaten out of the home or on-the-go. It's not come free: they've spent millions of dollars to establish themselves in pole position in this regard, in the minds of people who eat there as well as those who don't, such is the scale of McDonalds relentless promotion and ubiquitous retail presence.

The Red, Yellow and White colors are also a key part of the permanent repertoire of associations that are tied to the brand.


All of which makes it odd indeed that a relative minnow of a player - Jamba Juice - should use these colors in the branding of its own breakfast offering.


















True, the white strip on the right-hand side promotes Jamba Juice as the owner of this message, but it occupyies only 1/4 of the entire advertising space. We believe that the large red block is so dominating that it is likely to be processed as a separate unit, and so mis-attributed as a McDonald's communication.

We're also left wondering why Jamba Juice doesn't sharpen the distinctiveness of its breakfast offering compared with the burger and biscuit behemoth. After all, this is a time when people are more aware of the health consequences of eating than ever before.

The climate is ripe for Jamba Juice to promote its unique take on breakfast, with fruit and a blender being key elements to 'brand' this healthier approach. Instead we get these items visually with nothing more than a perfunctory promotion that 'new breakfasts meals are here.'

A missed opportunity in our book. Or perhaps, a nervous David afraid to pick up a gauntlet against a category Goliath.

A strategy of direct contrast against a well-known entrenched competitor can be highly successful. It worked for Veryfine beverages back in the late 80s when they positioned their 100% juices against sodas (at a time before the explosion of Snapple, Sobe, Nantucket Nectars and Arizona Ice tea on to the market).

One simple yet memorable ad featured a Pepsi can next to a Veryfine bottle.

'Gas' it read under the Pepsi container, 'Guzzler' underneath Veryfine's.

The point was telegraphed. There's only such much soda you can sup without feeling full of gas. But a beverage without the carbonation? You can drink as much as you want to quench a thirst.

For litigious-fearful among you, the Veryfine brand - largely unheard of at the time - got tremendous credit for the boldness and courage it displayed in challenging a giant. Something that replacing the Pepsi can with an air-brushed generic soda can would not have inspired.

As a brand, if you are a David facing a Goliath, act like it. You have a legion of devotees waiting to believe in your cause if you authentically embrace it instead of hiding in the shadows.