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Notes

Post image for How Swarovski dismantles its brand

Swarovski is a well known brand for jewellery around the world. The great marketing idea of applying techniques used for diamonds to glass made the company big and rich. These “techniques” are not only technical but also marketing skills. They sell you low cost glass at a high value by giving it the touch of exclusivity. They sell not only jewellery but also figurines and much much more – from beautiful to awful everything is covered.

Now I for myself don’t care much about the Swarovski hype – I don’t like much of the design and the associated prices – but I respect the marketing effort and how well they constructed their brand over the last 50 years. About 15 years ago they opened their “Kristallwelten” (crystal worlds). A sort of museum with works by famous artists inspired by the crystals. Andrè Heller was the curator of this magical place and everyone was delighted.

I will list now in a few words why this “Kristallwelten” is dismantling the brand of Swarovski:

  • It’s expensive – you pay 9.5 Euros (about 13.4 US$ at the time of writing) for getting in. There are 15 tiny rooms with “inspired art”, that’s close to a dollar/room. If a ordinary museum would charge at this prices… and not to forget – this is a marketing stunt, so free entry should be the minimum
  • If you are not interested in the “art” you cannot enter the shop directly – you have to pay to get into the shop basically. Ok, you get 2 Euro off you purchase with the ticket.
  • The so called art is a hoax – maybe 2 or 3 pieces of this exposition is worth the name of art. I studied art and I can tell the difference. They have a separate room for the “gallery” as they call it – the room with real masterpieces from the Swarovski art collection – see the difference in the naming
  • You don’t get any information about the production process or about Swarovski – there is only one room about the jewels itself and this is a little bit frustrating as you go there to learn about Swarovski
  • It’s old – 15 years and nearly no addition. You can tell the date of the art pieces and the updated rooms are just fitted with larger screens.
  • The shop has not all products on stock. The shop is big and they have nearly all products on display, but not all sizes. The factory is 50 meters away, we are at the heart of the Swarovski production site and they are not able to stock the rings on display in all sizes (and they just do S, M, L and XL – not like the jewellery ring sizes which are 22)
    On the good side I have to admit, that the “crystallized” section, where you can buy single items to combine by yourself are quite neat.
  • The prices in the shop are the same all over the world. So if you travel to the Kristallwelten in Austria and you think that the shop nearby the factory is cheaper your wrong. No outlet – no factory sale.

So what is the conclusion – I stumbled out of the Kristallwelten and felt like I’ve been betrayed. The website is actually beautifuler and the respect for the firm was gone. No content for real money and no “magic” and all. Common’ Swarovski – we know it’s a marketing stunt, but don’t take us for fools. Get rid of the entrance fee (or do a full rebate on a purchase) and spice it up with more about the firm.

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In various posts around the web you can find opinions on the new identity of the tv channel SyFy – formerly known as Sci-Fi Channel. While I don’t want to go into the design details I want to express some thoughts why the probably made this change. At first it seems quite unusual to change a well established brand so radically. It seems even more radical as the new name is also a new term that sounds like the old name but doesn’t has the same meaning – it actually has no meaning.

This puzzled at first even me. Science fiction was born over 100 years ago and the abbreviation sci-fi has become wide spread. Everybody knows what sci-fi is and therefore naming a tv channel who broadcasts sci-fi shows should be called sci-fi. But here lies the big problem. The vast majority of people “thinks” the know what sci-fi is all about. Basically science fiction is all about ufo’s and space travel. Science fiction is obviously much more than that and actually most of the movies and shows on tv are some sort of science fiction. How can you break this misinformation of the general public?

There are two ways. One way is to educate the people, but this would cost much more that just do it the way SyFy has done it. They changed the name and claimed that SyFy is the tv channel where you could “imagine more”. The name sound familiar enough to sci-fi fans to recognize the term and is new enough to new viewers to just be a name.

How far SyFy is more than just space crafts and aliens shows the spot – well done and good luck to the “new channel”.

Update: As @Lazarus2000 on Twitter pointed out giving a brand a unique name has another advantage. You can trademark the brand.

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Connecting the dots

June 22, 2009

in Notes

Drawing from some of the most pivotal points in his life, Steve Jobs, chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, urged graduates to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life’s setbacks — including death itself — at the university’s 114th Commencement on June 12, 2005. Inspiring and worth 15 minutes

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I’m happy to announce that this blog made it into the selection of Alltop – Top Design News. I’m in good company ;-) with the ususal suspects (Core 77, Cool Hunting, Design Observer, …). BTW: Alltop is one of the lates ventures of Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki) and they define themself as “online magazine rack” of popular topics.

Now you can follow my lessons along with the great articles of the other resources. So check them out: Alltop – Top Design News

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The recent TV spots from Nike+ is neat, the campaign interesting and it worked for me, somehow. I do running and a lot of other sports actively but I hate watching them on TV. I don’t read the results in the newspaper and I couldn’t care less who will win the Serie A. A friend of mine talked to me about the Nike+ Spot about how much they might have spent for all the stars you can see running. I replied “I didn’t see any stars.” Then I realized – sport stars. I don’t know any of them – ok a few but only in their working dress ;-)

In the end the spot doesn’t gain from the athletes – it’s nothing unusual that sportsmen do running. IMHO they could have spent less – the idea would have worked great even without stars.

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The moral police

Advertising lies all the time – at least this is what most people think. I must admit that I tend to believe them when I see all the rubbish on various home shopping channels or housewife-magazines (no really, this kind of magazines exist). To be honest, advertising doesn’t lie more than the average human in any position and mansion, but I think advertising should not lie.

In many countries “lying” in advertising is strict prohibited and if you check the ads you probably find small clues for the omitted facts or the specific “conditions” to get the praised results. But this is not my point.

When do you reach the point where it is advisable to not advertise at all a product? Is it ok for a Aspirin to advertise its painkilling for sportsmen? I’ve seen an ad in TV where two girls talk after a fitness session. One complains about her aking muscles and other one gives her aspirin. Hmm. Stretching or not overdoing might be the better advice.

As an art director I was more than once presented to advertise products with small to none improvements or benefits when compared to the competitors products. I had obviously to show the product as if it where the best product of the world but I always avoided to push it over the top. I also refused to do advertising for certain products. I will not do advertising for weapons, drugs, cars (if they claim to save nature), the usual stuff – but where do you trace the line?

Is the graphic designer responsible for the products of his client? In my opinion any art director and graphic designer take a part of the responsibility because he helps to deliver the message to the costumers of his client. If you deliver a faulty message or if you do not deliver the truth you take part in the disguise. You as a graphic designer might not spot on first sight that the product doesn’t deliver what it claims but this is not always the excuse – it should come out when you do the briefing.

What do you think about the morale in advertising, where do you trace the line? Your opinions are welcome.

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In the last couple of month I’ve attended to a few workshops related to the new tools we are going to use in our marketing departments. The two main tools I’m talking of is the DAM (digital asset management) and a translation management and approval system based on a indesign workflow (very handy if you manage publications in 32 languages). I know both systems already because I was one of the initiators of the group wide projects and because I tested them before choosing the solutions. This enables me to have quite some notion of “how to do things” with the software. But this does not mean that I already now the fastest way, or the most effective or future proof way to do it.

It’s much like when you learn Photoshop or Indesign. There are many ways to get results, but you might not figure out the best way by yourself. I’ve expected to get from the software vendors some advice, some “best practices” as they are called, what is the most effective way to get your taxonomy (keywords and structures) right and what are good workflows to follow. They should know as they see what theyre clients are doing and what works well and what not. But this was obviously not the case. You get the usual “Every firm has it’s own way to do things.” and “Our system is so flexible that it can be customized and setup to your needs.” This might be true, but if I just match my current workflow I could miss some great improvements or even worse, I discover later on, that if I structured the system or prepared the documents a little bit different in the first place I would get much more out of it. Nobody starts over such a project without a bad need. I hope, that with the spreading of this kind of systems there will be more user groups and tutorials to help firms setup their DAMs, in the meantime I will stick to this subject and bring my experiences.

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But this does not mean that the design is simple. A minimalistic approach uses as few graphical elements as needed to transport the message to the user. No decoration or other distracting elements are added. The message is the protagonist. The graphical elements to focus on the message can be simple shapes, but the result is a rich expirience.

A design that is just “simple” on the other hand does not give you a rich expirience – it gives you the feeling that someting is missing.

If you do a minimalistic design and you get the feeling that something is missing, then you probably (1) didn’t focus enough on the message, (2) the message is too weak or (3) cannot be transported through minimalistic design:

  1. To much decoration or complicated layouts can blur your message. Get rid of graphic elements without a function.
  2. Weak messages are often the main problem. Minimalistic means reduced to the bones and a message which is blurry and not focused can’t work in this context. Talk again with your copywriter and client if you can get a message with a tighter focus.
  3. You cannot transport chaos with a minimalistic approach. Period.

As a conclusion we could say: A minimalistic design uses only graphic elements with function to maximise the message, simple design ignores the message to maximise simplicity.

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Monty Python on advertising

February 27, 2009

in Notes

Just had to share this with you – hilarious. BTW Monty Python has increased their DVD-Sales by 300% by openining their own Youtube Channel, giving away some of their best sketches for free. What a fine example of marketing 2.0

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