Archive for the 'Design' Category

Punk is…
Never having to dread getting up in the morning knowing you’ve got another day ahead of dull, dull, dull meetings.

Punk is…
Saying something in a meeting at work that jars the groupthink away from the safe, tried and trusted routes.

Punk is…
Introducing some managed chaos into the workplace to unshackle people’s thinking and inject some creativity.

Punk is…
Taking a day out of the office to do something completely different but stimulating – an art gallery, a movie, a hike - and letting your mind make the creative connections necessary to tackling problems in new ways.

Punk is…
Bringing in an expert from a completely different field – a cabinetmaker, a tree surgeon or sushi chef, for instance – to talk to your team and learn from the experience.

Punk is…
Hiring people not based on the amount of relevant experience they have in your industry but on how the unique skills they have will help the organization grow.

Punk is…
Making creativity a part of everyone’s jobs, not just the domain of a department in an agency, and judging employee performance partly based on how well they’ve used creativity to solve problems.

Punk is…
Putting yourself in others’ shoes to see in a more objective way if what you’re doing makes sense to the outside world or whether you’re just talking to yourself.

Punk is…
Being a greedy consumer of knowledge from all sources, and discovering ways to apply that information to your own business when you least expect it.

Punk is…
Finding ways to be happy in your work, knowing that happiness is good for creativity and creativity is good for more creativity, which is good for business, which makes you happy.

Punk is…
Knowing that if what you do doesn’t pass the bullshit test and isn’t meaningful, honest and interesting, you should be doing something else instead.

Punk is…
Realizing that people don’t care about your business and certainly not your marketing unless you give them a serious, no bullshit reason to care.

Punk is…
Setting impossibly high goals for yourself and thinking of crazy ways to get there before scaling back your ambitions to more achievable ones, as this will free your mind to bigger possibilities.

Punk is….
Questioning colleagues on their assumptions, and never accepting any form of the “it’s how we’ve done it before” rationale.

And that is what Punk is, dude.

Twitter @laermer

I keep waiting for the smart home. It’s pretty moot to me since my home looks pretty brill. Do we really want smart homes — homes that do everything for us automatically? I had a lot of PR material sent to me about smart AND dumb homes while compiling “2011” and have thus decided we’d be in trouble if the smart home invaded. And, in the words of Mad Magazine’s dearly departed founder —WHAT IF, you know…?

• Your “Smart Home” crashes and won’t let you in?
• Your toaster can’t find the software to toast your bread?
• You can’t multitask in your home- because if you use the washer, dryer, TVs, hair dryers, computers, printer, fax at the same time-because your house will slow down or freeze and have to be constantly rebooted?
• You haven’t upgraded your home to Windows Latest Crap and so the home can’t open up any of your windows? Wouldn’t that suck!
• Your home has to do time for “performing an illegal operation” and thanks to these occurring you constantly have no place to live?
• Your washing machine loses more than stray socks since you didn’t press the SAVE function?
• Your kid didn’t do as well on the college boards as your “Smart Home,” and your home got into a better college?
• Your “Smart Home” lost all of its smart data and became silly since you didn’t backup?
• You have to take courses every time your home has to be upgraded –formerly remodeled or repaired – if you didn’t upgrade, you can’t get replacement parts for your home or appliances?
• Your voice activated smart-pants home understands your “Honey, I’m home” command as “Honey, I’m a burglar,” and phones the cops cause it doesn’t believe you’re that honey. (”Lucy?”)
• It takes your microwave and all of your previously “instant on” electronics and appliances five minutes to recover from a crash?
• Your home flashes an error message, and your home and everything in it disappears because you didn’t save in a new file?
• Your home has obtained a virus and has to be quarantined from other homes?
• You can’t figure out Home’s many-thousand-page operating manual — neither can your kid, oy — and Amazon and all brick and mortar shops are out of “Smart Homes for Dummies?”
• Your one-stop-shopping bill that bundles your energy, cable, phone, and broadband services offers the worst of each service — everything goes out in a storm, service is provided by former cable company technicians, and you get interrupted during dinner constantly about switching to a new provider?
• The nanotechnology security system—which is smaller than a piece of dust — went up your child’s nose but no one knew because it couldn’t be seen and each time he sneezed, your alarm went off?
• Your refrigerator and the items in it and your dishwasher and detergent are communicating more than the — um — spouses?
• Robots can operate everything in your ID-enhanced house and decide human inhabitants aren’t needed because they just make a mess?
• Your “Smart Home” can’t keep pace with the Jones’ homes that are smarter?
• You’re kept on hold with bad music daily trying to reach Tech Service about your home network, which keeps going down? (That music is one of the ways in which the term “bad” reintroduces itself to you while waiting for someone to service you!)

The future is not about living like the Jetsons, and most of the cool stuff coming will be subtler and more seamless than the introduction of a pad that makes your own look schmaltzy. Hug your house.

The Financial Times reported yesterday that Apple is considering launching an “all you can eat” iTunes service that would allow customers to get unlimited access to the iTunes library in exchange for their paying a premium for iPods and iPhones. This mirrors Nokia’s “comes with music” offer the Finnish company announced last December in which folks will be able to get all of Universal Music library of music by paying a premium on top of the price of a Nokia phone. The FT reported that Apple might also be examining a subscription service in which iPhone customers pay a monthly charge as part of their phone bill to get unlimited access to iTunes tunes.

What’s interesting about this is that Apple is proving itself once again to be adept at shifting and innovating as the market moves. Rather than simply sticking to the business model that has made them the most successful seller of music downloads (by far), the black turtle-necked one has recognized that being the biggest in ANYTHING is no guarantee of future success. Consumers don’t like being taken for granted and if something new and shiny comes along, such as unlimited music, they might easily be tempted to dump their iPods or iPhones in favor of a cool new Nokia phone that gives it to them. And data shows that consumers would be willing to pay a $100 premium for as device to get unlimited music over its lifetime, or $7-8 a month in extra subscription charges.

To be a Punk Marketer you have to put yourself in the shoes of the consumer (however smelly they might be) and imagine what they want and need. As a starting point, assume there is no brand loyalty, even for a brand as “cool” and iconic as Apple, and that consumers are fickle and will change allegiance as fast as it takes to say, “but this ones cheaper!” Research is useful for that, but so is intuition and common sense, and Jobs is a master at understanding what will appeal to consumers emotionally without having to see proof of it. And the other thing that Apple consistently does is to set its own standards, not be governed by those of the industry. Each product they come out with doesn’t just improve on the competition, it redefines the market. Sure, the iPhone has its problems (most of of them because AT&T’s network isn’t good enough), but it has set the standard for all future mobile devices leaving all but rival Nokia, with its new N-95 phone, scrambling in the dust.

Shopping at Sears is such a depressing experience. The decor is Dismal, the lighting Dull and the Displays dowdy. (Contrast this with Target stores, where you feel cool-as-shit just walking into the place.)

The only reason a consumer with any sense of style might be tempted to go to Sears is because of the prices on the boring stuff you just hafta buy - the vacuums, ovens and wotnot - otherwise you’d never make the trip. I went on one of those necessary-evil trips this weekend, to buy a stainless steel dishwasher. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot my heart sank. as I plodded through the store it somehow reminded me of an elderly person in a care facility just waiting to die.

But, beneath the dull exterior there are more sinister forces at play. Having picked a Bosch dishwasher as the one of my dreams and went to check out I was told the actual price was $200 more than the large sticker on the displayed model. Apparently the price shown was for the white model not the stainless steel. So, I wondered and asked, why put the cheaper price on the more expensive model? Eh? The shop assistant was sympathetic but unable to help. Apparently it is new company policy. Not something she agreed with, but there it was.

This practice that Sears head office has adopted in its wisdom is wilfuly misleasing. I think they expect people like me who are time poor to simply pay up. But, no, that would be succumbing to their wicked manipulative ways. I went home, found the same model online for way less than even the white model in Sears was being sold at and bought it there and then. (Shipping was free.)

So now I’ve been duped by Sears I won’t make the same mistake of thinking I have to suffer their stores to get a good deal again. I’ll order online instead and advise as many people I can to do the same.

Shame on you Sears.