Category — Consumer Electronics

Let your creative people take a bath in data. By Beth Ann Kaminknow. Data, and its sister, analytics, are the new sexy in advertising and marketing. Every agency and company now has an in-house data and analytics practice. It is blasphemy even to think of making any business move without the aid of sifting through mounds of data, given its ability to lead to better (more accurate) decision-making.

So, with all of this data at our fingertips, you would also expect that we are becoming smarter, more efficient, and productive marketers. Perhaps in some instances this is true, but in many cases we have yet to optimize a data-driven creative process. We are overflowing with data, but there is a critical missing link … read >>

Because shoppers are averse to paying a “green premium,” marketers are re-framing energy efficiency as cool technology, reports Bryn Nelson in the New York Times (4/11/12). In other words, in addition to buying “a 60-inch television boasting killer picture quality, you may get extra satisfaction knowing that your engineering marvel consumes only as much energy as a 75-watt lightbulb … Newly honed pitches steeped in consumer psychology are linking up the traits people crave — cutting-edge quality, say, or convenience — with the energy savings and reduced emissions championed by environmentalists.”

Whirlpool learned this lesson the hard way back in 1994 with its Energy Wise refrigerator “which created the impression that buying one entailed a sacrifice.” The brand did better with its “sharply styled and high efficient Duet frontload washer, introduced in 2001, which “allowed a large capacity, washed more thoroughly than a top-loader and was gentler on clothes.” The larger story is how such appliances affect energy consumption in aggregate.” The Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, for example, “says that a regionwide shift to high-efficiency televisions could yield enough energy savings to power more than 290,000 homes each year.”

With this in mind, the alliance in 2008 started the Energy Forward initiative, which involved placing special labels on televisions meeting certain energy-efficiency standards and offering “a financial incentive of $5 to $15″ to retailers carrying the sets. The idea is to frame “efficiency” as another feature of a well-engineered television. So far, the initiative has “saved the region enough energy to power more than 10,000 homes for a year,” according to the alliance.” In a separate campaign, the alliance is promoting “ductless home heat pumps that double as air conditioners.” While the pumps save an estimated “25 to 50 percent on heating costs, the primary pitch has been to comfort and convenience.”

The rate of technological change has gotten so fast that we need to inform the design to reflect it," says Ryan Anderson in a New York Times piece by Steven Kurutz (3/29/12). Ryan is director of future technology for Herman Miller, and he works with a "design team to come up with answers to vexing, internet-age questions like what the home office should look like when the iPad and other tablets and laptops have freed us to work anywhere." Among the imponderables is "whether people prefer to use such devices on a work surface or, say, on the couch." Among the challenges is making the furniture look good, too.

"Seeing a beautiful piece of furniture in a beautiful space littered with cords and cables is not a great experience," says Ryan. "Making them discrete is important." Over time, this is a problem that may solve itself. "What’s interesting, from a design standpoint is that the computer gets rid of so many things," says Harry Allen, an industrial designer. "You don’t need clocks because they’re on our phone … A lot of things that used to take up room, like records and books, you don’t need." Ikea is among those picking up on this, having re-designed its Billy bookcase so it is "deeper because so many people were using it to hold everything but books."

Philippe Starck refers to the process of "dematerialization," or the "elegance of the minimum." As to the future of design, says Philippe, "There is no future." He predicts that eventually "we’ll all be implanted with microchips and we’ll be the product." In the meantime, Yves Behar of Fuseproject, a design firm, says furniture designers have not kept pace with consumer needs. "We’ve had technology in our living rooms for 10 or 12 years, and furniture has not changed at all in response." He sees a future in modularity, so that "you would be able to modify the couch that you’re using in a way that makes it adapt to new technologies."

Within two short years, Pinterest "has become the favorite website of moms, do-it-yourselfers, home cooks, brides-to-be and others," reports Douglas MacMillan in Bloomberg Businessweek (11/21/11). If you’re not familiar with it (membership is by invitation only) Pinterest is "a kind of social network that centers around finding, collecting and sharing images from across the web." Members can browse each other’s "boards," which "are basically curated collections of photos, usually centered around a topic such as food or clothing."

An overwhelming majority of users — about 70 percent — are women, but the site was co-founded by three guys: Ben Silberman, Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp. It was Ben, who collected stamps and coins as a kid, who noticed there was no place online where people could collect stuff. "Not everyone’s a writer, so blogging doesn’t make sense for everyone," he says. But coalescing around shared interests occurs naturally, so it’s a way for, say, bridesmaids to share dress ideas, for example.

Pinterest hasn’t made any money yet (it has $37 million in funding), but Ben thinks there’s a natural commercial connection. "People are planning their vacation, they are redecorating their home, they are planning their wardrobe," he says. "They are going to Pinterest to get inspiration for the most important life projects, which correlates to the most important purchasing events in their life." He also thinks Pinterest has something over Google and Amazon in that regard. According to ComScore, Pinterest attracted 3.3 million users in October, up from just 418,000 in May.

"Oh for the days — not so long ago –when a boy’s world would have fallen to its knees before a new Ducati design," writes Frederick Seidel in the New York Times (11/6/11). Frederick is worried that "motorcycles — even superb and lovely Italian motorcycles from the land of Donatello and Bertolucci" are "being replaced as love objects, as arm candy, by other more contemporary show-off desirables." He is speaking specifically of electronic devices, and even more specifically of those made by Apple.

"The iPhone 4S, the iPad 2, the 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air computers — these are the sleek gorgeousness young people go on about, have to have, and do have, in the millions," Frederick writes. "These machines, famous for the svelte dignity of their designs — and of course, far less expensive than a motorcycle — are a lens to see the world through and to do your work on. It’s their operating speeds that thrill. Young people cut a bella figura on their electronic devices." Above all, it is the young men — who used to buy motorcycles before a recession-induced coma — about whom Frederick is most concerned.

Instead of hankering after the latest sport bike — motorcycles that "perform with brio but have no practical point to make" — they are instead "standing in line outside an Apple store, patiently waiting to buy the latest greatness … They are buying a slice of what Apple does — and how it does it — and how it looks doing it. They are buying function but, just as important, they are buying glamour. The device enhances the buyer’s sense of self. It helps the person think and at the same time not think. Once, not so long ago," Frederick writes, "motorcycles did the same thing."

"She who can afford a tablet tends to be a higher spender in general," says Sephora’s Bridget Dolan in a Wall Street Journal piece by Dana Mattioli (9/28/11). Bridget, like other marketers, has discovered that the "conversion rate and average order size" is greater for shoppers using tablets than those using PCs or mobile phones. Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru confirms the observation, noting that the conversion rate for shoppers using tablets is four or five percent, compared to three percent for shoppers using personal computers. Orders sometimes are 10 to 20 percent bigger among tablet shoppers, too.

While it’s true that tablets "still account for only a small percentage of overall e-commerce … they are punching above their weight." What’s more, e-commerce is the fasting growing sector for most retailers, who are "posting double-digit revenue gains each year even as in-store growth remains muted. Around three percent of the nearly $150 billion US consumers spent online last year came via mobile devices, of which tablets are a rapidly growing component, according to market research firm comScore, Inc."

At this point, "only nine percent of online shoppers own tablets," but they "tend to spend more time on the web after buying a tablet and nearly half shop from the device," according to Forrester. These consumers do tend to be wealthier, and report being drawn in by the touchscreens "and a portability that helps users get more comfortable than when surfing on PCs." Blake McCrossin says he didn’t expect to use his tablet for shopping but says he’s already finished his Christmas shopping because of it. "The visuals and graphics are amazing, and I get caught up in impulse buying," he says.

Pantone color 12-0752 — aka "buttercup" — is the perfect shade of yellow for a best-selling banana, writes Martin Lindstrom in the Wall Street Journal (9/17/11). Less attractive is Pantone 13-0858, or "vibrant yellow." Buttercup, it seems is "one grade warmer, visually, and seems to imply a riper, fresher fruit." It’s just one of the many illusions of freshness foisted upon consumers by marketers, and revealed in Martin’s latest book, "Brandwashed." According to Martin, Heinz works a related trick with its ketchup, which he discovered during an experiment with consumers around the world.

Martin asked his subjects to empty their refrigerators and then rank and replace each item based on its perceived freshness. Heinz ketchup consistently was ranked fresher than "lettuce, tomatoes and onions." Most consumers couldn’t tell Martin why they ranked ketchup tops in freshness but he says he knows the reason: "Even though it is made from tomato concentrate, Heinz plays up its ‘tomato-ness’ and its deep red color — the shade of a right-off-the-vine beefsteak tomato."

Much of this psychology, says Martin, is rooted in "fear," and the marketer’s understanding that the "illusion of cleanliness or freshness is a particularly powerful persuader." He says this is why the first thing you see when entering Whole Foods is flowers — "among the freshest, most perishable objects on earth." It’s also why retailers set their refrigerators to make sure the milk sweats and spritz their produce, even though doing so promotes rot. Bubbles are another biggie — in beverages and shampoo alike — signaling freshness and cleanliness, reassuring us that we made the right choice — and ensuring our continued loyalty.

Ren Ng has come up with a camera that can re-focus a picture after it’s been taken, reports the Economist (9/3/11). The camera, known as the Lytro, “uses an array of several hundred thousand microlenses inserted between an ordinary camera lens and digital image sensor.” A light ray passes through the main lens, just as it does on a conventional camera, “and then through one of the microlenses” before hitting the sensor. “By calculating the path between the lens and the sensor, the precise direction of a light ray can be reconstructed” afterwards.

This means that "it is possible to determine where the ray would have struck if the focal plane had been moved" — effectively re-focusing the lens and potentially bringing any (or every) point in the image into focus. It all sounds kind of complicated, but the thing is, "the camera itself is simple. The main lens is fixed in place; there is no auto-focus, autoaperture or other machinery which needs to be activated every time a photo is taken." There’s no lag-time "between pressing the shutter-release button and actually capturing the image." Instead, the snap is "truly instantaneous, just as they were in old snapshot cameras."

In addition, because the “lens is preset always to capture the greatest amount of light possible, exposure time can be short, even in poorly-lit conditions. The main downside is that the images are low resolution, “which works perfectly well online, but will not pass muster in print. This might not matter, though. Nowadays, people make fewer photographic prints, especially large-format ones where resolution counts. By contrast, billions of photographs are shared online each year.” Lytro plans to enable Lytro users to “upload the image data and the processing tools to Facebook and other social networks.”

"The SX-70, designed by Edwin Land and unveiled in October 1972, was the iPhone of its day," writes David Colman in the New York Times (9/11/11). Made by Polaroid, the SX-70 "packaged cutting-edge technology in a stylishly slender design and became instantly desirable, selling 415,000 units in 1973." Its innovations were no match for the digital era, though, and in 2008, Polariod stopped making film for the SX-70. And yet its allure lives on for a die-hard group of enthusiasts, among them fashion designer Robert Geller.

Robert’s father, Wolfgang Peter Geller, was a photographer, and Robert himself studied fashion photography at the Rhode Island School of Design before turning to fashion design. His father had given him a Hasselblad some years ago, but in 2001, Robert came across an SX-70 at a flea market. "I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen," says Robert. It wasn’t just that the photos were developed instantly; it was also "its drawbacks: its limited focal range, which tends to blur everything in its path, the distinctive yet unpredictable color profile that can wash out features and details."

"If you want clarity, this isn’t the camera," says Robert. "This is more romantic. Like when you look at pictures from the ’70s, and they’re something beautiful even if not accurate." He’s aware that several iPhone apps can ape the Polaroid look, but that doesn’t do it for him. "That’s a fake," he says. "It doesn’t do what the Polaroid does. This is a thing: it gives you something you can hold on to that you can’t change." Lucky for Robert, a group of former Polaroid empoloyees formed The Impossible Project, and began making film for the SX-70 again. "It’s not that I’m such a nostalgic person," says Robert. "I love the present. But your memory is selective."

Barry Judge of Best Buy re-imagines retail in 140 characters or less. By Tim Manners. With some 18,000 followers on Twitter and more than 2,000 tweets to his name, few marketing chiefs have embraced emerging media as personally as Best Buy’s Barry Judge.

As music and movies migrate from discs to downloads, and consumer-electronics devices grow ever smaller, the acres of retail that once were so formidable suddenly may not be so desirable anymore. As a big-box retailer, Best Buy has no choice but to figure out how to make digital media part of its solution, and Barry is thoroughly absorbed in that challenge … read >>