Archive for 2006

Saks Fifth venue have a brand new identity thanks to one of the greatest design agencies in the world, Pentagram.

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2006 was meant to be the year that TV advertising bit the bullet. However it has seen its fair share of top quality advertising.

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The king of the planning blogosphere, Russell Davies, has recorded a series of podcasts with Richard Huntington, Planning Director at United London. Russell describes Richard as

“doing more rigorous, useful and nuanced thinking than any planner around. It’s particularly worth paying attention to because he’s an actual working planning director not one of us pontificating, blogging freelancers who aren’t really at the coalface.”

Can’t say fairer than that. You can listen the first one here. And the second one here.

Here’s a little gift to IF! subscribers: a 64 page document with wonderful photography of the best of the Holidays 06 windows in New York City. Photography by David Pinter.

NYC Holiday Window Profile PDF

The hi-technology Jawbone bluetooth headset hits US Cingular stores today so we sat down with founder Hosain Rahman to talk about his new product and the market needs.

Congratulations, we saw your product on the front page of the WSJ. The bluetooth headset market looks crowded: Why did you get into it?

We believe the market is expandable. The market was crap and the offering sub-standard. Headsets have been made until now as an after thought: cheap microphones and plastic made in Asia and imported to the US.

We decided we wanted to bring advanced technology to the market, so we used technology found normally in military use. We wanted to apply design so we turned to Yves Berhart. We wanted to provide care so we used medical grade plastic because this thing is touching your skin all the time.

We also provide customization. You get four different ear-loops and four different earbuds to fit your ear perfectly.

How does it work?

It understands when you’re speaking and cuts out the other noise. In two ways: a sensor monitors the vibrations when you’re speaking and we have two microphones scanning what’s going on. The microphones by default clear white noise but they also learn dynamically. As you walk from office to street to taxi to store, the headphone listens and adapts to take out the background noise.

What is the consumer need for such a complicated product?

Mobility depends on audio quality - and that is influenced by network quality and device quality. The word ‘adapt’ is key to the way we are pitching this product. We are helping people truly become mobile with their mobile phone.

Will we see a change in consumer behavior pushed by the introduction of technologies like this?

What we see is a proliferation of audio interfaces: iPods, phones, record-decks, Skype. In the past we’ve used multiple ear-pieces and headphones - what we call audio gateways - we see this all converging especially with the adoption of Bluetooth on phones and music players. As a business, we see this as important category - we want to dominate the audio gateway category.

Thank you and good luck.

Jawbone

EXTRA EXTRA: Making unboxing videos seems to be all the rage right now, so we tried our hand at recording the unboxing of a Jawbone headset we were given. Apologies for the sound quality - iMovie can be a little crap sometimes.

Tris Hussey over on Business Blog Consulting has some tips for PR folk on pitching bloggers story ideas:

* Do your research first
* Don’t e-mail out of the blue with a pitch
* Don’t call on the phone right away to push your pitch
* Do tell the blogger why they were picked.
* Don’t just say “I think this would be interesting for your blog” , unless you’ve already established a relationship with the blogger
* Don’t be offended if they pass
* Do thank them if they post
* Do track mention of the pitch topic, you might be getting slammed or miss a great post

A case study in pitching bloggers : Business Blog Consulting

Reveries republishes the salient points of an article on Brooklyn Industries in Inc magazine:

Actually, their overall marketing budget will continue to represent “roughly the same portion of revenue (two percent)” as before. It’s just that instead of spending their dollars on ads, Lexy and Vahap will invest in better window displays and fancier catalogs. “We were shocked to see how little impact our ads had,” says Vahap. “It was a painful decision, but we cut them off.”

reveries.com > marketing insights + ideas » Blog Archive » Brooklyn Industries

Over on the Worldchanging blog, packaging designer Wendy Jedlicka explains how to start creating sustainable packaging. She says that he criteria for Sustainable Packaging are quite clear, and you really only ask these simple questions:

• Does it make us or the planet sick? Don’t do it!
• Can we use renewable resources, energy as well as substrates, and then use them again without going back to virgin sources?
• Are we doing it efficiently, considering all costs (logistics, materials use, recyclability, stakeholder issues, etc.)?
• Are all components doing what they’re supposed to do?
• Do they protect, inform, and sell with an added bonus of restoring some of the resources we’ve already wasted as well as increase positive consumer perception?

WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future: Sustainable Packaging and Design

This is the window of a designer-esque thrift store in Chelsea, NYC. Everything in the store can be bought in the usual manner, but the stuff in the window is only available via online auction. You can either use the kiosk in the store to place a bid or go home and plant those hurried bids in the last 60 seconds. All money goes to AIDs & HIV charities.

Housing Works