More than "viral marketing" is needed for success.

Fast Company has an article, "Is the Tipping Point Toast?" that expands on Malcolm Gladwell's idea of the "Tipping Point." He essentially expands on the idea of who really are the influencers in the marketplace. The article is interesting and worth reading. However, using the popularity of music as "product" he concludes from his research that Madonna's success is simply random - and I disagree with that.

The problem with such academic research is the lack of real world context. In today`s proliferation of product, having that right product is the first essential - so give the "material girl" credit, her`s has not been merely a random walk. She has recreated her success over and over through the years by her constant reinventions. Madonna is a savvy businesswomen who stays in tune with the tenor of the times with the product that she offers.

In today`s hyper-competitive environment one winning suite is not enough,four fully integrated winning hands are required to win - product, pricing, marketing and sales. (Although a three-legged stool can stand up nicely. Ex. Granite became the countertop of choice in this country with little to no marketing. It is a fabulous product made competitive by the invention of the artificial diamond and the availability of container shipping and sold through a short supply chain.)

Although given short shrift, the real story is in the article: "When he tried to pitch "some company`s shitty product," he couldn`t force it to go viral."

Slow Home Report - January 30, 2008

Sanity and Sustainability meet good design. I hope this movement has a future as outlined by the introduction to this website. Slow Home.

The Blur comes to the Built Environment

Much esoteric philosophizing and intellectual building goes on in the architectural world, for material suppliers questions of the validity of some of the ideas and how they will manifest is always in the forefront of their product planning. As a consultant, I regularly wrestle with how culture, technology and design ideas will combine into new forms. I realize that the influences and outcomes are never linear, but rather more organic, often even spiral. On my return from Art Basel Miami, I have been obsessing over how THE BLUR will affect the built environment. Of course, it already has - Diller + Scofidio created a building for the Swiss Expo 2002 called the BLUR Building that was essentially a scaffold with mist created by 31,500 high-pressure nozzles. Their description states: "Upon entering the fog mass, visual and acoustic references are erased, leaving only an optical "white-out" and the "white-noise" of pulsing nozzles. Blur is an anti-spectacle. Contrary to immersive environments that strive for high-definition visual fidelity with ever-greater technical virtuosity, Blur is decidedly low-definition: there is nothing to see but our dependence on vision itself." Ah! but this rarefied thinking doesn't translate to my clients, nor do my clients make water.

So I am no wiser, I keep searching and realize that one of my previous presentations held the answer - the ribbon building I was showing as a new new trend in a 2005 presentation at Coverings showed what blur would look like in the built environment. Surfaces will no longer be distinct, floors will meld into walls and flow into ceiling and technology makes it all possible. Now that is something my clients will understand - a new way of seeing their material with more square footage to cover!

Always looking for confirmation, I found it on a most spectacular architectural website: Iconography: In a post called "The Endgame of Minimalism," Michiel van Raaij states, "For the first time in architectural history the floor, wall, and ceiling not only had the same color, but became part of the same surface." He also sees "the end of paint, stucco, or foil" putting all but concrete, metal and glass manufacturers out of business. If I follow his reasoning, I guess that I'd better put less emphasis on color and more on texture, it 's all seems rather blurry to me.

It was inevitable

It is amazing how quickly some trends run the race. I have no idea who is most responsible for much of the "lighting as material" in the built environment but I suspect that Color Kinetics, recently bought by Philips Solid State Lighting Solutions, played a large part in the growth of the incorporation of light into and as a part of architecture. When I presented their Lightwasher wall washers and keychains as Christmas presents in 2002,(only a few museum shops were selling them) the recipients didn't buy into the amazement and effusive enthusiasm I showed for the product. Needless to say, they did not share my view of how important this technology could become in our industry. I am even more amazed at the skepticism of the of the writers for Live Design in their report on the Spring Lightfair 2003, who professed it would prove to be just another fad "Some industry insiders predict that it will be five to 10 years before LEDs are mature enough to replace other light sources" was their take on the subject less than 5 years ago.

This is where technology met architecture, and moved it along the trend curve much faster than the usual speed of change in the decorative segment of the construction industry - and the public adores it, with youtube leading the way.

Louis Vuitton Staircase

This is the most recent of the dozen videos on youtube of the staircase at Louis Vuitton in Rome. Light is now as much "material" in design and architecture as more traditional surfaces. Viral marketing is becoming an important part of every business segment and content is an important part. (None of the dozen image sequences on youtube are the same images.) LV's viral store design is no surprise, as they have relied on the viral marketing of their logo from the very beginnings of their business.

A picture is worth 1,000 words

Sam Berlow and Cyrus Highsmith of The Font Bureau Inc., Boston composed a defining article for the 2008 election in the Boston Globe. The article: "What Font says 'Change'?" speaks in terms of graphic design, but what the public sees on bumper stickers in the months ahead and what it says about each candidate really hits you in the face visually with little further explanation needed. In terms of graphic design Obama is the clear winner. Kudos to the writers for showing us so clearly how images affect our lives.

Pepsi Jazz Ad in People Magazine

Advertising goes beyond a flat sheet of paper. This Pepsi ad in people magazine has sound, smell and 3-d pop-up at a cost of over $2 per.

Marketing to the IKEA Generation

If your are marketing interior finishes or furnishings to the demographic that IKEA serves, (Generation X and Y and second home owners) spend some serious time online with Design Sponge to see how this generation lives and what they love for their homes. This blog speaks volumes in this generation's language. Design Sponge is immediate, authentic, candid, personal and entirely delightful.

Light focuses the blur of materials

As with most products in he marketplace today there is a glut of products and the only way to differentiate is to be either CHEAP or "remarkable." according to Seth Godin. Graniti Fiandre lets light create the focus for their new porcelain tile - Luminar - the surface design interacts with light to make the metallic finishes appear unique and truly "remarkable."

Gender Roles coming into Focus

The days of defined gender roles have come to a screeching halt. When I came home to my neighbor and her daughter building a concrete block wall, I knew the world had changed in some inexorable way. (It is totally beside the point that I stripped my own roof 30 years ago - I was-after all-invincible, I was one of Bob Vila's sidekicks on This Old House and we were a little wacky and way ahead of the curve.) 30 years later, we have PINK suede tool belts and steel toe work boots for "her" available at Home Depot Canada and Porsche Design Kitchens by Poggenpohl for "him." Trends in the construction industry take a long time to establish themselves, but who would have guessed 30 years?

Day 1 - Mark Moves Into IKEA

The BLUR of Art Basel Miami and Design Miami

There was a pervasiveness of BLUR at the art shows - in our culture, life seems to blur in many ways. For example, there has been a full generation of the blurring of gender roles, more recently it is the blurring of gender itself. On the beach side stage was a performance by the performance artist Donald Urquhart and his high camp "Palace of Tears" which left gender irrelevant. This fall there were three prime time television characters with ongoing roles whose gender was more than slightly bent. TV may not offer the high art of Art Basel, but in its cultural perception, it is art. The art in Miami expressed the ambiguity of our times.

Freud touched on the topic over a century ago: “Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.” Does art help us cope with the times? Taking up art appreciation certainly beats taking tranquilizers or hours on the couch. So, ambiguity is one of those topics best left to the arts community, rather than to marketers. Although the photographer Michael Prince shows how marketing may tap into this trend through blurring in this photo shown in Miami by the David Gallery . His photo called Push forces the viewer to focus on the topic at hand in an almost ethereal way.

In the built environment this blurring trend will lead to more subtle and less defined transitions from one surface to another for the moment. Like every other fashion cycle, this blurring will eventually lead to a new (as yet undetermined) FOCUS. Stay tuned.

The LIGHT of Art Basel Miami and Design Miami

I still can't get my head on everything that went on at these shows, other than it was all fabulous. For a marketer, the age-old question prevailed: Does life imitate art or does art imitate life. The best that I can ascertain from my days in Miami is that "art" has to be watched because, often unknowingly "art" is first with the perception and expression of what is happening in the culture. Photography is an immediate art and is often first with the impressions of what is important in the culture. Lynn Bianchi's photographs shown by the Joel Soroka Gallery, besides being gorgeous, made some important points:

• Light becomes the object, rather than as a way to light other objects, just as we are seeing light as material in the built environment.
  
• The booth showed only her body of work, this singular focus conveyed a much more powerful presence than displays of various artists in many of the booths.

Marketers are so often tempted to "show it all," often loosing impact, again proving the power of editing.