Everything Blog

I can still remember my mother telling me many years ago, in a department store I know not where, to look but do not touch. And, on other occasions, to look with my eyes and not my hands. I’ve heard similar instructions being given to young shoppers with adults in tow many times over the intervening years, and seen numerous (and fairly aggressive it always seemed to me) “If you break it you own it” signs in stores that more explicitly convey the same risk and threat combo my mother was trying to import when I was young.

The reality is, those retailers that do not encourage shoppers to touch the goods they have on offer might well be missing out, big time… Read on…

I’m sure most of us are familiar with the phrase “a rule of thumb”; some of us might even use one or more rules of thumb in our daily lives. Sayings just like these:

One hour flying equals one day driving.

$1 in capital allows you to increase your assets by $10.

A user should be able to navigate to any page on your site within 3 or 4 clicks from the home page.

The efforts of any employee must generate 3-5 times what the company pays that person.

They typically seem to have a simple logic that’s hard to deny. However, sometimes simple things are simply that, and they have little real value in an increasingly complex world.

How many marketers believe the cost of customer acquisition is five times higher than the cost of retaining an existing customer; that a satisfied customer is likely to tell five other people, while an unsatisfied one tells 11; or that it’s important to keep existing customers happy, because satisfied customers will tell their friends all about their experience and this will increase sales? Many of us do, but where’s our proof?  Read on…

Naming new brands or products, or renaming existing brands can sometimes be problematic.

While hitting the market with the wrong name is more likely to be a missed opportunity than a disaster, the right name can certainly give your brand a push-start and, in some cases, help the company/brand carve out a niche that others will find difficult to predate thereafter.

The nine-step test below is something we use here at Everything Design. It’s not a list of absolute must haves (it’s very difficult to tick every box, particularly if you’re developing a brand name that needs to be trademarked internationally), but it is a useful checklist to test just how various options stack up.

Here are some of the key points you may need to consider: Read on…

I like Easter (well the chocolate actually), Christmas and Father’s Day – some things that come around on a regular basis are great. But other recurring decimals are less so. Think the post-Christmas Visa bills, the in laws’ annual visit, and the forty-something health check (and all that that entails). The bad pennies, so to speak.

And then there are local and national elections. With their protracted foreplay, petty politics, uninspiring policies and people, and the relentless and formulaic party advertising. Just another bad penny in the public purse.

In the forthcoming New Zealand elections however, the tension between the Maori and Mana parties – not to mention Harawira and Act’s willingness to say exactly what they think – things look like they’re going to be a little more “interesting” than normal. And negative advertising’s almost certainly going to play a part in the election and in shaping voter perceptions and opinions. For better or worse.

The question is does negative political advertising actually work? Research by authors Phillips, Urbany and Reynolds published in the highly respected Journal of Consumer Research delivered voters some very bad news:

Read on…

We’ve all heard the service industry’s clarion call, “the customer’s always right”. But is that really the case? I’ve always believed good service provision does not necessarily mean “doing everything the customer wants” so much as bringing the expectations of the service provider and the customer closely into line.

Over recent years there has been a significant increase in the involvement of customers in new product development (NPD) in an attempt to enhance the innovative appeal of new products and speed up the development process. Conventional wisdom says this is a good thing… but I’m sure I’m not the only one to have witnessed instances when customer participation has had an adverse impact on project outcomes. Read on…

If you’re endeavouring to position your brand as a means of self-expression for your target audience in the belief that it will mean you’re far less likely to compete head-on with your traditional competitor brands–your confidence may sadly be misplaced.

John Varcoe’s article published by Australia’s Marketing Magazine features recent international research that challenges some of the conventional wisdom around the value of lifestyle brands and the risks they involve. It’s an important message for any marketers considering building a lifestyle brand.

You can read the article here.

Young consumers, or “digital natives” as they’ve been labelled, share information on line as part of their daily routine, and their purchasing behaviours and preferences are guided by their involvement in social network dialogues within virtual communities and on blogs. On line social agents can have a dramatic positive impact on the online behaviour and attitudes of young consumers interacting with brands. Read on…

Marketing is not accepted as a true profession by some business executives, others see marketing as more of a tactical rather than a strategic issue, while some even go so far as to question marketing’s validity and value. This makes it difficult for marketers to gain a seat at the top management table in any firm where beliefs like these prevail.

Despite such concerns, there have been regular calls (mostly by marketers themselves, but also by some academics) for more marketers to sit at top management team tables to help ensure the customer’s perspective can be adequately incorporated into long-term planning and decision-making. Several authors have also demonstrated the presence of a chief marketing officer (CMO) within a company’s top management team is an indicator of the status of marketing within the firm. Read on…

International design publishers Victionary have recently published a two volume I Love Type Series, featuring the very best of the world’s graphic design typography.

New Zealand design company Everything Design is the only New Zealand company to have been included in the I Love Type Series, which includes work by leading international designers like Experimental Jetset, Dani Navarro, Un.Titled, Company, Browse, Big Active, Meta Design AG, Triboro and Bunch. Read on…

The exhibition, titled Standard Deviations: Prototypes, Archetypes, and Families in Contemporary Design will launch in New York on 2 March 2011. The exhibition includes an example of work by Jason Saunders, creative director at Everything Design Limited in Auckland,  developing a place brand for the City of Salford in the UK–the very pink Salford street sweeper. Read on…