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…

The emotional response generated by touch can be a powerful one, especially for individuals who are particularly sensitive to such stimuli. It is for this very reason that in 2003 the Illinois state Attorney General’s office even went as far as to warn holiday shoppers to be cautious around retailers who encouraged them to hold products and imagine the objects as their own when shopping.

Don’t touch. It creates such a chasm between the shopper and the seller. Not much room for the “try before you buy” gambit in those stores, that’s for sure. Fortunately perhaps, the opportunity to touch or try is now much more commonplace than it was when I was five – car dealerships, computer, hi fi, gaming and mobile phone stores, are obvious examples that spring to mind. While providing consumers with the immediate option to touch products while browsing is possible for all but mail order and virtual stores, there are still some real world stores in which “Thou shall not touch” remains the overriding tenet – typically an unfortunate consequence of the way their goods are packaged or displayed.

If you’re managing brands or categories on or off line where that do not touch mindset prevails, for whatever reason, it might be timely to consider the recent research on the power of the sense of touch by Joann Peck and Suzanne Shu published in the Journal of Consumer Research in October 2009.

Most people understand through personal experience that the sense of touch can be a powerful trigger for memories and emotions. Peck and Shu however investigated whether or not simply holding an object and imagining it is yours (whether you’re a buyer or a seller) influences your perceived psychological (rather than legal) ownership of the object and your perception of its value.

Using a variety of objects (Play Foam, Slinky toys, mugs and pencils) the authors were able to demonstrate that touch does indeed lead to increased perceived ownership and an increase in valuation of each object (if the object provides neutral or positive sensory feedback).

Importantly for on line store owners, they also demonstrated that for buyers or non owners the sense of perceived ownership could be significantly increased just with the use of either touch or ownership imagery. Ownership imagery also significantly increased perceived ownership and value of objects. The authors note that, “The use of ownership imagery to increase both perceived ownership and valuation of the objects was especially effective when touch was unavailable”. Clearly, there’s a very strong message in those comments for on line and catalogue retailers in particular.

Objects that were enjoyable to touch were shown to create an increase in perceived ownership and the positive affective reaction increased the perceived value of the object for both buyers and sellers. Touching objects that were less enjoyable to touch (eg the Play Foam) still enhanced perceived ownership but decreased the affective reaction (and so perceived value of the object in those circumstances did not increase).

Peck and Shu’s research certainly provides a possible explanation as to the relationship between touch and impulse purchase, and the success of tactics such as “free trial” periods. However, their work also highlights an opportunity for the owners of virtual stores. On line retailers who use ownership imagery as part of the interaction with potential buyers on line may be able to significantly increase perceived ownership and value, and hence the amount those shoppers are willing to pay to acquire the goods on offer.

The authors have shown the effect of ownership imagery is a powerful one, however, even then they may have understated the effect in real terms, as their experiments deliberately used products in which touch would not provide additional and meaningful attribute information. They recommend additional research should be conducted into “products that provide both positive sensory feedback as well as information through touch input”.

So, there you have it: merely touching an object – or even simply viewing imagery encouraging touch – results in an increase in perceived ownership of that object. Perhaps my mother, all those many years ago, already knew this to be true. She’d recognised even at the age of five my Gollum-like consumerist streak, and could see the future more clearly than could I. My little precious Mechano set/Scalextric Track/Raleigh Chopper/Rubik’s Cube/Sony Walkman/X Box 360/Flatscreen TV/iPhone… I’m sure you get the picture.

Next time I go shopping, come to think of it, I’’m going to try and keep my hands in my pockets just for once.

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? It often simply doesn’t exist in a form that would stand up to proper academic review.

Such was the case with management consultant Frederick Reichheld’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) which he grandly and, as it turned out, somewhat foolishly trumpeted as “The One Number You Need to Grow”. It was derived from asking people the simple question, “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend?” Once published in the Harvard Business Review it became a metric for the burgeoning word of mouth industry as a way to quantify positive word of mouth – on the misplaced belief that sound science underpinned Reichheld’s claim that NPS was a superior metric.

Independent research by Keiningham et al subsequently published in the prestigious Journal of Marketing however concluded Reichheld’s work was seriously flawed and there was very strong evidence it suffered from research bias. Another simple rule of thumb, on reading Keiningham’s paper, immediately sprung to mind: If it sounds too good to be true, it is!

And so in 2002, when authors Sheth and Sisodia published The Rule of Three: Surviving and Thriving in Competitive Markets, I was interested to read (but not convinced about the general applicability of) their claims. Sheth and Sisodia had established their own rule of thumb which they called The Rule of Three, stating an industry consisting of three large generalists and numerous smaller specialists generates a competitive environment that is “optimal” for firm stability and profitability. They further argued that a non-linear relationship between market share and profitability exists in these structures, such that small- and large-share firms (within boundary conditions) can achieve high profitability, while midsized firms are destined to languish.

While the Rule of Three seemed intuitively true in some respects, my cynicism and I slept well at night knowing it was at odds with several other conventional wisdoms of the day, and that it had never been subject to independent evaluation and testing – if it sounds too good to be true, it is! Or so I thought, until researchers Uslay, Alting and Winsor subjected The Rule of Three to empirical examination and published their findings in the Journal of Marketing in March 2010.

I’ve been sleeping a touch less soundly ever since – their findings, from more than 160 industries, supported the Rule of Three. They were also able to provide the following five key insights:

1. There appears to be a prevalent competitive structure for mature industries in which three “generalist” firms control the market.
2. Industries that conform to this structure tend to perform better than industries with a fewer or greater number of generalists.
3. Both “specialists” and generalists outperform firms that are “stuck in the middle”.
4. The performance benefits of market leadership appear to diminish with excessive market share.
5. The Rule of Three industry structure and its influence over firm profitability do not appear to be priced appropriately by financial markets.

So, what does this mean at a practical level? Uslay, Alting and Winsor outlined the implications of their research for the investor community, senior management, and for marketing managers. In the latter case they suggest a market leader approaching the upper limits of scale might best use marketing to expand the pie and protect rather than maximise market share. Large generalists, they believe, have much to gain from co-marketing with generalists in other industries or even with direct competitors (ie to recruit customers from non users rather than gaining them from competitors), or perhaps implementing an international strategy rather than trying to grow their domestic market.

Their finding that specialists generally perform better than what the authors call “ditch dwellers” also runs contrary to conventional wisdoms around the profit impact of market strategy, which typically views high performing small firms as mere exceptions. As the authors note, “This traditional view is myopic in that niche players have a collectively substantial role within the confines of differentiated markets. In contrast, we find high-performing, small market-share firms to be the rule rather than the exception.”

Uslay, Alting and Winsor believe their work supports Hamel and Prahalad’s earlier recommendations that specialist firms should focus on leveraging their core competencies, rather than diverting strategic attention to market share or firm size. Or in other words, dare I say, such firms should probably “stick to their knitting”!

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:

1. Appropriate: There needs to be a reasonable fit with the entity’s business purpose. If the name would work just as well – or better – for another entity (or product), then you probably haven’t quite got it nailed. Less-than-ideal example: Lusty (a children’s clothing label), Enima (a model of car).
2. Distinctive: Any name should stand out from the crowd and from other names in its category. It should also separate well from ordinary text and speech. The best brand names often have the authoritative weight that a proper noun provides. Example: Charlies (a juice brand), Katipo (a beer brand)
3. Appealing: Will people enjoy using it? Names that are intellectually stimulating, or provide a good “mouth feel”, have a head start over those that don’t. Examples: LexisNexis (an on line reference resource for lawyers), Polly Pocket (a range of toys for young children), Ferrari (a high performance car)
4. Concise: A name should be short enough to be easily recalled and used. It should be robust enough to avoid being reduced to a nickname. Less-than-ideal examples: National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Limited (a government-owned research company), Polytechnics International New Zealand Limited (educational and training services consulting)
5. Easy to use: Most people should be able to spell the name correctly after hearing it and to say the name correctly after seeing it. Less-than-ideal examples: Sussan (a clothing retailer), Apteryx (a clothing brand), Saatchi & Saatchi (an advertising agency)
6. Extendable: A name should have “legs”. That means it should suggest a visual interpretation or lend itself to a number of creative executions. Examples: Momentum (a recruitment company), Frenzy (a juice brand). If you are stuck with an existing not-very-extendable brand name, all is not necessarily lost. Delivery company FedEx developed a system of linking the FedEx brand with a real English descriptive word – for example, FedEx Freight, FedEx Box or FedEx 2Day.
7. Timeless: Names that capture trends (which are typically short-lived) soon begin to feel dated and will always be associated with “yesterday”. Less-than-ideal examples: Dew Drop Inn (the tea rooms your parents always went to), Ta Da!! (a women’s clothing store). FCUK had great short-term recognition, but might not turn out to be in the best long-term interest of the clothing brand.
8. Transferable: Names should be portable across product, national and cultural boundaries so they can be applied consistently to meet a wide range of marketing opportunities.
9. Exclusive: A name needs to be capable of being owned and protected; otherwise its value can be diluted through imitation. You need to know if it is available for registration as a trademark or domain name.

Source: Everything Design Limited and Marty Neumeier’s book The Brand Gap

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:

Negative advertising is more likely to change votes than positive ads.

And yet there’s no shortage of research and anecdotal evidence that voters dislike negative political advertising. Similarly, other research suggests negative adverts reflect poorly on their sponsors and may reduce the rate of voter turnout (although there are other studies that show voter turnout may increase and that negative ads benefit society overall).

But regardless of our own personal like or dislike, negative advertising is generally accepted as being more noticeable and memorable than positive information. Remember National’s “Beaches – Iwi. Kiwi.” billboards? Remember Labour’s billboards from the same campaign? You see what I mean.

In previous research of voter response to negative ads, there was no definitive proof of any systematic effectiveness or ineffectiveness. Various authors have suggested such mixed results reflect the interaction of advertising valence and prior political preferences simply reinforcing an existing dislike of the candidate under attack (ie a confirmation tendency – negative ad effects may be limited to a “preaching to the choir” effect).

In the Phillips et al study young, university-educated registered voters’ reaction and decision making responses to negative and positive ads used in the 2004 USA presidential election (Bush vs Kerry) were recorded. As conventional wisdom would suggest, negative and positive ads created very different reactions amongst voters that were independent of prior preferences, suggesting a general disdain for negative advertising, “Even for a candidate’s supporters, a negative or anti-opponent ad was more likely to be counter-argued and deemed less persuasive and influential than was a positive version”, said the authors. So, no surprise there.

Negative advertising prompted more migration of vote intention.

But the effect of negative advertising is not quite that simple. As the authors also noted, “Overall, negative advertising seemed to prompt more migration of vote intention, surprisingly both counter to and in the direction of the ad”. The experiment design allowed the researchers to separate the effects of reinforcement, backlash, defensive reactance and position change, to give some insight as to how voters integrate negative advertising with their prior candidate preferences.

Negative advertising by candidates has two possible downsides: it may create a backlash amongst current supporters who dislike negative advertising to the point they may change their opinion of the candidate who approved it; or it may lead voters in the opposing camp to shore up their defenses and strengthen their position, thereby making them even more resistant to subsequent messages.

The strengthening (or attitude polarization) effect is a theoretically expected response, but has always been difficult to measure because few studies have dealt with issues contentious enough to create such partisan motivations. The defensive reaction by an opposing camp is the more common response identified, however, it is usually of limited importance given it’s a strengthening of opinion amongst voters unlikely to vote for the opposing candidate anyway. It’s only if the negative advertising generates anger within the opposition camp to the point that it increases the opposition’s turnout at the polls that the cost would be more significant.

The backlash effect, however, certainly does have the potential to be a very significant cost as it may adversely impact otherwise established votes.

But what of the upside for a candidate? Despite being clearly disliked, negative ads have been shown to have a significant advantage over positive ads in reinforcing and increasing the commitment of voters who support the attacking candidate.

Negative ads also had a position change effect (ie may cause people to change their vote) for some who initially opposed the candidate, causing the authors to comment, “This is perhaps the most interesting result of the study as the size of this effect is essentially the same as the reinforcement effect”. The authors were unable to show any significant position change resulting from positive advertising.

While they pull back from concluding that negative advertising always works relative to positive advertising, they do observe there appears “to be legitimate routes to persuasion for negative advertising, enlightened by considering voters’ prior preferences and an understanding of the campaigns’ objectives”.

So what does that mean for Kiwi voters contemplating the run up to the next election? Well, the writing’s on the wall. Negative advertising will produce more attention and information processing, even among those voters who appear to have already made their decision.

In the opportunistic world of MMP it would seem an almost certain bet that one party or another will see negative advertising for what it is. A way to get noticed – with a very good likelihood that as long as the party does not do anything that would create a backlash amongst its existing supporters, the upside’s better than any downside, in the short-term at least.

Putting personal preference aside,  that’s a good steer for both Act and the Mana party in 2011 I suspect.

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.

Our company specialises in brand positioning and design and, typical of service companies, we work closely with many of our clients. But the design business has some interesting, perhaps unique characteristics. One being that almost everyone has a belief in his or her own design aesthetic (“I know what I like”).

When clients become involved in design projects it usually adds value and improves outcomes, but there are also times when a client’s insistence that we run with their own personal preferences is to the detriment of the project overall. The hard part, of course, is deciding when to tell a client they’re making a mistake (the “why have a dog and bark yourself” gambit).

So it was with a degree of vested interest that I began to read the research published in the Journal of Marketing by Eric Fang from the University of Illinois. Fang’s research assessed the value of customer participation in terms of its impact on new product innovativeness and speed to market. It makes for interesting reading for manufacturers and marketers alike.

Fang structured his research to answer two key questions:

1. Are there trade-offs associated with customer participation in NPD; and
2. Can customer participation undermine new product innovativeness and speed to market, even as it facilitates one but not the other?

As a starting point, Fang differentiated between two different kinds of customer participation in OEM manufacturing—customer participation as an information resource (CPI), and customer participation as a co-developer (CPC), and examined their effects on new product innovativeness and speed to market. His analysis generated two key findings.

Involving OEM customers in product development is not always desirable.

The trade off between new product innovativeness and speed to market, he believes, is explained by how the network between OEM customer’s retailers and distributors is structured. “CPI has a negative influence on innovativeness when downstream customer network connectivity is high, but a positive effect when it is low”, says Fang, “In contrast, CPI has a positive effect on speed to market when downstream customer network connectivity is high and no significant effect when it is low”.

His research also suggests that when process interdependence is high, CPC has a positive influence on product innovativeness but slows speed to market. When process interdependence was low, CPC significantly improves speed to market but has no effect on innovativeness.

These findings, Fang believes, have clear implications for management. Firstly, the involvement of OEM customers in the product development process is not always desirable.

CPI is likely to be beneficial in circumstances where the manufacturer’s retailers and distributors are disconnected and not in regular communication, as the diverse exchange of information generated by CPI can enhance product innovativeness. The risk, however, is that incorporating diverse and conflicting information into the development process may also slow down NPD to a material degree.

The involvement of OEM customers in a significant proportion of NPD tasks also delivers its own set of pros and cons. Clearly, if development requires a high level of interaction and coordination that involves customers, CPC has the potential to delay the development process. On the other hand in circumstances where it is possible to partition tasks between the OEM manufacturer and the customer, and leverage each party’s specialist knowledge, then the speed of NPD may actually increase.

Sadly, Fang’s research findings do not solve the dilemma that faces design companies when clients insist on the use of their own personal favourite colours or typefaces. However (and more importantly I concede), it certainly does provide manufacturers and marketers with guidance about how best to manage customer participation in new product development to deliver improved innovativeness and enhanced speed to market.

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.

Most people experience similar feelings when they arrive at a function where they know few if any of the other guests, or they join a new group where they don’t know what’s expected of them or how to behave. For many people, it takes a bit of an effort to start up a conversation; to remember the names of the hosts and other guests for anything more than a few moments as conversation topics ebb and flow; and come to understand how things work in new situations. It was certainly always the case for me when I was fresh out of university and in my first “serious” full time job.

The whole process can be quite daunting, particularly if you’re not overly confident or an extrovert by nature. But it becomes so much easier when a host can greet you on arrival, share their experiences and introduce you to some of their other guests. Suddenly, you’re not the lone outsider who has to break the ice and make their own way – instead, you’ve become someone to be welcomed who will be given the information they need to fit in and understand what is on offer and what is expected.

That role of welcoming newcomers and helping them gain knowledge and learn the behavioural patterns of the host organisation is of tremendous value to any entity looking to increase its membership, but also to any business looking to target younger generations of consumers who might prefer to research and interact on line than deal with the organisation face to face.

That’s a very powerful place for any brand to put itself in.

These 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.

The development of intelligent virtual agent technology has made it easier for online consumers to get the information they want, when they want it, without having to speak to someone on the phone or in store. This is of particular value to organisations targeting younger consumers, but even more so when there’s a need for those younger consumers to become familiar with complex services that require a significant degree of customer involvement and knowledge (navigating university enrolment systems, taking out insurance, registering with Inland Revenue or opening bank accounts for example).

In a recent study published in the Journal of Marketing (March 2011), researchers Köhler, Rohm, de Ruyter and Wetzels have investigated the impact of on line agents (aka virtual service employees) on what they call “newcomer adjustment” in the banking sector. The results suggest how organisations can best align interaction content and style in social agent-customer interactions, particularly those involving younger consumers, and so are certainly worthy of further discussion.

The on line agent’s ability to deliver functional content was shown to have a strong positive effect on newcomer adjustment and helped ensure customers were more likely to gain self-confidence in their dealings with, and feel more accepted by, the virtual agent’s firm.

Köhler et al found the on line agents in their study were more than just conveyors of information. They became “socialisation agents” that were able to influence customer attitudes and behaviours and satisfy the consumer’s demand for richer on line interactions by including social content in their interactions with customers, as long as social content did not dominate the interaction with the customer (as this had a negative effect on newcomer adjustment).

A sophisticated socialisation agent able to communicate functional and social content can be a significant driver of positive performance outcomes. This effect on newcomer adjustment can be further enhanced through the use of a proactive agent interaction style (ie not merely reacting to customers’ FAQs or requests but initiating and maintaining customer interactions), which requires the agents to have access to past interaction content so they can better respond to each customer’s needs.

Socialisation agents not only make it easier for “digital native” newcomers, they also make it easier for existing customers to learn more about service offerings they’ve not previously utilised or may not even have been aware of. Socialisation agents also increase the consistency of service delivery, as even the most highly trained real life customer service agents are subject to human error, their emotions and mood swings etc that might adversely impact the dynamics and quality of the customer-company interaction.

There may also be significant cost savings to be gained once the virtual agent is up and running (in terms of lower demand on call centre resources and in store staff time) as well as the chance to increase revenues through up-selling and cross-selling by virtual agents almost as a matter of course.

Another exciting implication for marketers that Köhler et al highlight is that socialisation agents are likely to have use and value beyond the confines of the company website, on SM sites like Facebook and Twitter, and even in communicating with multiple customers at the same time (facilitating social interactions between different customers perhaps). Now that really is an opportunity for delivering a bigger bang for bucks.

It is clear from the work done by Köhler, Rohm, de Ruyter and Wetzels that virtual agents have the potential to play a key role in a firm’s social marketing and communications strategy, simply because they’re not just providing newcomers with information, but are also perceived b y younger customers in particular, to be acting as a friend, mentor and advisor. And that’s a very powerful place for any brand to be able to put itself in.

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.Of the CMOs who have made it to the top management team, some are a lot more powerful than others, and the strength of that power is key to the influence a CMO might have on the decisions made by the firm’s senior management team.

Having previously demonstrated that the presence of a CMO does not positively or negatively affect firm performance (this work was previously discussed on Everything Blog in an article titled “The State of Modern Marketing – Houston, we have a problem”), authors Nath and Mahajan‘s latest research published in the Journal of Marketing in January 2011 looks at the factors that affect CMO power, and whether or not CMOs with more power contribute more to improved firm performance than those with less power. It makes for an interesting read because it also provides guidance to CEOs as to when having a CMO within the top management team is likely to enhance firm performance… and when it might not.

Nath and Mahajan found the following to be true:

1. CMO power is greater when the CMO position is also responsible for sales than when it is not.
2. Marketing experience in the top management team reduces CMO power. Conversely, the lack of marketing experience within the top management team increases CMO power.
3. CMO power increases sales growth in firms with top management teams that have a relatively high proportion of divisional heads and decreases ROS for firms pursuing unrelated diversification.
4. Firms where CMOs have responsibility for sales have superior sales growth to firms where CMOs do not have that responsibility.

There are some clear implications for CMOs and CEOs in Nath and Mahajan’s latest research.

Powerful CMOs might be detrimental to company performance

Firstly, CMOs without responsibility for sales should improve their cooperation with sales heads while maintaining their long-term orientation (and sales their short-term orientation). Secondly, CMOs should aim to optimise the provision of resources they control (including those originating from the sales function if possible) through to the top management team. In general terms, CMOs need to control critical resources and become central, effective and nonsubtitutable to/within the top management team.

The authors also suggest CEOs can improve company performance if the CMO position is given greater power in highly divisionalised settings and if it has some control over the sales funtion. However, they also note that in firms pursuing unrelated diversification, a powerful CMO position might then be detrimental to company performance.

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.

“It’s great to know our work is recognised and valued by the international design community,” says John Varcoe a Director at Everything Design in Auckland, “Our emphasis has always been on delivering strategic outcomes for our clients, rather than designing outputs that simply have a pleasing aesthetic. That strategy-led approach ensures the work we produce for our clients delivers strong and effective communication of key messages, and this characteristic is likely to be what made our work stand out from the crowd.”

The two New Zealand projects featured in Victionary’s I Love type Series were the Pink Ribbon Day public awareness campaign posters Everything designed for the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation and the Mirror on the Wall Best Awards campaign promotions they created for the Design Institute of New Zealand.

Suzanne McNicol, Marketing and Communications Manager for the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation was not surprised to see Everything’s work included in such august company, “Everything continually produces work that’s right on target for our key audiences, is beautifully brand-aligned and highly effective”, she said, “Everything’s Pink Ribbon Day poster campaign for the Foundation was so strong and such a perfect fit for the out of home medium that it enticed Adshel to make the NZBCF a recipient of two free Adshel campaigns – now that really is effective communication!”

Now that really is effective communication!

In the recent Girls Night In fundraising campaign for the Breast Cancer Foundation, Everything designed posters that used night time illumination of the outdoor advertising panel to reveal a second stage to the creative treatment.  A range of different silhouettes were printed on the reverse side of the poster to represent the different age groups in the target demographic. The clever use of the silhouette technique reinforces the key message — encouraging women to spend a night in with friends and donate the money they would normally spend on a night out to The Foundation’s support programmes for women with breast cancer.

The inclusion of two New Zealand design projects from the Everything Design studio in the I Love Type Series certainly seems to cap off a very good period for Everything’s Creative Director, Jason Saunders. His work on the City of Salford destination brand was recently included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, which opened on 2 March 2011 and runs through to January 2012.

As MOMA’s exhibition promotion notes, ”Since the late 19th century designers have celebrated the socially uplifting promise of industrial production, believing the true path to modernity lay in standardization. A designer’s job was to conceive a model that could be converted into a working prototype—a blueprint for a series of objects, each identical and manufactured according to exacting rules. Yet it is human nature to crave individuality, and since the 1980s designers have sought to inject “chromosomes” of unique identity into objects produced on an industrial scale”.

While digital technology has made the dream of creating families of objects with common traits and distinct behaviors a reality, Saunders says he did not set out to work that way, “Destination branding’s not about the objects per say, but I certainly did have the desire to create a unique identity and attitude for the City of Salford,” he said, ”The Salford brand embraces all the various partners and stakeholders working to improve the image of the city, from the city council and local strategic partnerships, to major players in the city such as The Lowry Hotel and Salford University.”

Saunders’  Salford street sweeper is certainly a wonderful part of the Salford brand mix. He successfully challenges people’s preconceptions of Salford, reflecting a spirit of self-confidence and optimism through a strong, modern and forward-looking visual treatment. MOMA’s inclusion of the Saunders’ street sweeper in the exhibition puts the spotlight on a fantastic example of modernist design influencing and enriching every day life.

Saunders, who has also worked on destination branding projects for Liverpool, believes the Salford brand is something New Zealanders might want to take a closer look at, “It’s not at all about a logo as so many local destinations seem to believe–the brand strategy for Salford provided an integrated platform for a region-wide approach to positioning and marketing the city to a range of audiences, including investors, corporates, researchers, residents, local and regional government, students and tourists. It’s not at all about the logo or an expensive ad campaign, but how the brand could help guide and shape the attitudes and perceptions of all of Salford’s stakeholders.”

Probably more famous within the international design community than in New Zealand itself, Everything Design is known best for the strength and effectiveness of its brand strategy-related work for the likes of Telecom New Zealand’s Chorus brand, DB Breweries, the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation and New Zealand’s global technology exporter Endace.