10/04/10: The Science of Product Innovation

or Seriously, Your Teeth Can’t Get Any Damn Whiter…

A few years ago, my friend and I were complaining about the recent deluge in cookie “innovations”. I still really don’t understand the point of oblong Oreos or bags of Chips Ahoy Bites. What’s wrong with round cookies?  Were people complaining that these cookies weren’t cool or modern?  Is there really a need for Oreos to turn the milk different colors? Do kids not like white milk anymore?

As a person who dabbles in the world of branding, I know it’s a little more sinister than this. Fearing audience boredom with current products, Nabisco needs to make sure that we do not buy something else and ensure its audience stays “on brand.” So the reasoning goes, what people really need is a new cookie. Or a new old cookie. “It’s so not your Mom’s cookie!” It’s oblong! It turns the milk a different color! And there you have the “science of product innovation,” as it’s called in corporate speak. (I’m sure this term must offend real scientists.) As far as I can see, product innovation is nothing more than a sad, fairly obvious attempt by companies to make you keep buying the same product with a slightly new meaningless twist.

In this vein, we have the mindboggling wall of toothpaste at the drugstore. Strangely, my normally rational husband is obsessed with buying the latest toothpaste product. When I was in grad school, my professors always trotted out toothpaste as the prime example of brand loyalty. Your parents were either Colgate or Crest and thus when you went out on your own, you just followed along. While my family flirted with AquaFresh at my beseeching, ok begging, (I mean, talk about product innovation! It has three different colors and comes out of a pump!), we were for the most part, loyal to Crest.

When Erik and I moved in together, he brought his tube of Colgate to the relationship. Out of love, I acquiesced and tossed my Crest.

So I should have known something was awry when a few years ago he purchased Arm and Hammer Advanced White. When I looked askance at it, he pointed out excitedly that it had BAKING SODA in it! It was “Advanced.” It said so on the box. This one would really make our teeth whiter! (I was reminded of the bogus claims of Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound – don’t know about it? Here’s a link.)

And so began Erik’s endless quest for whiteness (my professors would be horrified): Crest, Colgate, Tom’s of Main, Arm & Hammer, Gleem (Ok, he never bought Gleem).  Erik was not bound by brand loyalty, but actually persuaded by spurious whitening “ product innovation.” Here are just a few of the products he purchased over the past couple of years (click image to enlarge). (Note this does not even include the many packs of whitening strips that have passed through our medicine cabinet.)

 All of this reminds me of an article I read a few years ago in The Onion, U.S. Dentists Can’t Make Nation’s Teeth Any Damn Whiter.

So I thought perhaps Erik had finally believed his teeth were damned white enough when he purchased the same toothpaste three times in a row. Our loyalty was established. Colgate. Total Whitening. My professors could breathe a sigh of relief. We were back on brand.

Until last week. Erik brought home yet another new kind of toothpaste. It was Colgate so I guess technically we’re still brand loyal… but this one is Max White. He opened it up and said, “Look, It’s got little whitening strips in it! Actual white strips! And the tube is clear.” As if that has anything to do with cleaning your teeth! Weird clear trends—anyone remember Crystal Pepsi?

Ah, the power of persuasion, I mean, innovation. Colgate should be proud of winning the toothpaste war in the Diehn household … at least until Crest ups the ante. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what happens when we run out of toothpaste.

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09/01/10: You’re Fired

“You’re fired!”

We all know this clip of Donald Trump as he leans over the table, pompadour perfectly coiffed, menacing finger pointing. I wish it were that easy.

I was fired once, as a college intern on a horrible trade newspaper. It was about indoor air quality, really.  My big “story” there was about an asbestos lawsuit in Florida. Anyhow, toward the end of my tenure, the editor called me in and said, “I understand you aren’t happy here.” I looked at her and said, “Uh, well where did you hear that?”, and she whipped out a paper and pushed it in front of me. There it was in black and white: a print out of an email I had written during a particularly boring afternoon. It was titled “A Monkey Could Do This Job.” Ouch.

“Kerstin, You’re fired.” OK, she didn’t say it like that, but gist was the same. (As you can imagine, I also learned a valuable lesson about employers and employee email.)

Well, recently I needed to fire someone. Not an employee though—a client. It was tricky. I did some good portfolio-level work for this company and on some level, kind of liked it. But then my contact left (and I now know why) and I was under the thumb of a raving lunatic.

Most of my strategies to fire this woman ended in failure. First, I said I had too much work and recommended two other designers. Neither worked out. She called me screaming about how incompetent they were and how could I recommend such horrible people. Then I conveniently had a baby. I thought this would be my ticket out. I still won’t forget during that first week after my son was born, the woman called me while I was breastfeeding and demanded that I email her a bunch of files. I had actually sent these files weeks before but she lost them. I told her I was in the middle of feeding my baby, and she said impatiently, “Well how long is that going to take?” Ugh.

Like the many-headed hydra, she recently came back. Like this:

Friday, 4:30pm: Email from her, subject line only, “R u around?” Um, I haven’t spoken to her in 6 months and we are not friends. You don’t do that to vendors. I decided to wait until Monday to deal with it.

Saturday, 2pm: Text from her: “R u around?”

Saturday, 9:30 pm (!!!!): Text from her: “Where r u?”

Ok, let’s stop here for a minute. It’s the weekend. If by around, do you mean am I in NYC with my family?, then yes, I’m around. If by around, do you mean have I been sitting here waiting to get underpaid and abused by you, then no, I’m not around. Who texts a vendor at 9:30 pm on a Saturday night? Actually, who texts a vendor at all? So not appropriate.

Sunday: 2:00 pm, Email (subject line only): WHERE R U? Yes, in all caps.

So on Monday, I was tempted to call her and bust out my best Donald impression. Instead, I sent a polite email saying that I don’t work on the weekends and that I’m not taking any additional work at this point. In other words, “Lady, you’re fired.”

 

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07/21/10: Stock Photo Fatigue

As a designer that primarily works with nonprofits, I need to bring in most of my projects under a tight budget. Because of this, I use a lot of stock photography. A LOT. I have combed the stock sites under client command for everything from a close up of a hypodermic needle to a cat hunting in a patch of clover to an “ethnically diverse” woman breastfeeding. In my searches I see many permutations of the same tired concepts. I’ve created a very unscientific categorization of these cliches. (#1 is at the top, it’s one of my all time “favorites.”) Click the image at right for samples from the rest of the top 10 categories that make me want to punch my screen. (No, I don’t know how to make the picture larger on this blog post, it just resizes the images automatically.)

 

As you can see, I sometimes find the process of searching for stock photos fairly tedious. Let’s just say I did not have to hunt very hard to find the pictures shown here. But sometimes, while I’m cruising around looking for a generic medical shot (often ends up being a stethescope or a bottle of pills or a hand on a medical file), I find photos that make me go huh? or ew, why?  Just when I was thinking I should make a follow-up blog post about this, I discovered someone already has an entire blog devoted to this at http://awkwardstockphotos.com/. Enjoy! Now I’m going to return to my quest of finding an image of a racially diverse classroom.

 

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06/07/10: Mapping Our Environment

I’ve always been drawn to maps. There’s something very satisfying about a simple visual document that gets you where you need to go. I’m thus very excited whenever I’m called upon to design a map. We’re so used to looking at google maps these days that we forget that maps can have personality and tell a variety of different stories. The first question is how much space are we mapping? Naturally a map of the United States and a map of Park Slope are going to look very different. The amount of information included is directly related to how much we are zooming in on an area. (So you’ll see my Sudan map has a very different look from my park maps.) The next question is what do we include? If we have a small focus, the tendency is to want to include everything. Working on the Highland Park map project, I learned a valuable lesson—sometimes you have to reduce elements to tell a better story.

Highland Park was a unique case. It was truly an unmapped park in the city of New York. I had to draw from geographical surveys, reservoir surveys, and some random bits and pieces that had been put together over the years. But more than that, I had to actually go to the park and visualize the space. The biggest challenge was trying to explain that the park’s dual structure is not just a visual break, but a physical break because the top portion is significantly higher in elevation. To get to it from the lower park, you have to climb a series of staircases (not ever shown in previous maps). The map started out as a simple locational device for the bathrooms and ball fields but it developed into a more complicated story of how much walking you need to do to get to these places!

The final thing that needs to be done to a map (beyond the actual cartography) is to give it flair and style. It needs to be reflective of its environment and depending on its location and function, it needs to tell a unique story. Each of these maps correspond to a different branding story told by the individual parks (click the image to enlarge). Riverside Park Fund’s ski map builds on the wayfinding system and color scheme I developed a few years ago. The FDR Park sign adds historical context and fun to an otherwise   simple unobstructed view. It’s a visual reference for the daily speed walkers to track their progress and for those more willing to engage, thes signs also detail significant historical information at that particular location.

So if anyone needs a new map, let me know. I’m happy to put on my walking shoes and visualize your environment.

 

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