gwendolyn faith is not a crayon.
I work in advertising. I play in the kitchen.
I’m part tweenager. (Look at my iTunes playlist.)
I’m part Grandma. (Look at my oversize cardi collection.)
I’m part Romy or Michelle. (Look at the height of my hair.)
As a Christian, I'm learning how to glorify God in the everyday. To live into the status quo, like Jesus' own Manchurian candidate, and seep grace through its cracks.
I wish my life were a musical, but other than that, I’m pretty content.
(No surprise I also like to Yelp.)
I was reading this great book, and I found out something which may be useful for economists: that moment when you make a decision among close alternatives, is purely emotional. This is what the book has to say:It’s purely emotional, the moment you pick. People with brain damage to their emotional centers who have been rendered into Spock-like beings of pure logic find it impossible to decide things as simple as which brand of cereal to buy. They stand transfixed in the aisle, contemplating every element of their potential decision—the calories, the shapes, the net weight—everything. They can’t pick because they have no emotional connection to anything.
This is why companies are now starting to limit the variety in their product lines (the consummate example being Apple, of course), because it makes it easier to make an emotional connection and create post-hoc rationalizations about your choice. It may seem a little manipulative but this decision-making heuristic makes our lives easier; one just has to realize their cognitive biases.
It’s quite in line with the bounded rationality of behavioral economics; that people make choices rationally but only up to the extent of what they know and how they think. If this interests you, Predictably Irrational and other books by Ariely are great reads.
I read Predictably Irrational a few years ago, but three years into my advertising coursework, the book would be worth another read through a more critical eye!
Research on the so-called Zero Moment of Truth — the moment when a shopper goes online to research a product and decides whether to make a purchase — suggests consumers often make purchase decisions in-store, as they read peer-to-peer reviews on their smartphones. I wonder if emotional consumer reviews are more emotional than more matter-of-fact or features-driven reviews. How do reviews, which so many shoppers rely on, facilitate an emotional connection, anyway, if they can at all?
Developing a communications plan for a class project with Billiards on Broadway, a local three-in-one restaurant, bar and pool hall.
Can’t deal with how awesome this is. What a cool way to integrate retail with pop culture.
Ssense, a luxury retail company based out of Montreal, has recently introduced what they’re billing as the “world’s first interactive shoppable music video.” And yup, it’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. I Think She Ready features Diplo, FKi, and Iggy Azalea all decked out and styled in brands and items carried by the site, while WireWax technology, which enables users to tag videos in essentially the same way they would a Facebook post, makes the “interactive shoppable” part possible.
(via hashtagwhatif)
In the past year or so, we’ve been witnessing the convergence of several trends – a shift in online behavior, where users of social media tend to be gravitating toward micro-social networks and smaller, more socially curated sites; the rise of micro-lending, micro-giving, and localism; the growth and innovation occurring in qualitative market research; the higher levels of participation and quality in smaller-scale forms of research; the pruning of “friends” in social networks and tightening of privacy controls, and other phenomena. While disparate in their form, they are all manifestations of a few basic principles:
- People want to feel that they are having an impact.
- People want smaller, more intimate, more meaningful social circles.
- People want brand relationships with a human face.
- Companies need to better understand their customers, in a human and not purely data-driven way.
- Privacy is starting to matter again.
It was about persuasion, but now it is about conversation—and it makes sense, of course. No one wants to just be talked at.
Don’t forget the miniaturizing of other things as well, like desserts and packaging :D ~ cake pop, anyone?
love.
Baudville Survey Card
I ordered certificates from this company and look at the little gem that came in the box. Very clever, luv it!
(via stepa)
Creative Utah Museum of Fine Arts Advertisement: See the world through the eyes of Monet and 22 other masters
Clever and attention-grabbing!
Categories are interesting to anthropologists. They are the “buckets” into which we organize the world. More exactly, they are the buckets with which we read the world. We have a bucket called “bird.” Inside that is a bucket called “Robin.” As spring approaches, we see winged creatures on our lawn and the buckets leap to the ready. Robin! Bird! Spring! This is culture in action.
From this point of view, Pinterest is a treasure. It’s a chance to see American culture as if from a glass-bottom boat. Yes, some of it is a little reductive. But sometimes what people stuff into the categories is a chance for us to see exactly what they mean. Pinterest is a little Rosetta Stone, a table of equivalencies. Oh, so that’s what YOU mean by home. Here’s what I mean. In a culture that flowers with an increasingly diverse variety, this is useful.
Grant McCracken in the Harvard Business Review post “Pinterest as Free Market Research”
I should probably write my own commentary instead of posting quotes all the time, but hel-lo, I have a research proposal to write! Actually, I have two research proposals to write. Ouch.
advice for the next generation of account planners from victoria kaulback, brand planning director at y&r new york
click through for advice that’s a little more serious for those of us who favor insight to investigative journalism and goat cheese.
Planner Dan Pankraz in his smart blog post Ten Tips for Crafting a Great Communications Challenge — The Heart of a Great Creative Brief
Dan already knows what I’ve been learning over the past year or two.
Don’t settle for “persuading” or “repositioning.”
Identify a stale, conventional belief about the brand, product category, consumer or culture; defy convention; and change the target’s behavior for good.
I bet Dan and I would get along.
