The Roses Student Awards: UK UG graphic design competition
"The Roses Student Awards is a platform for students to get agencies attention! The awards recognise fresh and original work representative of the next design generation. Roses Student provides the opportunity to get undergraduate work infront a first class judging panel. Is there a diamond among the rough? 10 agencies, 10 judges, 10 chances. Who will make the cut!? ...
The Roses Student Awards deadline 15th Feb 2013. The work will be judged 14th March with the winners being revealed on the night in a networking party at Islington Mill, Salford."
(Roses Student Awards)
Fig.1 2012 winner Abigail Burch (Nottingham Trent University) Brief 1. "Alternative Therapy: Tayburn".
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
1000heads: The Word of Mouth People
"Traditional marketing was built for another age. Today a new creative energy is required. Sociability is the media of now. Social connections happen everywhere, every minute of every day, in the real world and in the digital world. Social communication touches everybody. Brands are carried along in the stories people share, and the conversations they have, in social media, on their mobiles, and face to face. We help brands to get their stories to travel further and faster, building sustained relationships and advocacy as they go.
Our story began in a (thankfully converted) cowshed back in 2000. We saw that a new age of communication was emerging, an age of social communication. Since then we have worked with some of the world's best businesses helping them to behave in different ways; encouraging participation and collaboration with their audiences. We now have an 90-strong team of talented thinkers, doers and sometime dreamers who bring social communication to life for brands around the world."
(1000heads)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Welcome to the Era of Design
"All businesses, no matter what they make or sell, should recognize the power and financial value of good design.
Obviously, there are many different types of design: graphic, brand, packaging, product, process, interior, interaction/user experience, Web and service design, to name but a few. ...
You see, expecting great design is no longer the preserve of a picky design-obsessed urban elite - that aesthetically sensitive clique who'd never dare leave the house without their Philippe Starck eyewear and turtleneck sweaters and buy only the right kind of Scandinavian furniture. Instead, there's a new, mass expectation of good design: that products and services will be better thought through, simplified, made more intuitive, elegant and more enjoyable to use.
Design has finally become democratized, and we marketers find ourselves with new standards to meet in this new 'era of design.' To illustrate, Apple, the epitome of a design-led organization, now has a market capitalization of $570 billion, larger than the GDP of Switzerland. Its revenue is double Microsoft's, a similar type of technology organization but one not truly led by design (just compare Microsoft Windows with Apple's Lion operating system)."
(Adam Swann, 5/03/2012, Forbes)
Fig.1 "Mille Miglia" bicycle by VIVA [http://www.vivabikes.com/].
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Green USP? Greenwashing and design in the age of ethical consumption
"In the contemporary era of heightened green awareness and 'ethical consumption', major companies have quickly realised that consumers are looking for greener brands, writes Lynne Ciochetto. Design has played a key role in reinventing company profiles with new environmental messages, and designers should question these claims.
As companies have started using green concepts or claims in their advertising, branding and marketing a trend has emerged called 'greenwashing'. 'Greenwashing' refers to marketing is that is misleading, untruthful or creates false impressions (see Fred Pearce's column in the Guardian)."
(Lynne Ciochetto, 24 March 2010)
Fig.1 2010 Toyota Prius "Harmony" TV Commercial
Fig.2 Nick Turner, "BP Exec", from Art Not Oil satirising BP's revamped green corporate identity.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Market research should focus on emotional need states in all consumers rather than focus on segments as if they are stable and mutually exclusive
"The concept of the USP, as seen by the brand manager, is to focus on one main selling benefit of the brand versus those offered by competitors. The strategic thinking which goes into selecting a brand's USP resembles warfare between competitive brands, with imagery maps reflecting the battlefield, and positioning statements as the weapons. But where is the consumer in all of this?
Consumers do not want one characteristic or one USP. Consumers want it all. Why should a consumer have to choose between the longest lasting pain reliever versus the fast acting, or the safest, most gentle, or the cheapest priced? The concept of marketing a USP is not a consumer-centric view. It is not a realistic, relevant reflection of how consumers operate. Furthermore, a USP for a brand is limiting in appeal by the very definition of trying to sell one main benefit to the sub-segment of consumers which most values that one benefit. Consumers want pain relievers to be fast-acting, and safe, and strong, and inexpensive and more.
The consumers' emphasis on one or more of these benefits changes from occasion to occasion, and from mood to mood. Consumers are not stable, nor consistently rational. Although segmentation research allows us to place consumers into distinct groups, and to put a descriptive label on each person, consumers are not fixed with just the characteristics of the one segment. The reality is all consumers have all emotional needs within them. Some elements/associations are stronger and some are weaker, depending on the person and the day. Our emotional desires fluctuate such that what appeals to one person in one week might be less appropriate for the same person the next week. These fluctuations are hard to target because a population of consumers are all in fluctuation. This is why segmentation research can be so frustrating to market researchers when trying to neatly explain brand behaviors. Unique segments do not uniquely buy just one or two uniquely defined brands. And segments are not stable.
Instead, brand managers should be targeting all consumers with the intention of painting their brand with the emotional associations the brand can satiate. Market research should focus on emotional need states in all consumers rather than focus on segments as if they are stable and mutually exclusive. "
(John Hallward, 2007)
2). excerpt from John Hallward (2007). "Gimme! The Human Nature of Successful Marketing", Wiley
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
