rise of rust, recycled ritual

This class had a lot of content, some of which was geared more towards people starting a tech corporation than anything else but it tied in well with the previous marketing and creative planning classes.
Vision: Great businesses don’t start with a grand vision. They begin with “therefore, what?”: asking questions like “how could something be better?” or “What if there was this new type of product?” start a company with innovative ideas. Then as time goes on, products get more complicated, new ideas and technologies come up, new needs, later the products are revised, and an empire is built slowly out of a question about what could or should be. Companies start better when its about more than just making money, they are more likely to spend their money with a company with meaning that they feel a connection to. The lecturer recommends that mission statements do not work, but mantras do: a few words to explain the company and the “why” about the company’s purpose for existing. This isn’t just for the external world but also for employees to understand what their company is about to its core. Planning: Don’t worry about your prototype being exactly perfect, get it out into the market and see what the consumer response is, don’t just do market research and wait it out. Most entrepreneurs are too attached to their original design/product and hesitant to develop it and edit it later. Don’t spend months on end figuring out the market, use “the 24 hour business planning rule” – you have 24 hours to map out the plan, then you go talk to the consumer base.
Minimum Viable Product (ship, then test. Get it out there, then test, then improve)
If products are disliked, don’t waste all your time and energy trying to fix them. Focus on what consumers do like, and improve them.
What’s the planning process? “Weave a MATT: Milestones Assumptions Tasks and Tests”
Milestones: Critical priorities that have to be focused on: figure out the big milestones you need to survive! Product releases, what is the price point, raise capital, hiring a team. Assumptions: Layout your assumptions and gather realistic evidence and test the assumptions. You assume a lot about how your business will succeed, how consumers will respond, what works and what doesnt in your business model, how the product performs, how sales will work, the advertising budget, whats the international market, whatever. Tasks: Theres a lot of tasks needed to start a company. They need to be assigned to the right people. Taxes, renting the space, insurance, etc Tests: Test product, test employees, test market, test customers, continue to improve. Launching: People make decisions on emotion, not rationally. Buying is an emotional process. You need to have a story that reaches people, touches them. Your relationship with your customer is about how the products change people, “what makes your company loveable?” Find the middle ground between the statistics of your product and creating a sense of wonder, excitement, inspiration in your customer. When it comes to new technology, sectors, products, you have to plant seeds with a lot of different people across the market and then focus on who responds, and put your money and energy into those groups. Embrace small businesses or little known media people instead of waiting to be one in a long list of products or companies on a better known person or businesses’ website. Most people don’t learn from their mistakes until theyve reached failure, but instead you should try to understand how you could fail using a scenario (like, the new product was poorly received) and figure out what theoretically went wrong, and what the response should be. This could give new insight into the weaknesses in the company or launch or product, and get people to think proactively instead of idealistically. Lecturer refers to this as a “pre-mortem”.
Fundraising: “Is venture capital the right path for my company? Is my company venture fundable?” Venture capital is a unique form of funding with specific requirements: high-growth company, you have to be turning into into a very high-grossing company quickly. The best way to build a company is through revenues (ideally) Corporate partnerships, grants, personal money are alternatives to venture capital. If you have investors, your vision needs to align with theirs. You have to get the details right when you set up your company before getting funding. Have people know their roles. Protect your intellectual property and understand patent filings. Theres a difference between a visionary and a business-minded person, an investor is looking for someone business-minded. Hire a lawyer that understands business. Get your team together: you need to have a team that is “fundable”, you can’t just be an individual with an idea. Have a team with different perspectives and experience. Just like you need to emotionally connect with customers, you need to emotionally connect with investors as well. Its usually uncomfortable for entrepeanurs to ask for money and takes a very long time with a lot of meetings, so again you have to figure out if its right for you or your company.
Pitching to Investors: Set the stage by preparing, come to your meeting with all the supplies you can, look confident, have a one minute explanation of yourself and what your company does, not an entire life story! Lecturer says he looks for a 10/20/30 rule for a powerpoint: 10 slides, 20 minute presentation, 30 pt font. Keep it short and basic. Whats your business model, product plan, etc The large text is so that you don’t have a lot of text and you don’t read directly from the slides which is unprofessional and unfortunate, and so that everyone can read what your slide says! Take notes during your meeting then summarize it at the end to understand what happened in the meeting. Be quiet and listen, let the metting flow. Better yet give a great speech and have a working model and do it without a powerpoint!
Socializing: Build a social media platform for your company – free ad space. This is to promote. How do you post? Brief posts work best, find the best time of day to post, post fairly frequently. Have a good quality photo or video with each post to attract attention. Lecturer uses the example of NPR as a great media presence, that provides mostly great, interesting content and occasional promotional content.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Alignment: Fundamental principle of design. Things that are aligned are percieved to be more related than things that aren’t aligned. Elements that align with reading styles strongly influence how you percieve what your reading (meaning, if a paper reads left to right for example or top down). Example: poor designed ballots can lead to errors in voting. Elements in design should align with at least one other element, so that compositions are coherent and organized

Feature creep: an expansion or addition of new product features beyond original design. Designers or marketers that add features without really understanding the customers need. More is not always better, it can overwhelm and confuse consumers. Editing original design to include a feature can be detrimental

Desire lines: Traces of use that indicate perferred methods of interaction (wear and tear on objects, fields, walkways, keyboards, phones, etc). Find how out how people actually use something, then use your findings as a blueprint for design. Designers dont always know best. User-centered design philosophy: develop an understanding for how people interact with a product and let this guide the design. (Marketers would be very helpful with this)

Iteration: Reapeating a set of design and development, building upon the last draft of each until you succeed. Focus on getting through multiple prototypes quickly to get to the best end product (fail fast, fail often)

Hicks law: the time to make a decision increases with the amount of options, too many options means taking more time to respond. KEEP IT SIMPLE!

Left digit effect: consumers respond more emotionally to the left digit (as in, theres a difference to the customer response between 29.99 and 30.00 even though they are essentially the same). Prices ending in .99 began to appear in newspapers in the 1800s, around the time the register was invented. A price that ends in .99 required cashiers to open the register and make change, and more visually accounting for the transaction. But now its a marketing tactic to subconsciously make people believe the price is less. This could have to do with the fact we read left to right. Though, we also tend to believe the quality of a product decreases if it is not a whole number, and subconsciously view the unrounded price as meaning we are being decieved.

Root cause analysis: a way of understanding problems in relation to their causes. Its a challenge in design to develop a deep understanding of problems, not just see a single cause

Sunk cost effect: tendency to continue investing because of previous investments in the project, even when the payout wont be worthwhile

Selection Bias: people are pattern oriented. Selection bias is a distortion of statistical evidence, where the evidence is skewed because of lack of randomization, that distorts the conclusions as well. You have to collect data from every source, or use data from random sources.

Ikea effect: the act of assembling a thing increases the perceived value of the object to the purchaser – example given, boxed cake’s sales shot up after changing the formula from “just add water” to “add eggs, and make frosting with decorations!” People want low effort and a high perceived level of contribution

Red effects: a set of cognitive effects that happen when exposed to the color red. distinguishing red from other colors (after black and white) is our oldest color-recognition ability. Red is noted by the lecturor as the “Color of blood and fire”, the color that makes women more attractive to men, wearing red can lead to a competitive advantage in sports, shows dominance, example: “red power tie”, impairs problem solving and creativity, Designers use red to increase attractiveness (such as red lipstick, red sports car)

Black effects: a set of cognitive effects that happen when exposed to the color black. white and black were the first hues humans could see, associated with evil: theres even difficulty getting black dogs and cats adopted because people perceive them with hesitation, nightime, black glossy products are seen as timeless and high value, black is associated with dominance and authority.

White effects: a set of cognitive effects that happen when exposed to the color white. White is seen as moral and good, prophets are depicted in white and light, daytime, believed to show honesty and fairness, white glossy products are seen as timeless and classy

Weakest link: the use of elements in a product designed to fail to protect the most important elements in the design in case of failure, by disconnecting systems when they fail, or containing damage after systems fail

Supernormal stimuli: variation of a familiar stimulus that elicits a response stronger than the original stimulus. instinctive responses can be exaggerated by manipulating the trigger stimuli. Exaggerated features of superheros or barbies, high concentration of sugar in candy, younger people are more susceptible to this

Performance load: the mental and physical effort to complete a task, cognitive (mental effort) or kinematic (physical effort). When performance load is high, errors and time spent on task increase. For entertainment products, it should be in the center, where its not too complex to not understand for most people, but not simplistic enough that it is boring. Increased automation helps bring down performance load.

Crowd intelligence: an emergent intelligence arising from collaboration of many peoples conclusions. The average estimate of a crowd is more accurate than all of the seperate individual estimates. Works best on simple problems with clear answers, not for creative problems.

Forgiveness: one of the most important principles in design, designs should help people avoid errors and protect them if they do fail, prevent harmful conditions, warn people of harmful conditions that are ahead, request confirmation for deletion or override, provide a fail response from the product.

Aesthetic usability effect: beautiful objects are percieved to be easier to use than unattractive objects, even if they are the same. Perceptions of products influence how people will continue to regard objects, like the marketing class I took before talked about, if you are aiming to influence change and a movement, you have to make them think about all products differently by their exposure to your project, one easy way to do this is to make them attractive and simply functional. The lecturor quoted “form should follow function” – Louis H Sullivan, father of modernist architecture. Generally, making things work well before making things beautiful is wise. Aesthetic usability effect is the exception to this.

80/20 rule: pareto principle – in any large complex system, a large percentage of the effects are cause by a small percentage of variables (often, 80/20). Focusing on the 20% means a high impact for a low cost.

Baby-face bias: tendency to see things with baby like features as having cuteness and personality characteristics like gentle nature, helpless, and honest, applying to all anthropomorphic things (example, disney princesses, vw bug cars, etc). If it benefits a product to be the opposite, they will have sharper edges (example, sports cars, superman, etc). Bias is stronger in women and children. Would benefit a product like companion robots or automated household devices.

Cognitive dissonance: a state of mental conflict that results from incompatible attitudes, thoughts or beliefs, that makes people want a resolution to the tension (to fix the conflict). Example: create cognitive dissonance in a consumer, making the consumer ask themselves whether what the advertiser states applies to them, which often results in the person subconsciously agreeing with the ad. Like with any product advertised as a “must buy” product if you love someone, the person will ask themselves, why havent I bought whoever this product if I love them? In which case they often do.

Gloss bias: general human preference for glossy rather than matte objects. why do we like glossy objects? Example given, apple stopped making matte screens despite their superiority in favor of glossy screens only on their laptops. Why they did this as a company that states its revolutionary and different from other tech manufactorers is simply that the glossy display outsold the matte ones in store. Bias is weaker in people with experience with a variety of finishes, a well-read or experienced consumer will be less likely to buy glossy finished items than the general person.

Golden ratio: a ratio within the elements of a form, such as height to width, which approximates 1.618. Inherently aesthetic proportion found in nature and the human body. Now the standard for paperbacks, great structures often have this ratio. Only found to be beneficially preferred in linear or rectangular object design.

MAFA effect: Most Average Facial Appearance effect is when people find the most average facial appearance of a population more attractive than faces that deviate from the average

Archetypes: universal patterns of form, social role, and story that have appeal or influence. Archetypal forms include horns, snakes, provocative forms. Archetypical social roles include hero, rebel, trickster, lord. Archetypal stories include: quest, conquer, voyage, tragedy, romance. More effective with mass market audiences instead of niche audiences. Good for communicating cross culturally, increase appeal, or communicate on an emotional basis.

Face-ism ratio: the ratio of face to body in an image calculated by dividing the distance from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin by the distance from the top of the head to the lowest visible point of the body. Images depicting a person with a high face-ism ratio (where the face is more prominent in relation to the body depicted) focus people’s attention on the persons inner attributes like personality, instead of the persons physical attributes, and with a low face-ism ratio, when the body is more prominent, people pay more attention to the sexual or ornamental features of the person.

Flow: a state of problem immersion so complete that awareness of reality is lost. Balances task difficulty and skill level needed at equally increasing volumes. Person continues to be challenged at their skill level, creating clear goals that build upon time, and positive feedback.

Freeze-flight-fight-forfeit: when people are exposed to stressful situations, they respond by FFFF. When threatened, people instinctively freeze to gather information and understand the scenario, next is to flee in order to escape, when impossible the response is to fight, and lastly is to forfeit and surrender. It is important for design systems to understand the stages of stress response. Simplifying tools and controls helps with the tools being operativeable by people in stressful situations, like how emergency exits are designed (simple use, visibility, etc)

Legibility: something as simple as the size of typeface can be the difference between a product being workable or not. Legibility is the visual clarity of text based on size, typeface, contrast, spacing etc

MAYA: most advanced yet acceptable – “useful for determining the most commercially viable aesthetic for a design. Aesthetic appeal is a balancing act between familiarity and novelty…the most advanced form of a design that is still recognizable as a member of its product category will be the most aesthetically pleasing to general audiences”. Consider it when designing for mass market scenarios. Release innovations slowly and gradually, not all at once in one product.

Mental models: mental simulation of how things work, how you expect something to work based on your experience with similar things. Difficult to change. System model is how things work. Interaction models are how to use or interact with something. Engineers versus average consumer have totally different concepts of how an object works. There is not much understanding between both these groups, but designers can be the go-between of both groups. Engineers and designers should use their products, and observe users using these products, to not only have system model understanding but also interaction model understanding.

Shaping: breaking down a complex behavior into a series of simple behaviors which are trained one by one until the complex behavior is achievable. The complexity of the behavior continues to be raised to achieve rewards. One odd thing is superstitious behaviors: irrelevant behaviors accidentally reinforced during training, like when people unexpectedly score well on a test when wearing a certain shirt then wear their lucky shirt every time they have an important test.

Storytelling: Storytelling is evoking emotions or understanding through events presented to a consumer, particularly useful when its interesting, relevant, and makes people feel something. A great marketing strategy is that people dont buy objects, they buy objects with stories.

Waist-to-hip ratio: example, the “contour bottle” used by coca-cola beginning in the early 1900’s. Products that have similar ratios to the “ideal” body ratio of waist to hip in people (women 0.67-0.80, men 0.85-0.95). Many products use this shape and ratio for products. Objects can be feminized by making their “waist to hip” ratios closer to the female ratio, or masculized by making their “waist to hip” ratio closer to the male ratio.

Zeigarnik effect: tendency to experience intrustive or interruptive thoughts about a task that is interrupted or incomplete (something I wrote about in my previous book review: the riskiness of leaving a project half-done and procrastinate by doing another project that will then be less skillfully executed). Your mind seeks closure and seeing items completed, so your mind continues to focus on tasks still minimized on your mind’s desktop, they are still in your subconscious, taking energy. This can help you remember material better, such as if you take a break doing something unrelated, but feel driven to get back to the task due to the Zeigarnik effect!

Affordances: the characteristics of an object that influences its function or use (like a door that opens and closes in an obvious way) an affordance that doesnt work is when the form of the object doesnt align with how they are supposed to be used, like if a door had a doorknob but its actually a push door). Example given by lecturor is large walls afford graffitti, large walls that are already painted with images or covered with plants does not afford graffitti.

 

 

 

 

 

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The advertising and marketing fields are very different from what they were 100 or even 50 years ago. Marketing was spending enough money on ads and that equalled profits. Marketing models have changed in the last decade. THe lecturer for this class states 11 questions to consider for marketers:

1. What is marketing for?

Its no longer goods plus money equals marketing and advertising. Now, “the act of marketing is telling a story to people who want to hear it, making that story so vivid and so true that the people who hear it tell other people.”

2. What are we allowed to touch?

Can the marketer change the product, the manufacturing, etc? Marketing teams should be in control of tweaking and better the products, logically speaking. You should understand what you are able to change within the dynamic you sign up for.

3. What can we measure?

“Tv is totally unmeasurable”, he states. It’s hard to measure a true consumer response rate, not everything can be monitored and quantified.

4. What can we change?

Internal product change, external changes, can you change peoples perceptions and wants? Not all marketing is necessarily about changing the consumer.

5. What promise are we going to make?

To the client, the customer – marketing is making a promise you can keep, and hopefully exceed the promise.

6. What’s the hard part?

Shelf space, visibility, competition…What is the biggest obstacle?

7. Should we make trends or follow trends?
8. Where is the risk?

What personal risk as a marketer are you taking? What risk is your brand taking in making the promises it does? What risk is there to the customer?

9. Who is in charge?

Who says yes or no, and who is responsible?

10. What is the money for?

Marketers spend money. Where are you spending it, and what is it for? New media is replacing old media, using a different way of spending money.

11. How should I be spending my time?

Don’t be reactive and lose your ability to continue your own agenda and spend your time on what is valuable.

Action Theory of Marketing

Components:

Emotions

A product or service for sale is likely something people want, not need. Satisfy wants – unless you are actually satisfying needs, like basic water, food, or shelter, which few marketers are spending their careers on. Are you trying to invoke delight, or fear in the consumer to compel them to feel they want their product? People don’t trust marketers because of false promises. “Which emotion do you want to invoke and in whom?”

Change

What powerful organizations do is cause people to change. Apple is the example Godin uses here, as they have changed the perception of consumers of technology, how to use it, what to expect from it, what it should look like.

Alert

How do you keep a relationship with people, how do you build the permission to create that relationship? Amazon is the example Godin uses, as they have the trust of their consumers to keep them in the loop and who allow themselves to receive consistent communication from the company.

Share

Set aside TV – what about person to person sharing? People sharing your products story, emotion, with other people. Products can change the way you feel about yourself.

The P List

Positioning: Is our product in someone’s mind? You can’t usually force your product into a prime location in someone’s mind – “Your goal is to find a niche and fill it, to jump into someone’s mind next to similar products. Where do you position yourself?”

Pricing: A lot of people fixate too much on pricing, there isn’t a routine formula. We don’t pay based on the cost of manufacturing, we pay based on worth and value, which is all based on perception. Godin uses Leica as an example, stating the people that use these cameras do so because it matters to them to have the most expensive camera that signals that you are serious about photography and will only buy the best camera, it’s a status symbol and a sign that declares who you are.

Placement: Shelf space, web shelf space, social visible space (like having your product in the hands of a celebrity), ad shelf space, proximity to brands you want to be next to.

Promotion: Products can be promoted into the conciousness of the masses without any traditional advertising, when using promotion you reach the audience you want to want your product directly.

Permission: It’s powerful to have people that want to be receptive to you, that want a membership with you

PR: putting the story into the world, which is a crucial marketing strategy

Placebo: Believing a product is better makes you experience it as better

Persistance: Frequency + consistency, not overwhelming people. You often have to see an ad multiple times to remember it but you dont want to remember it because its irritating

Place – A place creates an emotion, physical environment or even website, what feelings does it bring up in people?

More on Emotions:

Story: the story of the brand or product should speak clearly to people, a brand and a story must coexist. User needs to understand the value of the product more than just the price point.

Experience: “We don’t sell stuff, we sell the way people experience the stuff”

Worldview: the expectations we all bring into any given situation will affect how we receive a product

Personas: how would a theoretical archetype experience your website, based on their persona?

Customer service: customer service can bring a lot of personality to a company, especially if theres a “culture” between the workers

Risk (perception): people are afraid of being afraid, of new ideas and products, and of missing out on what everyone else is doing or using.

Multilevel marketing: it works because of the combination of person-to-person sales, and the need for the seller to really believe in the product for their own integrity

Network effect: opposite of the scarcity effect, which is used for items that are percieved as rare, the network effect is something that works better when more people use it (like facebook)

More on Change:

Awareness: the thought you can become a part of peoples awareness, having a precense in social media isnt enough if people aren’t aware of you being present

Authority: “I may know you exist but I don’t trust you”. Having authority on a product or market means people believe you when you say “this is effective” or “this is the best”

Closing the sale: people’s heart rate spikes when they are about to make a purchase, so marketing aims to bring them past that point of hesitation

Copywriting: not many people can write copy, and copy is underestimated. Words communicate stories

Free: people giving attention and trust in a company, in exchange a company gains awareness and an audience

Hype: when someone overpromises something and consumers end up disappointed

Lifetime value analyst: profit from your lifetime of purchases and their network of people and their lifetime of purchases. The goal is to spend as much as you need to get that first wave of people

Movement: is your maketing going to make a movement? What does it need to achieve that?

ROI (Return on Investment): when I buy X ad to reach people, how many people am I reaching? Is it balanced in the amount I spent on X ad versus the amount of people absorbed it?

RFP (Request for Proposal): a company alerts people of something and people express their need for it when they do need it. This doesn’t include much marketing, as its not about people wanting something

Trust: “The easiest way in the world to change someone is for them to trust you”. People that are skeptical aren’t going to buy products.

More on Alert:

Direct marketing varies from other kinds of marketing, because direct marketing is measured and direct to the consumers (like email), other kinds like billboards cannot be tested and measured in the same way

Cold calling: untrustworthy and ineffective

Subscriptions: powerful tool, as once you have people subscribed to you, you can do a lot, as long as you maintain their trust in what they subscribed to

Diminishing versus Increasing Returns: diminishing returns means you are doing more and getting less, and increasing returns is the result of more people doing something, now other people now want to do it

Mass market: “Everyone wants it because everyone has it”

Retail: offers little control to a marketer, takes a lot of time and money to get established in

Retention: How long does a customer maintain interest and loyalty? If you let people down, you will lose them for good, especially if you let them down by comprimising your product quality

Build a schedule: your almost never going to build a company or marketing campaign in a short time, it should be a journey of consistence and reliability

More on Share:

Referrals: In a post media world, person to person referrals/reviews help us make a choice or opinion.

Viral marketing: “marketing that markets itself”

Hive: the small group of people that can be marketed to as a “niche”

Amplifier: who is a persistent and outspoken fan and how do I promote them to promote me?

Persistence: are you temporary or permanent?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Citation:

Godin, Seth. “The Modern Marketing Workshop.” Skillshare. Skillshare, n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2017. <https://www.skillshare.com/classes/The-Modern-Marketing-Workshop/96411401>.

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Citation:

Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus & Sharpen Your Creative Mind. Ed. Jocelyn K. Glei. Las Vegas: Amazon, 2013. Print.