Marketing - Dress to impress

It still amazes me how as marketeers we invest thousands upon thousands of money into various marketing from data research, customer journeys, marketing campaigns, apps, PR, packaging, and shinny new platforms based content, and still as marketing directors we forget the basics of what we were taught when we did our marketing degree which is; when selling your product your customer has to be amazed visually or emotionally or in the case of clothing you look amazing wearing it. Yes I know we're not all size 10 models, but there's things we can do that can make us all look good. The brand sells itself when worn, Lacoste is a fine example in clothing and in-store experience. You build an appealing brand. Steve Jobs understood this basic principle too of marketing when launching Apple products (Just looking at the products you would get goose bumps, so why do so many major brands miss this?) Again I believe they operate in silos and for that the whole customer experience is a bit of a let down. Here’s a great example of not truly understanding your customer, this blogger has shown how major retailers have missed the mark. Fitting rooms should have flattering light and pleasing colours that make the clothes look good but Russian blogger Inna visited dressing rooms in 11 different stores and found they often fail to flatter.

Inna visited clothing stores such as H&M, Mango and Zara and compared her before shot, taken with home lighting, to the shots taken in each room. And even though she was wearing the same clothes, and shot the pictures with the same phone, the lighting and background changed her appearance alot from shot to shot.

So what did Inna conclude based on her research? Brighter lights are more flattering, and red used right will really make you stand out, but a dark dressing room can ruin an otherwise good shopping trip. It might make you look moody but you’ll look drab.

Basic stuff right, and you don’t need to invest in thousands of pounds in research to understand that principle. So next time you are planning your next marketing campaign think about the whole customer experience, not just online but when they enter the store, talk to retail staff, go and visit and see for yourself if you have to, be honest with yourself, if it's not great get them involved, the outcome will be much more appealing for you and your customers.

Great art direction craft is truly an art form

This post is going back to old skool _well I'm listening to some old skool Soul so it seems quite fitting, but I wanted to share as I think it's vital for young art directors, designers or budding photographers the importance of craft. In an age where time is money and money is time and most people have neither this is a great case study in how to save money and time but still create something magically. Step forward Felix Hernandez Rodriguez who was commissioned by Audi to shoot their top of the range sports car retail price at a tidy $200,000 and what does he do? He shoots a toy $40 model of the car.

Now mere mortals would seriously struggle in making this look slick and something that could be used in print in fact even for online we would struggle, but this cat by using props, clever angles and lighting has produced something truly incredible. Now I don't know this photographer but looking at the shots this guy is highly trained and knows how to art direct, it's not just a job title. Not only is he talented but smart too. Could you imagine getting the real car on different locations? I know from experience of working on many car brands just getting the car on set is an issue and when you do, you have a time slot.

It reminded me of a shoot I did for Castrol the concept was a visual of one of those old fashioned chimney sweeps coming out of the exhaust. (Castrol stopped the build-up of soot in your engine apparently) So everything was signed-off and as a young art director everything was planned out, re-sizing my crops etc. But I had over looked one thing; the exhaust was too short so you couldn't fit the sweep in. Slight panic on my face started to appear as I wss in the studio that was charging 10K a day!! The photographer Kevin Summers at the time saw my face of horror and smiled, he went away and then 10 minutes later he returned with a cardboard tube sprayed black - he walked over to the BMW and whacked it on the back, at that point even more look of horror spread across my face, he smiled further and said he would light it and no one would know, I was nervous but he was right. No one ever knew till now. This was a great learning curve in my career, in you must really learn your trade to break the rules, this principle still applies today even in the tech world we live in You can see the full joyous piece here

Cat Memes

Just brilliant- what more can I say