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How Social Media Is Transforming Business

Eric Tsai — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:01:31 +0000

Lately I’ve been researching on how brands are using social media to improve their business. While doing a bit of thinking on social branding, I recalled a conversation I had with a friend that just launched a web2.0 startup business. The one advice I gave was to launch it as soon as possible without worrying too much on branding. The idea is to deploy your initial idea and allow your users to tell you how to evolve the product.

That’s how majority of the new web startups utilize crowdsourcing with an emphasis on the power users then really listen to what they have to say. The brand development aspect of a startup isn’t as important as the initial user experience.

It got me thinking about business models and how more and more companies are finding it necessary to transform their business model due to the economic crisis. In addition, the shift in consumer behavior will cause brands to adjust to a fundamentally altered playing field.

In most cases brands will find it hard to transform themselves unless they’ve already got a flexible, dynamic long-term strategy that embraces change. This means dismantling silo culture within the organization while fostering cross-functional collaboration to spark fresh thinking. Brands that have this fluid approach are more likely to adapt to change through uncertainty.

Brand Fluidity Creates Advantage

In my previous article “The Emerging Trend of Hybrid Marketing Model,” I pointed out that hypercompetition is no longer allowing businesses to have a sustained competitive advantage, so the idea approach for brands is to have an agile business model.

This happens consistently in the tech industry where every 3-5 years technology evolves and often improves (1.0 to 2.0) leading to a need for adoption.

The key is to stay flexible and scalable because products, services, and business models will evolve over time as knowledge becomes ubiquitous which leads to the path of commoditization altogether. Just look at the costs of electronics, web hosting, printing, or even internet bandwidth have dropped in price in the past 10 years. In fact, not only are they cheaper, you get more for less even with inflation.

By having an nimble business model, it’s possible to build brand momentum that has relevance in addressing consumer needs. And relevance is a good predictor of short and long-term success. However, more focus should be put on proven short-term tactics that aligns with long-term goals.

Short-Termism Is Not Sustainable

The eruption of social media has forced brands to incorporate this new tactical tool as part of the overall brand strategy playbook. This is indicative of the validity from companies like Intel, IBM, eBay and Wall Street Journal that have moved quickly to publish social media guidelines for their employees.

In a structured brand ecosystem, social media is an unproven short-term scheme because it will continue to evolve as an ongoing, living tool that facilitates real time dynamic conversations. I’m not denying the success that some brands are having in social media but in general most brands are still trying to figure out the arc of its trajectory in pursing the adequate usage of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and even blogs.

Brands that quickly jump on the bandwagon without defining the desire outcome are focusing on short-term solutions that are simply band-aids not cures. Coupled with a lack of attention to the overall strategy, fundamentals, and conventional approaches to long-term value, it’s simply not a sustainable model.

What’s important is to create an unambiguous structure for brand fluidity while maintaining energy and involvement throughout the organization. The transformation extends well beyond tactics. Brands must become more engaging by being more social, this means building meaningful relationships that resonates with their audience.

Social Media Accelerates Upstream Reciprocity

Every relationship has a purpose especially on the increasing social web. What social media demands is trust and authenticity. I see it as doing what you promise and be consistent especially in transactional business. In a recent article “Altruism Repays the Best-Connected Individuals” from Technology Review published by MIT, stated that:

Unselfish behavior spreads through society in a way that most benefits the “hubs” in the network.

The article basically illustrated how being unselfish will benefit you at the end because those who have been helped will likely to go on to help others, then spreads through a group creating the upstream reciprocity phenomenon.

There is actually an entire study done with formulas to support the phenomenon and you can go read the “Upstream reciprocity and the evolution of gratitude” analysis from U.S. National Library of Medicine if you like.

I found the information fascinating because it mimics the structure of a social network. Apply this concept to social media and you’ll realize that you’re the red dot A and everyone else is dots B and C. Imagine altruism can be any form of your direct or indirect influence in social media. It could be the content on your blog, tweets you’ve answered, or even products and services you’ve sold (ebooks, videos, webinars, web design, copywriting, consulting, etc). The takeaway is social media accelerates both upstream and downstream reciprocity especially for reputable individuals.

In business, the act of unselfishness is another form of the Freemium business model. And this immediately hit home with me on how social media is transforming the way companies are doing business. You can no longer neglect your reputation online because that’s where the conversation about you is taking place.

Social Transformation

Social media has evolved to be the hub for instant and viral reciprocation for any organization’s internal structure and external engagement. The power of its reach and the openness of its platform commands the kind of transparency that challenges your core value proposition.

It really doesn’t depend on the wisdom of gurus or experts for its dynamism. That’s the primary reason it will almost certainly withstand the “it’s a fed” challenge.

Social media is transforming businesses and it matters. From Twitter to Facebook and every web2.0 tool in between, consumers are more and more concerned with the integrity and intent of the brands they interact with, while employees are less afraid to expose how companies work internally.

The challenge for marketers is not to merely appear engaged, but to actually be engaged – to live up to the promise and deliver.

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I hope this is helpful in uncovering the implications of social media in business, it’s important to identify the fundamentals and rethink the overall picture. I know I haven’t analyze any of the specific social media tools in detail, but you can simply conduct a Twitter or LinkedIn search to find every possible tactic and how-to’s out there by the so-called “experts.”

The Evolution of Media Content Distribution: Circulation 1.0 to 2.0

Eric Tsai — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:27:16 +0000

I often get asked on the benefits of Social Media: “How should we leverage social media for advertising and marketing?” or “What do we need to consider when incorporating social media into our existing strategy?” There are still a lot of questions surrounding social media. The simple way to get a grasp on it is to first understand how information flows through social media.

Visualizing The Circulation Evolution

I like to visualize information so I’ve created the following graphics to describe how content travels through the traditional media channels.

As you can see in the traditional model, content gets created (by few sources) then aggregated into the circulation 1.0 channel of print, radio, television, and the web. These “read-only” materials get pushed out on a one-to-many process requiring users to retrieve them. Take newspaper as an example: it all starts with the editor creating the content, then it goes through a review process before it gets printed on paper, and finally delivers to you so you can start reading the content. This is a top-down approach for content distribution with maximum control

Now let’s looks at how social media elevates the content circulation in the 2.0 model.

In this model, everyone is a content producer enabling user-generated content to scale efficiently. When you have millions of people contributing content, it creates a many-to-many race to publish and distribute information. As a result, the content now comes to you, pulling you to consume. In addition, the nature of web 2.0 allows content to be syndicated and shared almost instantaneously.

Finally let’s incorporate circulation 2.0 as part of the circulation 1.0 and you get the “hybrid” model:

I call this circulation 1.5 because it retains the traditional media’s channel of distribution while adding web 2.0 into the mix. The concept is to leverage the best of both worlds from 1.0 and 2.0 to gain maximum impact for brand exposure and brand awareness.

Beyond Circulation 2.0

Most brands are still on circulation 1.0 networks and many are on the path to circulation 2.0 by adding social media to their traditional media channels. The great thing about circulation 2.0 is that everyone is pulling your content creating a natural word-of-mouth marketing that’s pervasive. However, as the speed of these dynamic conversation becomes even more instantaneous, in the case of Twitter, the content producer have less control. Content can get interpreted out of context and then passed along down the line just like that telephone game we all played in kindergarten.

This is why many companies are using social media primary as a service function for reputation management and customer support. That’s exactly what Zappos, PizzaHut, Intuit, and Dell have done by leveraging Twitter for those purposes. This creates transparency and adds authenticity to the brand which is where social media has taken us to so far. Moving forward brands must rethink the intend of their products and services and manage expectations carefully through positioning and messaging.

After the financial meltdown last year there is a lack of trust for brands and a definitive shift on perceived value. That’s why there is such an acceleration in social media because people demand to know the truth and in many ways social media allows us to get closer to what really is happening.

When Twitter was first launched in July 2006 (happy 3 year birthday!) it was intended to be a quick update for your groups of friends. Today it has evolved to a social networking tool to report, react, and discuss anything from news to random thoughts. It will probably continue to evolve because of the fluidness of the platform has allow users to take the service in completely unexpected directions. Now that’s good for innovation, they just need to figure out a business model for monetization.

The fact is traditional media still reaches far more audience than social media as I write this post. I’m sure I’ll circle back in the future as things may change in unexpected ways too.

Let me know what you think.

What is Product Development and How do I do it?

Eric Tsai — Wed, 13 May 2009 08:18:20 +0000

This article is for people that have no idea on what goes into product development, how they can develop a product even without being a designer.

Product development is the process of bringing a new product or service to market. It typically has a set process called product life cycle:

Idea or concept
Market research and analysis
Product design
Engineering and development
Testing and launch

Your product can be anything from physical goods to software on the internet. It can also be a service you provide such as washing cars or transporting goods. My very first product development project started when I was an art student in college. My goal was to put my artwork on to a website so I can showcase my artwork.

I was interested in using the web as a medium to communicate my concept approach to art and it was not about designing a website. My curiosity to learn has led me to study web publishing and the birth of my first website designdamage.com in 2001. I then continue to develop multiple versions of my website which landed me a job as a web designer after I graduated. In the years that followed, I was tasked to design packaging, graphics, catalogs, advertising, interactive movies, motion graphics, and even apparels and accessories.

Because of my entrepreneur mindset I never look at myself as a designer; instead, I simply try to solve the problem in front of me. This attitude has led me to focus on strategic and business approach to product development.

Today I will discuss the different ways you can develop your product even if you’ve never done it before. If your goal is to develop a product for business, or as your business, you will find the ideas below of interest.

How to Put Your Development Project into Perspective

Coming up with new ideas could be easy for you but difficult to execute. Your goal is to develop a working prototype, or ideally, go to market with it. Market research and analysis are vital to the decision making process, so your first goal when putting the project in perspective is to define the product from some initial market research.

Obviously no product is perfect especially when it’s a fresh new concept. It’s through testing and iterations that a product improves usability and provides value to the end user. It’s important to focus on the ideal outcome of your product and match those to your market research data. This will enable you to create a list of feature sets that deliver the desire outcome. Even if you aren’t sure exactly how to achieve those feature sets, having the list will maintain your focus on the benefits you want from the product.

How to Conduct Market Research and Analysis

The easy and fast way to start your research is via search engine like Google or Yahoo. Simply use keywords with your product categories will do the trick; for example if you are developing a new soda drink, search for “soda market growth” or “annual soda market sales.” Keyword searching is an excellent starting point, and you should conduct both web and images search as you may find some unexpected results.

Check document repository sites such as Scribd, SlideShare, and even Youtube will also yield some interesting information.

Another method is to research your competition that’s already in the market. Even if they don’t offer the exact products or services, their customer base may be interested in what you have to offer. Review their website, catalog or engage people that sell their product, get a good feel for where they stand in the market. I also recommend identifying the market leaders in your sector that are public companies so you can download their financial reports or listen to their conference call via their website or Yahoo Finance.

If you have cash to spare then paying for a research report is another way to start your research. If your product concept needs a lot of market data to support the idea, then you better be serious about purchasing some real research and analysis reports from professional firms such as Frost & Sullivan, IDC, Ipsos, Gartners and Forrester.

How to Leverage Outsourcing to Help Design and Development

Once you have a good grasp on what it is you’re going after, you need to start the product design process. If you’re like me, you can certainly utilize design skills to save some costs before you take it to the engineers or developers. As a visual person I like to create diagrams, charts and tables to lay out the concepts first before I start the actual design. Use the tools available to you to write up some sample use cases and creating storyboards are the best way to communicate the idea behind your product.

Think of it as narrarating a TV commercial, how would you convey what it is that you’re selling? What are the features and benefits?

If you are not a designer, I strongly suggest that you outsource your product design process. The key is to have your feature sets ready so you can communicate them to the designer efficiently and still control the development costs. Provide designers or developers your use cases and have them mockup the storyboards while you evaluate their understanding of your product.

End-to-end solution is what you want so you can reduce the time-to-market factor. Remember time is money so provide as much information as you can. Having samples or even your own drawings could make a difference to ensure your developers understand your concept.

Where do I go to find designers? And what if I need an engineer or software developer?

You can use outsourcing sites like Guru.com, Elance.com or CodeSnap.com. These communities have a proven platform for you to find the right talent and get the project started with competitive rates that includes contracts, NDA and approval processes. You can also get quotes from independent sources such as Coroflot and AIGA, where you could contact the developers directly.

Product Testing and Pre-Launch

Once you have a working demo or prototype, it’s time to put it through the constructive criticism test. This is the part where you have to be the most demanding person on your own project. You need to be strategic about your sample and like my discussion on perceived value, you must be realistic.

You can choose to make changes to your product, launch it in beta mode or pre-launch it to a diverse range of groups for your target audiences to review and experience the product. During this phase, it is extremely important to document everything and get as much feedbacks as possible. The more feedbacks you can get the more information you’ll have to plan you next iteration.

The relationship between product design, development and testing are the core drivers of a successful product, so if you intend to take your product or business seriously you need to know your market, put a development roadmap in place and have a solid method of product evaluation.

If you want more details on design principals involving product design I suggest you read my 3 part series on good design.

How Opinions Disrupt and Transform

Eric Tsai — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:13:54 +0000

I read an excellent report on the opinion of the public around the world by Ipsos Public Affairs. The report covers a wide range of “disruptions” with references, datas, and statistics that had an impact on the public’s perception from around the world.

Click here to download the complete report in PDF.

Public opinions and perceptions dictates how consumers behave, and how businesses decide. Why is this important? Because we are in the middle of a dramatic transformation of psychology, there will be a major shuffle on how we prioritize and what value means to us. Consumer behavior is shifting and marketers must adjust their strategies and tactics to fit the psychology for when we recover from this recession.

The discipline of consumer psychology draws heavily from marketing, advertising, economics, culture, and social trends. Marketers must remain focus on public opinions and consumer behavior to have an edge in the future.

Here is a great example of what I mean, watch this video interview with Harvard Business Professor John A. Quelch on his article, “How to Market in a Downturn.”

Design Strategies: Beyond Aesthetics and Function

Eric Tsai — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 04:55:07 +0000

I read a lot of business related blogs and one of my favor blog is Guy Kawasaki’s How to Change the World. Typically he blogs about business, startups, entrepreneurship, etc however; last week he had an interview with Hartmut Esslinger, the founder of frog design, a design firm I highly respect and keep my tabs on.

I couldn’t agree more with what Hartmut’s view on design:

“Design” isn’t a clear-cut talent profession, but one of coordination and catalyst between human needs, science and technology, business and economy, as well as sociology and ecology. The artistic talent required is more of an enabler at the end of rational and emotional analysis as well as strategic conceptualization. Therefore, it is vital to learn and study as much as possible especially about business, technology and human nature. In the end, there are flavors in design which are more aesthetic—see New York Times “Style Magazine”—but design is only relevant when it improves human lives by appealing both to the mind and the heart.

Context of Design

The important aspect of design isn’t really about the visual enablement, but the the context of the experience, strategies and economy of scale. I started out my career as a designer and as I progress into different management positions, I’ve come to realize the importance of knowledge, data, business and technology.

Designer chases after the end result, the goal to satisfy as much requirements as possible. My art professor in college once told me that “art is different, it kind of just sits there on the wall and does nothing. but design must do something even though both are up to the interpreters.”

I was producing conceptual art and I couldn’t care if people understood the meaning of my art, instead I focus on my emotions.

When I started designing, I quickly realized that design has boundaries but no rules. There are set requirements but ultimately you could do whatever you want. The catch is that innovation will come at a price that you are willing to pay: your design may not sell, could have major flaws over time, or get you fired from you job. Whatever those reasons may be, they become fear. And fear is what kills creativity, it’s the unspoken corporate rule that slowly deteriorates innovation.

Design is beyond just form and function, it’s solving and improving within a set discipline. Design is essential from architecture, clothing, automobile, highways, food, technology, right down to your body. By you working out you’re trying to shape your body, creating a form that you want to match your goal – to be fit or to look a certain way. Before you start working out you must research and learn about your body and the exercise you’re going to need to achieve your goal. Then you execute and overtime learn the optimal training routines to reach the condition you targeted.

Moving forward design will become more important as the convergence of technology continues to transform the way we live. With every new scientific discovery design will be one of the key success drivers for businesses to innovate and rethink our next decision. Through iterations, design will improve over time adpating to the humanistic and cultural element of our society.

Good Design: Part 3 – Marketing & Positioning

Eric Tsai — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 07:52:25 +0000

The last element of good design is to maximize the design by selling it – distribute it in the market, execute on marketing.

Picture this: you have a product idea and spent a great deal of time laying down the solid design framework for this innovative product, you think it’ll be a huge hit. And finally you developed a production sample and it’s even better than you had imagined! How would you translate that into success? Can you build a path to optimize the user experience? Do you have the roadmap to revenue?

Integrate Ideas into Strategies

Great marketing doesn’t make the product great, but a great product usually have marketing built into it already. It’s not about feature or benefits. This is a highly overlooked area for many creators and designers today, not having a playbook of strategies from start to finish. The best way to start developing your game plan is to imagine your ideal situation, your desired outcome then work backwards into the design.

For example, you came up with a new type of shoes that can help runners run longer and faster, then you should start your design framework by addressing the needs of your targeted runners. Perhaps those shoes solve some technical problems or have certain style advantages, they should all be part of the initial research so the end product could easily sell itself.

Think of how your want your users to view your product, better yet what reaction would you want them to have? Who, where, why and how are just as important questions to ask.

Who is it for?
Where would they use it?
Why would they use it? Want it or need it?
How does it work? How do they experience the product before committing to it?

The more specific market segment(s) you target, the more value you will bring to those customers. If you can formulate those outcomes and keep them in mind before you start and address them during your process you will most likely have an easier time marketing the product.

Positioning and Messaging

Communication design is about translating the concept and selling the idea. This is also one of the more difficult task for majority of the designers especially those focusing on aesthetics. This aspect of design requires a lot more creative juices on the business side and it does not have to be pretty, it just has to be simple, concise and to the point.

There are many approaches in developing the right messaging however; many well crafted messages can sound professional but mundane. It could be nicely written and formatted by some marketing agency with all kinds of overrated phrases like “innovative, unmatched, or amazing,” but it won’t receive the attention it deserves. In fact, the more you overpraise, the less unique you are. Ironically what works are the cheesy, low-cost, infomercial marketing pitch that does the trick.

The low-end positioning may not add much brand equity to the product, but the message usually is loud and clear not to mention easy to remember. The objective is simple, reveal the message and show what’s inside, what you are really selling, no tricks of gimmicks because they only work short-term.

High-end positioning is all about sustaining your brand equity over time and usually it takes a lot of resources to maintain the product or services at a high level. Think of all the luxury brands from Rolex to Bentley, from Chanel to Armani, all had to endure time and competition. You are paying for character, history, quality and image.

In the long run it’s about incorporating the framework and user experience of the design to the end-user. Everyone wants to sell good design, you can make money with good design or you can look good doing it, it’s market perception.

Leverage Technology and Networking

In today’s market, the design arena has evolved into a highly competitive landscape forcing designers and creators to utilize every possible resource to maximize the exposure and sales of good design. The digital world has transformed the way that brands communicate with their audiences. Interactivity and engagement are more important than ever. Marketers are using web2.0 tools such as blogs and Twitter and social network platforms such as Facebook, Youtube and Myspace to reach out to as many audience as possible.

There are plenty of resources on the internet that can educate you on the power of social networking, but it is still only a tool. If you want to maxmize your next design idea, you must have a solid framework with go-to-market strategies that includes the right message ready to communicate to your customers. This will allow you to have a higher probability of gaining brand recongition, and through recognition you control the destiny of your design or ideas.

Good Design: Part 2 – The User Experience

Eric Tsai — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 07:51:03 +0000

Now let’s move into the second important element of good design: The User Experience (UX).

After the framework is laid out, the next step is to orchestrate a path to the user experience. Design variables and objectives can be predefined in many ways, but fundamentally it must connect with the user to form the optimal experience. It’s what makes you say words like, amazing, slick, beautiful, scary, sexy, fun, annoy, loud, obnoxious, or cheap. Words that attempts to describe the experience and just like a picture it’ll never be the exact description.

In order to deliver the best user experience, everything goes back to the framework of knowing who you’re targeting and if you know your market. Obviously people have different views and opinions, which is why design can be very subjective from one person’s view to another.

For example, (continuing my car theme) someone that likes sports cars may or may not care about the 0-60 mph acceleration speed, he or she may simply enjoy the exterior look and interior design. On the other end, that same person may have a big family and will need another car that addresses the need of transporting a big family from soccer games to grandma’s house.

So if a automobile manufacturer is to develop a new “affordable” sport car that looks nice but is mediocre in acceleration they are in effect targeting the people that cares more about the look and would preferred to allow that experience to dictate their buying decision. This car may look fast and sporty but it may not have the most comfortable ride or enough space for utility. This is why it’s important to now only know your customers, but also know how to market and cater to their personality. Checkout the chart below you will find that Toyota has covered three demographics with three brands to maximize their market share

So how is that related to user experience? Well, if you know who you’re aiming for you can then focus on those specific areas to engage the interaction to impact the user perceptions resulting in a desirable outcome. Depending on the purpose of the product, in my example I used cars but if it was clothing, it’s style as well as gender, location, ethnics, age, income brackets, and so on. It’s always a good to start with analytical data then develop the target groups for each design.

If you know who you’re selling the idea (design) to, it simply comes down to the creation of the information architecture by utilizing as much data as possible to address and integrate all user-facing aspects of the experience from visual to emotion that are needed to connect the user to the design.

It should be noted that no design is timelessly perfect, it can be the best solution for a specific period of time then turns into a classic, or it could just be a short term trend. The idea is that with every revision, the next generation should improve the overall usability and experience from the last. Thus the reason why the latest car model will usually retain the good elements of the previous generation completely or attempt to improve upon its success. It is a continueous living proecess that designers embrace as a challenge to come up with better designs again and again.

Good Design: Part 1 – The Framework

Eric Tsai — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 06:30:49 +0000

A designer is a problem solving artist, creative inventor, functional planner, and a forward thinking strategist. Look around you and you will find that every piece of your surrounding are the designed with a purpose, just different in economy of scale, usability and creativity.

What constitute good design? What are the elements of good design? I can go on and on with a long list of elements but in my opinion the short answer should be that good design creates positive synergy, serves its purpose and improves the overall experience. It has to communicate the intend, deliver with style, and it has to work!

From clothing to electronics, from cars to computers, design has a purpose and it’s not about redefining or innovation but to provide solutions. Design solutions can be anything such as a product, or a marketing message, a piece of music, a meal, or a building – they must bring together key objectives and deliver the end result to achieve the stated goal(s). The challenging aspect of coming up with the solution is the framework that defines the project.

The demanding part of the job is to solve as many obstacles within the provided framework and still be as creative and expressive. For example, to address the need of an affordable automobile there is now a $2,000 Tata Nano and I can guess on the top of the design priorities list for the car are probably cost, safety, fuel economy, and so on while at the bottom of the list are performance, space, and aesthetics.

On the opposite spectrum checkout the $100,00 Fisker Karma S, a plug-in hybrid luxury sports sedan that exhibits style and luxury linked with the hot new word “hybrid.” Different objectives to address different taste.

You really can not say one design is ‘better’ than the other simply because they serve two entirely different markets, concepts, budget and approach. It’s like comparing apples to oranges, they are not priced the same in the market and to that end, cost(budget) plays an important role in how “innovation” come in play from within a predefined creative parameter.

It’s almost more impressive to actually be able to purchase a brand new vehicle for $2,000 than dropping $100,000 on a luxury hybrid because the bottom line is you can buy a lot of Tata Nanos with that amount of money – try 50 Tata Nanos.

Branding: Perception is Reality

Eric Tsai — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 07:21:28 +0000

As I scan through my daily dose of Marketing Charts, I found some interesting data on how companies that lower the price of their products or services may risk damaging long-term brand perception. According to “Big Price Cuts Linked to Long-Term Brand Damage” story, 64% of consumers assume that “the product is extremely popular,” if a brand does not lower its price during economic downturn and another 64% say they assume that “the product is already a good value.”

While some may argue that branding is overrated (which I disagree), the truth of the matter is perception is reality especially in marketing. Branding is a form of marketing by reinforcing the idea or concept while creating awareness simultaneously to generate brand recognition in the minds of the consumers. That acknowledgment of a brand often gets associated with the impression resulting in some form of emotional driver that leads to curiosity, desire, and interest. Obviously if you do a good job on branding, you’ll create positive emotions just like creating buzz so you appear as if you’re “everywhere.” However; good publicity bad publicity at the end it’s all publicity, it gets the word out and adds to the story – more opportunity to be talked about, linked, and circulated.

The most important step for branding is turning marketing into sales, it could be selling a product or selling an idea to get buyers to follow the call-to-action into the sales cycle. It is a propaganda with a cause in a wide spectrum of context. What marketers must realize is that the reality has to fit with what’s been advertised, the hype must come down to earth at some point. Great sales people can sell ice to an Eskimo but at some point the Eskimo will discover that there is nothing special about that ice, fool me once shame on you; fool me twice shame on the Eskimo . Great products do sell itself but branding and marketing act as the enabler allowing room for errors and price flexibility (margins).

This is why consumers are willing to pay 30-60% more on a Lexus over a Toyota even though it is basically the same car. Although it wasn’t the original intend when Toyota launched the Lexus brand, it was so well received and marketed that now Lexus is being sold as, well, Lexus in Japan! With the success of Lexus, comes Scion, another brand targeting the youth market, Toyota knows their market and does a good job of connecting their product with their customers. Brand positioning is extremely important, knowing your customer and deliver what your promise can have a lasting impact for a brand.

A brand is as powerful as consumers are willing to pay, and price cuts should be utilized as a long-term strategic move not a short-term financial solution. Another great example on Apple: when all other PC/notebook manufacturers are launching the hot-selling new netbooks left and right, Apple refuse to come out with a low-end low priced laptop to compete. Instead it lowered the price of its higher-end laptop sticking to their core value aligning to the brand equity they’ve carved out for themselves. They are consistent with their product positioning which generates great value for the brand while keeping current customers happy.

Everyone wants to be unique – you are what you consume, from the food you eat to the car you drive, the clothes you wear to the hair you style, it’s real if you believe it.

Responsible and Sustainable Designs

Eric Tsai — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:45:07 +0000

As a member of TED community, I am constantly inspired by the ideas and concepts from all the individual TEDTalks, themes and TED Blog posts. It’s got great resources, excellent ideas from different perspectives from global key opinion leaders.

Recently I’ve been watching some of the Architectural Inspiration videos and as a result I found new respect in the creative process that goes into architecture. Especially Cameron Sinclair’s Talk on Open-source architecture to house the world.

I immediately thought of a television episode that I watched awhile back on the San Francisco Federal “green” building by Thom Mayne. The building was created with many energy saving features in mind and encourage wellness for the occupants working in the building.

For example, the cafe was placed outside of the main building to encourage employees to walk outside the building to stop by for food and the elevators are designed to have stops on every third floor so there will always be some walking require at some point. The buildings is positioned perfectly with massive windows allowing optimal usage of sunlight into the building to reduce electricity usage to light the offices during daytime. In addition, the top 13 floors of the Federal Building do not have air conditioning since the building automatically opens the ventilation windows each evening and admit cooler outside air into the building. Heat energy stored in the building’s exposed concrete structure is removed by the cooler night air.

There are more energy saving technologies that goes into the entire project and as a result it appears to be very sustainable and eco friendly.

The idea is that the future of architecture must incorporate sustainability in addition to all the fundamental of design as well as “responsibility” to deliver impact solution to address social issues. Design should improve, perform, and solve problems.