Halloween gives brands permission to go places that would get them the stink-eye any other time of year. Most days, suggesting that customers arrange to have their ashes buried in your snack packaging would be a super fast route to a crisis meeting. But in October? Apparently, that’s brand engagement. Pringles has launched Once You Drop, inviting fans to sign a “will and taste-ament” for a chance to win a custom metal cremation urn shaped like its famous can, complete with cobweb details and...
2 days ago • 1 min read
Corona Cero’s seven-pack is a wonderfully silly packaging idea built around a much bigger change in how people can consume beer. I stopped drinking alcohol almost nine years ago, and it was one of my better decisions. I truly haven’t missed the booze at all. Cold beer was another story. So I love the explosion of 0.0% beers from global brands and tiny breweries alike. Many of them taste really, really good. One of my favourites (and my wife’s too) is Corona Cero. Ice cold, wedge of lemon,...
3 days ago • 1 min read
The new Roadster has questionable commercial value, but as an attention-generating product demo it has already worked spectacularly. Elon Musk unveiled the long-delayed Tesla Roadster this week by having it accelerate to 60 mph in under a second, cling upside down to a ramp and kickflip over Tesla’s existing vehicle lineup using SpaceX-derived cold-gas thrusters. Then social media did exactly what Musk was countin’ on it to do. Fans circulated the footage because it looked impossible. Critics...
4 days ago • 1 min read
Cause marketing can improve how people see a brand, but the product you attach it to determines IF that goodwill turns into buying. Cause marketing usually seems made for stuff we love buying. Like chocolate that helps feed children, sneakers that support youth sport, or concert tickets that fund community programs. There’s an obvious logic to it. If buying something indulgent creates a little guilt, attaching a good cause can make the purchase easier to justify. A study in the European...
5 days ago • 2 min read
Visit Sweden shows how an overlooked product attribute turns into a compelling reason to buy when it connects with the right customer need. Visit Sweden has opened a travel agency for introverts. The Introvert Travel Agency promotes Sweden to folks who want more personal space, fewer obligatory conversations and the freedom to explore without constantly interacting with strangers. As an introvert, I SO get this. Some days I’ll happily chat with an Uber driver on the way to the airport. But...
6 days ago • 1 min read
Apple’s new product burst is a useful reminder that the loudest reaction to an unfamiliar product rarely predicts what buyers will do with it. John Ternus has been running Apple for barely six weeks, and already the place is lookin’ busier. Since September 1, Apple has introduced its first foldable iPhone, HomeView in tabletop and wall-mounted versions, plus a whole family of smart-home cameras, thermostats, sensors, a doorbell and deadbolt. Obviously, this stuff was underway before Ternus...
7 days ago • 1 min read
Polaroid’s latest camera makes creative techniques easier while leaving the pleasure of experimentation in your hands. When I was a kid, a Polaroid camera was a delight at parties. Someone took a picture, and there it was… developing before our eyes. Compared with waiting two weeks for a roll of film to come back from the lab as prints, that was magic. Professional photographers I worked with years later had a more practical use: testing lighting before committing to their film shots. Then...
8 days ago • 1 min read
New research suggests customers experience craftsmanship through the people, timing and tiny gestures surrounding the product, beyond how it was made. When brands talk about craftsmanship, they usually point backward. You know, stuff like stitching all done by hand. Wood lovingly shaped by some grizzled artisan. Maybe it’s the chef who trained in obscurity for decades. Or the watch assembled from hundreds of teeny individual components. For sure, all that kind of thing adds value for the...
9 days ago • 2 min read
New research suggests tracking healthy behaviour might make you more likely to indulge elsewhere. I like the basic promise of a Fitbit. That was my first fitness wearable more than a decade ago. But any similar wearable, for that matter. So, you walk more, sleep better. Pay more attention to what your body is doing. And improve stuff by measuring it. Right? That logic is intuitive enough that self-tracking got built into watches, phones, rings and fitness apps everywhere. But a new study...
10 days ago • 2 min read
