Human Brands | Innovation and the Auteur Model of Brand Creation
Steve Jobs, iPad and the persona of innovation. In the past, I've explored the idea of the human brand, a persona driven organization type that focuses on the character of central leadership in defining brand approaches to enterprise and marketing expression. The idea...
The fragrance of truth | exploring the emotionality of scent in brand and consciousness
Paramount Studios Are you telling the truth - do you smell right? The smell and taste of things remain poised a long time . . . and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. (Proust, 1913/1928, p....
The Script | the calligraphy of the mind
The nature of the scripted hand, gesture and the fluent link to the mind I was talking to Steven Heller, the former Creative Director of the New York Times, and a person of astonishing connections and scholarship in the real of the history of design, author of more...
Sex Acts | Branding strategies for Safe(r) Sex
Global brand erection: the next position(ing) Okay, so it's Valentine's Day -- some levity, please. I do have a curiosity about the marketing of sex and the relations therein. It's a tough challenge, a complicated demographic positioning, albeit fraught with emotional...
Boys will be boys | Tween brand development
An emerging positioning: be a man, smell good. During an earlier brand development and product innovation program at P&G, Girvin created a product that was designed to speak to young men -- and those just following behind, the tweens, to explore and build on the...
Human Brands | Alexander Lee McQueen
Observing the passage of the brand, as fire, in the spirit of Alexander Lee McQueen This is the another in a series on Human Brand | defining the inextricable link between people, founding vision and the brands that they produce. When I heard of the passage of...
The idea of attention
Exploring the concept of storytelling, and the nature of attentive reception: brand, life and design. If you're telling a story, brand related or otherwise, who's paying attention? Returning from a design summit, in Florida, there was a series of conversations about...
Principled brands that die: Phi
Attitude, growth, solutions, strategy, design, charisma, trend leadership and responsiveness. Brands that live and brands that die. There's a curious challenge in the realm of celebrity brand development. Some evolve happily, growing, selling up, selling out and...
The Signature of a Brand | Human Handwriting and Character
Examining the idea of brand, signature and personality I was thinking about the idea of hand-writing and the character of the person. By a typical extrapolation, I'd liken the brand to the human -- in the warmed sense that brand is more than merely the skin of...
Modernist Type Design | Signing, Messaging and Way Finding
The right type -- communicating simple, elegant pathways in environmental graphic design. I was standing in the subway, NY Transit Authority (MTA) -- the proverbial NYC subway system and thinking about the complexity of the way-finding system there. Frankly, it...