back to basics on the phone front
Via trendwatching’s February briefing comes ‘functionall’ – ‘the phenomenon of simple, small and/or cheap products and services designed for low(er)-income consumers in emerging markets, with cross-over appeal to consumers in mature consumer societies’.
Trendwatching recon that goods and services especially designed for emerging markets often incorporate one or more of the following characteristics:
- Smaller and/or limited number of features, to keep prices low.
- Simpler, or easier to use, for inexperienced consumers.
- Energy efficient (or not using any traditional energies at all) and/or easy to repair and/or waste-reducing.
- Robust, as some of them are used in rugged conditions.
- Well-designed (the democratization of design is a global phenomenon).
- Aimed at helping owners to generate income, or allow users to create self-sustaining systems
Which explains why I bought my technophobe dad a Nokia 1101.
Its really simply to use (he’s had a mobile for ten years but has yet to master text messaging), with as few features as possible and large-ish buttons. A bit of googling reveals that the phone was actually designed for the Indian market (see!) and it doubles up as a torch (handy for a place where power cuts are common, even in the cities).
I’m not alone in my appreciation of back-to-basics mobiles, Tom Cable from retrobrick.com says that interest in original retro mobiles is growing, partly because “young people want an old-style phone for a grandparent because they have bigger buttons.”
So there you have it, if you need technology for a technophobe, look at what manufacturers are producing for emerging markets.
Add comment 9 February, 2010
Dear Google Wave
Dear Google Wave,
You look great, I really want to start using you and I can see lots of ways in which you’re going to make my life simpler.
but
You won’t let me use you in Internet Explorer (not all the PCs I use have firefox or google chrome on them) unless I install the Google Chrome Frame Browser Plugin. If I do this, my financial services provider’s website won’t let me in and to be honest, its probably more important that I keep an eye on my ISA than ride your Wave.
I’d also LOVE to import my contacts from outlook and hotmail into google wave, but I’m no techie and have no idea how to go about creating a CSV file. I click a button on LinkedIn and all my contacts are imported automatically. Why can’t you do this?
Yours,
confused in beta.
2 comments 6 February, 2010
Suits you, sir
I was very pleased to read today that ‘looking good in a suit’ is officially the 17th most important thing UK women find irresistible about men. Pleased but not surprised because (full disclosure time), my agency’s PR team commissioned the research (omnibus of 4,000 people I think) for a client and before I was off sick I nominated ‘looking good in a suit’ as MY irresistibility factor.
I might have been two years early in proclaiming the return of formal dressing. But as I said at the time, there are very few men who don’t look better (and sexier) in a really well cut and well fitting suit. Sadly though, very few men seem to know what a really well cut and well fitting suit is…
If you want to see what a really good suit looks like, check out these shots from Esquire of injured servicemen Lieutenant Alex Horsfall and Second Lieutenant James Amoore sporting made to measure suits, courtesy of Savile Row. (sources here and here):
1 comment 5 February, 2010
sickbedside reading
I’ve been detained on Sofa Watch 2010 for the last 10 days. Fortunately I’d placed a Amazon order just before my appendix decided to withdraw cooperation so I’ve been catching up on some non-fiction:
Dr Who, The Writer’s Tale, The Final Chapter
Russell T. Davies & Benjamin Cook
A massive 700 pages, composed almost entirely of emails and text messages between the ShowRunner of DrWho and a SciFi journalist, charting 2 ½ years of the ups and downs involved in writing and exec producing Saturday night TV.
The parallels between what the original creative idea was and what actually got budget/sign off/produced sit very closely with AdLand. And if you ever thought that your ‘creative’ job was a bit stressful, demanding or pressurised, read this and be reassured that at least Russell T Davies had it much worse. But I expect fame, fortune, 12M viewers and a swanky new job in LA might make up for some of that. (accompanying website here)
SuperFreakonomics
Steven D. Levitt & Stephen Dubner
What was so great about the original Freakonomics was that you could read a chapter and discover why, for example, drug dealers live with their Moms, feel like you’d learnt something new about looking at data, put the book down and go to sleep.
SuperFreakonomics does answer some great new questions, like why suicide bombers should buy life insurance, but then it wonders off for a good third of the book on a rant about global warming which doesn’t make for light bedtime reading. I wish I’d waited for the paperback and saved myself a fiver. (website here)
Whoops, why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay
John Lancaster
I ordered this based on India Knight’s recommendation. It’s what I wanted SuperFreakonomics to be – intriguing, simplifying, educating and an enjoyable read. I found myself learning about the ins and outs of the derivatives market and actually enjoying it. If (like me) you still don’t totally understand exactly how the global economy came to be in such a mess, this is a great place to start.
Add comment 4 February, 2010
not again…
Just found out I’ve got to have my appendix out asap, so I won’t be posting for a while. I’ve turned off comments in the meantime.
02/02/2010
Feeling brighter thanks, comments back on, more posts later this week, hopefully.
1 comment 26 January, 2010
Its in the (hand)bag
Great piece in today’s Sunday Times about the Unmade Beds (women who, for example have hairdryers but rarely get around to using them, yet still can scrub up pretty well when required; see Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren, Stella McCartney) versus the Pristine Pillows (high maintenance with fake nails, hair, boobs etc, a la Victoria Beckham, Cheryl Cole and Danni Minogue).
In her article, Shane Watson suggests that the best way to differentiate between the two tribes is to look at their handbags. Unmade Beds are lugging round enormous, overloaded handbags, last cleared out in 2007, but ready to cater for any eventuality. Pristine Pillows tend to keep their bags small and tidy – Debenhams says that the weight of the average handbag has halved in the last two years from 7lb 11 (3.5kg) to 3lb 5 (1.5kg) thanks to minimalist multitasking technology like iphones.
I think I fall somewhere between the two camps – I eat carbs and chocolate and spend most of my weekends covered in mud at the stables, but I’m also a big fan of pedicures and use products like volumising root spray on my hair. But since my handbag weighs in at nearly 6lbs, I must be leaning towards being an Unmade Bed.
It’s occurred to me that if a handbag is such a window to a woman’s personality, why aren’t we exploiting them as a research tool? There are lots of ‘contents of my bag’ sets on flickr, but obviously only confident and technically savvy women are going to be sharing there.
If we can use fridges and even wardrobes (I spent some very interesting afternoons doing Wardrobe Walk Throughs in respondent’s bedrooms as part of a project for a mail order brand a few years ago) as insight, then why can’t we persuade women to open up the final frontier and invite us into their handbags?
Add comment 24 January, 2010
Client quotes of the day
feedback on creative brief sent over for client approval:
“it shouldn’t say anything in Tone of Voice as the character won’t actually be speaking”
re: brand launch campaign:
us: “and of course digital will be very important”
client: “yes and I’d like a website too”
sigh…
Add comment 21 January, 2010
The weather outside (was) frightful
I’ve perhaps been guilty of overdoing the ‘oh-my-god-its-still-snowing’ posts on the blog recently (the white stuff lasted 4 ½ weeks in the end) and I can’t imagine that anyone outside the snow-bound UK would have found them particularly interesting.
But what I have found invaluable as I’ve tried to make the decision in recent weeks whether to risk the journey into work has been traffic and weather updates (complete with photos) from my friends on twitter and facebook. It’s been like a (private) public service. Ice on the A65? Traffic jams in Horsforth? Someone will kindly let me know.
pic by the lovely @LisaWisniowski
Although the local radio stations were busy collating traffic and snow news, with listeners phoning in live reports, the bit of the online world focused on the UK didn’t seem to have found a way to crowd source on the ground information in this way.
In North America, their National Weather Service has just launched a Twitter-based program to monitor tweets about severe weather (tweets are tagged #wxreport), but we don’t seem to have a UK equivalent. Time to sort it out before the next cold snap?
Add comment 18 January, 2010
Come fly with me, not my ad campaign
I’ve been ruining my carbon footprint by taking quite a few internal flights down to the South West for client meetings over the last six months. One morning, I was stood in the security queue at Stupid O’Clock with the rest of the account team (all in our 20s and 30s) when a uniformed Virgin Atlantic stewardess queued up behind us.
This was a bit unusual because Virgin don’t fly from my local airport. We ended up having a chat (the queue wasn’t exactly shifting fast) and discovered that she was flying down to Gatwick to pick up her working flight at lunchtime. We then got on to remedies for jet lag (some crew swear by Berocca, but there at times when only Red Bull will do, apparently), sleep deprivation and the pros and cons of the M1 vs flying down to London. She wished us a safe flight and a good meeting and was off.
That ten minute encounter did more to foster positive brand associations with Virgin Atlantic than every single piece of marcoms I’ve seen from them. If I was flying across the Atlantic, I’d want her to be looking after me. And, crucially, it wasn’t the sexy, groomed image that Virgin so carefully cultivates for its crew that won me over:
she was just a really warm, engaging girl. I’m not suggesting that the solution to the airline industry’s woes is to put stewardesses in every airport’s road warrior security queue, but maybe the Virgin Atlantic brand could use a little more real-life warmth and down to earth personality?
1 comment 14 January, 2010
In other news, TLC actually IS all around
Shortly after Christmas, Martine McCutcheon started popping up in the ad breaks on behalf of Activia, a rather disappointing tasting yoghurt of weird consistency (I’ve tried it) that apparently aims to ‘reduce digestive discomfort’, thus stopping you feeling bloated.
Martine would like us all to make a fresh start to 2010 and give ourselves some Tummy Loving Care (see what they did there?).
The agency (Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R) must have been rather pleased that ITV2 decided to screen Love Actually on New Year’s Eve as judging by their wardrobe choices for the ad, they hired Martine’s character Natalie-off-of-the-film, rather than Martine:
film on the left, ad on the right
Having found a few ‘behind the scenes’ Activia videos on the web, it looks like we can expect more TLC advice from Martine/Natalie in the weeks to come…
Add comment 9 January, 2010
