So, there we were, just starting to work through the workflow for Drupal – we got as far as the login screen when we thought ‘let’s write something nice on this screen’, and, pen poised… we were stumped.

We wanted to write something friendly like Moo would. Or Innocent drinks. We wanted to make it visually interesting like Vimeo do. Or Picnik. But… is that Drupal?

We realised we have no idea what Drupal’s personality is. And it would make our lives much easier, and help make a much better User Experience, if we can work out what it is.

Isn’t this completely touchy-feely and a waste of time?

Well no. One way or another, words will go on screens and a personality will emerge. Or, worse still, a few personalities, or a few dozen personalities. Much better that we spend a little time and give a little thought and see what we can come up with.

So, here’s where you come in:

The Personality Exercise:

Take a minute to v quickly answer the following five questions. Go with your gut reaction, don’t over think it. Try not to read everyone elses’ responses first. Don’t worry about being silly! (This is a kind of silly exercise after all, albeit useful)

• If Drupal was an animal, what would it be?
• If Drupal was a celebrity, who would it be?
• If Drupal was a car, what would it be?
• If Drupal was a profession/career what would it be?

So your answers might look something like this:

Drupal would be a squirrel/Paris Hilton/SS Commodore Ute/Teacher*

Get to it – what do you reckon?

*the opinions expressed above are not those of the author. Except for the SS Commodore one.

Several weeks later, this arrives:

Dear Leisa

I am not a sensitive person by nature, but I have to say that I am feeling a little hurt. We’ve invited you into our Club, but you’ve clearly decided not to.

So, as a one-off attempt at sheer bribery, I‘m offering you your first, trial Club case HALF PRICE at just £47.88 (that‘s a ridiculously low £3.99 a bottle!). Plus, two FREE gifts, worth £30. That‘s an overall saving of nearly £80.

Sound good? Then click here to claim your HALF PRICE case and FREE GIFTS.

But you‘re probably not ready to join yet. You‘re probably thinking…

I can buy the wines anywhere.

Well you can‘t actually. The boutique wines we reserve for our Club Members never appear in the supermarket. And they are always offered to members at a lower price than non-members get them for.

It‘s just like one of those ghastly book clubs.

Er…sorry, not correct on this one either. Quite simply, you have no obligation to take any wine you don‘t want. You don‘t even have to pay us for any wines that don‘t blow your socks right off.

I‘m not the joining type.

If we explained that the reason we have a Club in the first place is because 40,000 people can buy better than 1, perhaps you‘d change your mind? If you join us, 40,001 people will buy better than 40,000.

Or maybe you‘ve just not got around to it. Which is fine. People who buy wine by the case tend to be busy.

So what would be a good reason?

Here‘s one good reason to test us out right now. We‘re keen to recruit new Members. So, for one last time I‘m offering you your first, trial Club case HALF PRICE at just £47.88

Take our HALF PRICE case NOW, and you‘ll receive a complimentary pair of beautiful Dartington Wine Glasses, completely FREE. Plus, a FREE professional lever corkscrew, worth £20.

Still not sure?

What is the worst thing that can happen? If you don‘t like the wines, I promise to refund you instantly, without any fuss whatsoever. If you agree that these wines are a big step better than you can get in the supermarket, you can look forward to a lifetime of feeling superior to non-members.

So why don‘t you join us now and find out what it‘s all about for yourself? Not next week, but right now.

Cheers

Rowan Gormley
Founder, Virgin Wines
www.virginwines.com/reasons3

0870 050 0305

The insight that the tone taken in this email gives me to this brand is profound, and frankly, I don’t want anything to do with a company who has this kind of attitude in their customer communications.

We’ve spoken before about positive ways to handle ‘abandonment’ – well, here is the flipside, a combination of guilt-tripping (‘I am not a sensitive person by nature, but I have to say that I am feeling a little hurt. We’ve invited you into our Club, but you’ve clearly decided not to’), cynicism (‘So, as a one-off attempt at sheer bribery…’) and smart talk (‘Er…sorry, not correct on this one either…’). Yes, consumers today are media literate and this level of ‘openness’ could potentially work well, but be nice about it. I’m supposed to enjoy buying wine, with this email VirginWine have put me right off my drink!

Take care with your tone – and of course, this applies to any kind of copy that you’re writing. And know that only *very* few brands can be anything but nice to their customer.

Mum’s coming over tomorrow with the Dyson and we’re going to Hoover the whole place…

I know mum owns a Dyson… but if you were Hoover’s brand managers a decade or so ago you’d have to be proud, wouldn’t you? Vaccuum cleaning is a thing of the past it seems.

Every now and then, companies do really smart stuff. Apple are pretty well known for doing smart stuff, and Nike have also done lots of smart (or at least, expensive!) stuff online. And now, hoorah, they’re doing smart stuff together. I feel so proud and happy!

Nike and Apple® today announced a partnership bringing the worlds of sports and music together like never before with the launch of innovative Nike+iPod products. The first product developed through this partnership is the Nike+iPod Sport Kit, a wireless system that allows Nike+ footwear to talk with your iPod® nano to connect you to the ultimate personal running and workout experience. (Apple press release)

Why so? Because the user needs are so obviously at the centre of this product design. Clearly the product designers have thought about what they can do to support the goals that runners have, and they’ve designed a product that supports these goals.

Or, in Apple’s words, they’ve been working with Nike and:

creating meaningful consumer product experiences through design and innovation

Kevin Lim has a nice writeup on why this is more than an expensive pedometer.

If I were to start running, then the features that Kevin points out would be exactly the kinds of gimmicks that I’d quickly become addicted to. I’d love a soothing voice telling me how far I’d run and how far I had to go. Almost like a personal trainer but less annoying. And the breath I save from having no one to moan to will be better spent on helping me run further.

Feeling tired but not quite at the end of your run? Then get some particularly pumpy music and 3-5 minutes of running will magically be behind you before you know it. I *know* this works, because if I get a run of pumpy songs on my walk to work I get there five minutes earlier!

The only thing I’m not sure about is the community… but that’s just because my stats would be so embarrassing! All you fit people out there, you know you’ll love it. Just like those biking people constantly comparing how far and how fast….

Unfortunately, Nike doesn’t seem to realise that there is more to ‘global’ than the US… you get that. I suppose we won’t be able to buy the shoes in Sydney until sometime next year anyway… (and while I’m moaning… I don’t get why chicks can’t buy the black shoes… what’s with that?!)

I’m not sure how many shoes Nike will sell out of it … I reckon it’s just a matter of time before you can buy the sensor separately and put them into whatever shoe you want (at least, whatever Nike shoe you want… or perhaps some new running accessory we didn’t know we needed).

Still. I like it. It’s a partnership and a promotion that will make sense and add value to a lot of people’s lives. (At least, until the sensors start breaking and Apple won’t replace them!)
It’s certainly enough to make me happy to have a Nano, and likely to keep an eye out for the Nike shoes. Who knows… maybe even enough to make me run!

What do you think? Feeling motivated?

Image credit: Pellseer2 @ Flickr

On walking through Central Station the other morning, I couldn’t help be struck by the new campaign that Dove (owned by Unilever) have launched, called the ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’. It’s actually an international campaign, but the latest version has just hit Sydney with a high impact plastering of outdoor promotion at one of Sydney’s busiest train stations (and elsewhere, I’m sure).

They describe this as an integrated-marketing campaign that undermines the basic proposition of decades of beauty-care advertising by telling women – and young girls – they’re beautiful just the way they are.

I think this is a smart and intriguing campaign.

Obviously there are a couple of *almost* contradictory objectives:

1. to redress the typical beauty-care company media message which is that women are inadequate and require their products in order to become/remain desireable (or even acceptable to society)
2. to position ideas of ‘beauty’ that are different to the traditional ideals, as potentially beautiful (thereby desireable)
3. to help young girls and women everywhere to embrace a more positive body image (via Dove Self Esteem Fund)
4. to grow brand awareness of Dove
5. to shift more Dove products.

This is an interesting case study for the problems that FMCG products will face as they attempt to embrace 2.0 advertising. They have a media and marketing literate target audience who will struggle to not see campaigns such as this as a cynical attempt to ‘own’ (and thereby brand) an ‘issue’… so that despite the fact that they may ‘do good’ by growing awareness around these issues, at the same time, we know that they wouldn’t be doing it if they didn’t think it would be effective in growing brand and shifting product. So, it’s not an entirely satisfactory, authentic brand experience, is it?

only 8% of Australian women are satisfied with their facial attractiveness
Source: Dove Global Report

But, back on topic, why might the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty be considered a 2.0 advertising campaign?

There are a few things that make it feel 2.0′ish to me:

a) The Voice: Throughout the campaign, there is an absence of the typical ‘expert’, condescending voice that you typically find in (particularly beauty-care) advertising. In this campaign, the voice is primarily asking for your opinion, asking for your feedback, and reporting research data. There is an absence of ‘spin’, there is no ‘offer’. The voice sounds honest, and direct, and educational. To me, this is a 2.0 kind of voice.

If it were *true* 2.0, though, would be multiple voices, and they would come from the community, they would feel less ‘edited’, and they would be more substantive. This voice still operates in sound bites, and it’s not quite authentic. It’s far more 2.0 than a Chanel advertisement, that’s for certain.

b) The Content: There is no ‘product’ in this campaign. There’s not even the slightest mention of a product. There’s a link through to the product site from the campaign site, of course, but even that’s quite subtle. That’s a pretty brave strategy for what is essentially an FMCG brand.

Apparently the US version of this campaign had as part of their mission ‘inspiring women to take great care of themselves’. This doesn’t seem to be present in the Australian version.

The content of the campaign is educational and interactive. Using facts and case studies, the audience is given an insight into the tragic absurdity of body image and other beauty issues that impact so many women’s lives on a daily basis. There is an attempt at community building through the use of a discussion forum.

c) The Participation (interactivity): Both the outdoor messaging and the website throw questions at their audience, encouraging discourse both with the brand and within the community. This is mirrored by the participation encouraged on the website – both through polling and through asking visitors to ‘share their views’ on a discussion forum.

They’re definitely heading down the right (2.0) track with this approach. Unfortunately, you can almost see the tumbleweeds rolling through the forum, and there’s little evidence of any user participation on the site.

Here’s where I think Dove have not quite gotten on the 2.0 bandwagon… they haven’t quite nailed the community building.

I *have* to divert into user experience commentary for a moment and say that a big part of this could be because of the awfully designed interface for the online forum. The ‘post a message’ button is all but hidden in small light blue HTML on a white background, and the posting statistics are equally obscure. The actually conversation is hidden ‘below the fold’ thanks to the frame that the designers have used to minimise the footprint of the site …. really bad idea.

There are only a small group of people who want to ‘soapbox’ about a particular issue. Mostly, people want to participate The content of the campaign is educational and interactive. Using facts and case studies, the audience is given an insight conversation going on. At the time of writing, there were just 20 posts across three topics on this website… and, I’d hazard a guess that the majority of them have been seeded (posted by people who are involved with the campaign, or friends of these people who have been prodded to participate). I’m really interested in this subject matter, but there’s nothing inspiring about this community, and I’m not inclined to spend my time posting to a great abyss.

So, what should Dove have done?

So, let’s run this campaign again. What kind of things could we do differently?

• Leverage existing communities – it’s really hard to build a new community from scratch. Particularly in time to meet your media schedule… they just don’t work that way. There are some vibrant online communities in Australia who fit right into this target market and who already discuss these kinds of issues. Go talk to the people who run those communities and work out a way that you can integrate your campaign into their community. In particular, I’m thinking of the Vogue forums… Dove could have sponsored a new category in the Vogue Forums where people can go to talk about the issues raised in this campaign – guarantee there would be LOTS more people engaging in the subject areas – there are hundreds of women already there who would be interested in participating, plus all the others you could drive through the other media activities.
• Hire a community expert – again, communities just don’t happen. They need to be nurtured and grown, and promoted. Dove should have hired someone who has expertise in managing online communities, someone who could engage in the conversation (identified as a Dove person, of course), encourage more conversation. Someone who can go off to other communities and promote the Dove community and invite more people to participate.
• Invite the blogosphere – there are a lot of chicks out here, blogging away*. Use the force, Dove. The blogosphere force. Blogs are great at creating conversations, which is exactly what this campaign is about. Perhaps the community expert they hired could also be responsible for touching base with Aus Chick Bloggers? Maybe even hire a couple of bloggers to blog on the issues? To go out an interview more real women, to get more people involved, engaged, and talking with authentic voices amongst each other.
  * not nearly enough chicks blogging… but quite a few. That’s a whole over blog post tho’.

And, that’s just the most obvious fixes. There are no shortage of ideas that could be explored with a campaign that has so much 2.0 potential.

So, congratulations Dove. I *really* love the concept behind this campaign. Next time, perhaps, you might spend a little more time thinking about the opportunities that the the ‘new’ web can offer. (Oh, and spend a bit more time on the interaction design… it *really* does matter). It’s all in the execution, after all.

So, over to you, conversationalists.

Have you seen the Dove campaign? What do you think – 2.0 or not?

What other campaigns might you describe as 2.0 and why?

Technorati Tags: advertising+2.0, web+2.0, campaign+for+real+beauty, community

Previously I wrote about how taking a little time to write a good error message can turn what is potentially a catastrophic user experience into one that actually endears you to your customers.

Here’s another great example from WordPress that turned a potentially frustrating experience (not being able to reach someone’s blog when I wanted to), into an experience that confirmed my experience of the WordPress brand, *and* made me smile.

Even though they’re personifying the server here, the voice of the clever and friendly and humorous people who make up WordPress comes through loud and clear.

As the Cluetrain guys say (which you should all know from heart by now):

These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can’t be faked.

Unless you saw this error message too many times (and nothing can turn chronically poor performance into a good user experience), you’d be hard pressed to come away from this experience thinking poorer of WordPress.

You may even be so impressed you have to write a blog post about it :)

Nice work WordPress people.

Technorati Tags: WordPress, User+Experience, Cluetrain+Manifesto, Error+States

And now for something completely different, I’m going to perform a little amateur brand analysis.

This all started a few days ago when I was on a bus and I noticed (either on another bus or on some other form of outdoor advertising) that the National Australia Bank seemed to have changed their logo….

This is the old logo:

No doubt you’ll notice a few changes. Firstly, they’ve followed the fine example of Kentucky Fried Chicken and embraced the acronym. So, no more National, its now nab. Which segues nicely into the next change – they’ve embraced the lower case. And, finally and more subtly, they’ve done some work on the red star to make it look ‘more dynamic’.

There is a great case study in brand transitioning on their website at the moment, where you can see a flash movie literally tearing down the old logo and replacing it with the new one. They have a bit of content dedicated to rationalising the re-brand, which includes some reassuring copy including this:

We’re still the National Australia Bank. But we’re also calling ourselves NAB; after all that’s what you’ve always called us. Our new logo reflects this and the new energy you’ll start to feel at NAB. (from the NAB website)

eh. I don’t know. I’m not convinced. Something about this new logo doesn’t work for me. Lets consider what it might be.

1. Embracing the Acronym:

…But we’re also calling ourselves NAB; after all that’s what you’ve always called us.

Really… well, yes, the logo does say NAB, and yes, we’ve all called the National Australia Bank ‘the NAB’ for many years. Does that mean that I want the National Australia Bank to start calling themselves ‘NAB’… well, no, actually, I don’t.

Why not, you ask?

Two reasons. First up, I don’t want my bank being more informal than they are now. Actually, I want them to be MORE formal. I want them to be polite and trustworthy and to have clean fingernails. I want them to wear a smart suit.

These are the people who look after my money, dammit. I want them to be sensible and conservative. And I want them to have people looking after me. Enough tellers so I don’t queue all lunchtime, enough customer services people so I don’t have to wait on the phone, enough web developers so that the online banking is reliable and efficient and I don’t have to go into the branch!

I don’t want them being all casual and friendly with me. I have friends for that.

An another thing. Nab. Forget the acronym, think of the word.

Is that not a pretty inappropriate and unpleasant word for a bank to use?

Are we so familiar with the use of the acronym that we don’t care about the implications of the actual word?

(or am I being overly sensitive because I was a bank teller in a past life?!)

2. the lower case logo

Lower case logos are pretty popular these days. AT&T rebranded in November 2005 and unveiled a new lowercase logo. Why? The press release tells us:

Lowercase type is now used for the “AT&T” characters because it projects a more welcoming and accessible image.

More welcoming and accessible, eh? I don’t think so. I think it looks casual and childish. There’s nothing authoritative about that logo, in my opinion.

They’re not the only ones though. Around about the same time, UPS relaunched their logo. Using lowercase. At least their logo looks kind of nice. (in my entirely subjective and unjustified opinion!)

Do we want to be friends with brands?

I’m happy to be friends with my brand of music player, my lipstick, my clothing labels. Maybe even my mobile phone. But not my laptop, not my universitym and certainly not my bank. I want those guys to be

strong, respected, authoritative, safe, conservative, sensible, large. Make them all friendly, approachable and accessibly, and you take away a lot of the reason I chose that bank, uni, computer manufacturer in the first place.

Of course, I’m working on the premise that lowercase lettering conveys that accessible, friendly, welcoming,

open feeling (which seems to be why a lot of brands claim to use it). There are other ways to read it. An analysis of the UPS logo redesign suggests that lower case can be associated with service.

The choice of lower case letters sends a message of service; this puts the customer above the corporate entity (via Logoworks)

You know. This doesn’t sit right with me. Although I can kind of see how it works with the UPS logo.

For me, though, in this situation. That ‘service’ feeling isn’t created by the lowercase letters. Its created by the brownness. Brown says ‘I’m not so special, I’m just brown’. Especially when its combined with that gold / yellow colour. Its a uniform. Its not special. It serves.

Upper or lower case, doesn’t matter. That’s my take, at least.

Conclusion

Why on earth am I interested in this anyway? I don’t design logos.

True enough, but typeface is a tool that I (as well as the visual design team) use to send signals to users.

Even when wireframing, I often find myself using lower and upper case letters strategically. Sometimes it is because I want to create a more friendly, welcoming, fresh, contemporary effect. And sometimes I need to create a sense of trust and authorativeness.

Taking a walk through this case study and trying to understand why this new logo perterbed me as it has turns out to be quite instructive, I think, in considering when using all lowercase can be a helpful visual tool in interface design, and when its actually going to be counter productive.

of course, it all gets very complex when your client wants to be authoritative yet friendly and welcoming… another topic, another day!

Speaking of which, it looks as though the nab have also redesigned their website lately. urgh. what a contradiction. You go and spend a fortune on a warm, friendly, welcoming logo and then you design a cold, unfriendly, not particularly userfriendly and pretty much uninspired website to put it on. Where’s the sense in that? I hope the branding people are hopping up and down about it.

what do you think? am I talking utter rubbish?

how do you like the new logo?

do you have some thoughts on the psychology of the lower case?

Related reading:

nab

nab to spend big on miniscule brand change

nab banking on the brand

nab set to launch new look logo

analyzing logos – UPS case study

Strategic Name Development – AT&T Logo Followup

Technorati Tags: brand, logo, rebrand, logo+design, banking, NAB typography