HEAD BLOG

There’s a sign hanging by the counter of my local cafe which says “Good Coffee”.

Good.

Not great, not the best; just good.

The understated, happy-with-my-lot side of me likes this sign. Good is, well, good enough. It doesn’t attempt to lay claim to being the key to the one drink that will make your day or give you a story to pass on to your children. It’s just good coffee. Used in the same way as we might say that we would like “a nice cup of tea” it offers a charm which is wholesome and welcome, especially when placed against the grandiose claims of the big coffee shops.

And yet, another part of me wonders what would happen if there was a second sign next to it saying “Great Coffee”. How would that affect customer behaviour? It’s one thing enjoying the folksy charm of the ‘good’ but, given a choice under the same roof where such a decision can be clearly measured, would we stick by our simple friend or raise our aspirations?

Perhaps they know their customer is just looking for the good life.

The village where I live have joined the marketing game. Investments in signage and newsletters are all around, logo design cannot be far behind.

The pressure to join this game is immense but all too often the execution is lacking the guidance which could be gained through an analysis of the aims. It’s clearly a case of ‘what’ shall we do rather than ‘why’ should we do it.

And so the residents are told of a postcard competition. Amateur photographers have been invited to submit their views of the village and a postcard is to be printed a distributed to newsagents in the local area where it will fade alongside the hopes of the out-of-date football calendar.

It’s the postcard which gives us our clearest insight into the committee process as, after showing a witty cartoon sketch card from the 1950s, the modern counterpart is unveiled alongside careful explanations. This image of the stone hewn village marker has been elevated to tourist attraction, that view away from the village is a point of difference. And look, we have included a view along the main lane because it was felt the boarded-up shops were not otherwise represented. Nobody seems to ever asked what these scenes really offer us by way of promotion. Just lots of people squeezing in aspects thought to represent a ‘side’ worth, well, representing.

Nowhere in the process has anybody asked what is being sold and that’s where the opportunity has been missed. All the perceived gears of marketing are being swung into action but we are missing the actual product.

Views of the village aren’t, in all honesty, up to much. These scenes won’t be chosen for chocolate boxes to represent a golden era. Flower displays, lovely and welcome as they may be, aren’t the reason a young family will put down roots.

The real sadness is that it wouldn’t take much to uncover potential products upon which a genuine sales initiative could take place. The village is surrounded by farmland that could be tapped to provide goods which could be uniquely ours. Local businesses and landlords could be shown the benefits of working together to make more of eyesore spaces that would lift the shopping areas. Such businesses would do much to foster community in which generations could mix. If you know your neighbours and your community, you are more likely to want to support it. Activities could then be based on people rather than new signs.

In all, efforts to find a real and sustainable product for the village would pay dividends for everyone and when the committee meets to flex its wannabe marketing muscles it can do so in the knowledge that they won’t be selling their own, hopeful impressions of a village that doesn’t really exist.

In 1983 I received a ZX Spectrum. The one my dad bought had 16k (smaller than this Word file) but could be upgraded to 48k by sending it off again.

I don’t remember why he did it this way but I remember having to be very patient around Christmas until the postman finally delivered the newly upgraded home computer.

Many people my age will have been through the same experience but what made my ZX Spectrum different to everyone else’s was the case it sat in whilst I learned the art of up, down, left, right, fire and the basics of Z80 assembler language.

The case was built by my dad and it was a beauty. It held the computer, the tape drive and had space for an armful of cassettes hidden by a lid as well as providing a neat solution for channelling the cables. It was even designed to raise the computer to a comfortable angle of 20 degrees; dad certainly was keen on me doing a fair bit of typing as well as playing games.

Twenty seven years later and a bunch of us are sat, surrounded by flat screen monitors, Apple Macs and games consoles, discussing the latest in user experiences as represented through video games. Everything around us has been designed and mass produced to fit everyone.

The ubiquity of product design is not lost on us as we consider what it is that makes for a user experience. At the heart of this is speculation over whether the new boys on the block (Microsoft and Sony) have any chance of challenging Nintendo on their home turf of motion control.

The thing about the Wii is that it was conceived and designed as a mass-market, motion controlled device. Every part of it from the way in which the Wii-motes were made to emulate an average TV remote, to the limited graphics and chunky option screens, was part of what made the Wii grandparent friendly.

It worked.

Beyond most people’s expectations, it worked.

The user experience that Microsoft and Sony now want to emulate wasn’t added on afterwards, it was built in.

So does that make it any more robust? Does it make it any more likely to succeed? Where does the user experience end and the gimmick begin?

I’m not sure you can discount bolt-on solutions to user experience. Buzz and Guitar Hero were essentially exactly that and they intensified the idea of mass market gaming. The Eye-Toy back on the PlayStation 2 felt like an idea needing a market but Nintendo certainly solved that with the Wii.

And that is, perhaps, where this issue becomes more complex. Nintendo defined their own audience by knowing what it wanted to achieve with motion controlling whereas Microsoft and Sony are “lumbered” with an existing audience who are all very vocal about what they expect from gaming. I remember arguing against the flood of moans regarding the Wii name. The existing gamer base was hostile towards the very idea of “soft” gaming, an approach I feel has been behind the perception of gaming as a pursuit for the less socially able amongst us. Will they view the new user experience in a positive light?

The two companies must certainly hope so because on the flip side of that coin is a public who may already be convinced that the 360 and PlayStation 3 are for the gamers, the stereotypical gamers locked in their bedrooms screaming about Red Dead Redemption.

In such a world, the task becomes how to convince both camps that the user experience is one worth buying into because not everyone has a dad who will make that experience feel personal.

Everyone loves excellence, particularly in the games industry. Developers are always striving for the most polygons, the shiniest cars and super-intelligent A.I. Publishers want more features, the most online players, more weapon types. Is this what the consumer wants? Not always, and very few people understand this.

Let’s look at Apple, a company that constantly stresses its commitment to the best design in the world, but which has built a massive business on the back of non-CD quality audio files. MP3 and AAC files are nowhere near CD quality and plenty of audiophiles argue that vinyl is better. So if Apple are selling what can be describe as a ‘substandard’ product, how come they’ve done so well? Well enough to sell 10 billion songs. The reason behind this is that sometimes people don’t want or need the best they just want it to be ‘good enough’. With MP3s, the consumer has traded quality for convenience and, for the most part, is very happy. They’ve decided they can cope with ‘almost-perfect’ sound quality if it means they can carry their entire music library around with them, or have the convenience of downloading any track when and where they want. The same goes for streaming services like Spotify which has a maximum quality of 320kbps, the same as the best MP3s, and also features advertising between every few tracks. We don’t mind a few ads if we get the benefit of an unlimited choice of music that’s available whenever we want it

The Nintendo Wii is a great example of ‘Good Enough’ technology. It isn’t ‘next-generation’, it isn’t HD, it has no Blu-Ray player or extensive online matchmaking system but it has sold 67 million units. Nintendo very cleverly and very simply looked at what the mass-market wanted and gave it to them. This gaming mass-market, perhaps first discovered by Sony with things like EyeToy, SingStar and Buzz! loves to play but doesn’t have time to learn complicated gaming mechanics or new control systems. Very importantly they also don’t want to spend very much money. They’re not hardcore gaming connoisseurs who know how many processors or polygons their machines has and they don’t care. The Wii plays fun games cheaply and that’s Good Enough.

Simplicity and value for money are also driving Apple’s app store with throwaway games that cost 59p making as much money as established franchises. I often think “59p, well it’s the same price as a Mars Bar, might as well have a go” which has led me to such delights as Younicorn and Bauble. One of my most played games is the free BlocksClassic. As ever, you get what you pay for, but the point is we’re not expecting epics for that price. Our friends at Four Door Lemon released QuizQuizQuiz in October 09 and it’s done very well, more than making its money back. What is it? It’s a quiz game. What did you expect? Press buttons to answer questions against the clock. 59p. Sorted. Sometimes people just want to press buttons and answer questions without distractions. Now it would be easy to take a game like this, add in an expensive 3D TV studio set, celebrity voice-overs and more, but is that really necessary? Pound for pound the game wouldn’t necessarily make any more profit.

For the consumer everything is a trade off and if they understand the benefit of what they’re getting then they can decide if its a trade they want to make. So sometimes you don’t have to go too far with a product and its important that you make something that will at least make its money back and hopefully make a profit – or there’s not much point in doing it. ‘Good enough’ is not always a bad thing, there’s still scope for excellence, and perhaps we need to concentrate on making the customer happy rather than worrying about things they don’t even care about.

Could a marketing department have created the Internet?

Could a marketing department have created the wind up radio?

Could a marketing department have created space war and with it the entire video game industry?

There was a little bit of fuss last night when Alex Bogusky highlighted a poor review of his book ‘Baked In’. The review was far from glowing and called the book “half baked”.

Witty stuff.

Beneath the easy point, however, the writer (Dan Neil) went on to suggest that whilst marketing has a place in product design, it is ludicrous to believe that marketing departments could originate product.

Twitter user @adsoftheworld disagreed saying:

New products should indeed originate from marketing dept.

Consider this post an analysis not of the book (more of which at the end) but of this one claim.

For me, the idea that marketing departments should be responsible for creating product seems to stem from a couple of places:

Firstly the place we’ve all been as creative people, namely around the table after the client has left. Here, before we begin to hammer out a reasoned campaign we might, perhaps, point out the if-onlys. If only the product did this, if only the product did that. If only the client had come to us first.

I have lost count of the number of times I’ve solved deep political issues after a two minute news broadcast.

The other place in which marketing’s place in product design is assured is

Yet the reason so much marketing is ineffective isn’t all down to poor product design or a lack of integrated narrative between marketing and design, it’s also down to poor marketing. Bad strategy, lazy creative, poor communication – marketing doesn’t always get it right. Even when the best and the brightest are involved.

Much of the so-called creativity we see from marketing is box ticking, consumer tested strategy. It rarely sidesteps perceived wisdom to deliver something astounding. It works with known understanding of consumer behaviour. It plays to our shopping weaknesses.

Does product design do the same?

Sometimes.

Sometimes it comes out of the blue. Sometimes an inventor is just trying to find a way to make her life better.

Then it occurs to them that it could improve the lives of others.

That’s when they approach marketing.

Because, well, that’s what marketing is there for.

To bring a product to market.

The idea that marketable ideas come, or ought to come from the marketing department omits one thing: history.

A marketing department couldn’t have created the Internet because it wasn’t a product to sell. Commercial potential came afterwards.

A marketing department couldn’t have created the wind up radio. Who is going to invest money in thinking how to help poor people?

And a basic game that ran on a machine which would never be available in shops?

I wouldn’t have thought of that.

But I am interested in buying the book. That’s the role Bogusky exploited when he shared the poor review of his book.