lead/marke | ralf schwartz

Video: Handcrafting the Hermès Leica

"It will cost an eye-watering $25,000 - and this video goes some way to explaining that price." - Via gizmodo.

 

Apple and Samsung: 99%(!) Share of Total Phone Market Profits

"Of the vendors tracked (public companies who report mobile phone divisional performance), Apple obtained 73% of operating profits, Samsung 26% and HTC 1%".

All quotes and jpg via asymco.

Again it is about disruption:

"So if the industry is booming but the majority of participants in the industry are loss making (and surprisingly so) then what is going on?

There are two answers: new market disruption and low end disruption".

The Evolution of the Lego Logo

Via jay mug.

Great brands and Logos stay ahead of their time by intuitively concentrating on their inner core.

Any interest in Pinterest? Ask yourself these fine questions

I just wrote in our weekly column at German business magazine Wirtschaftswoche that Pinterest - or facebook, twitter, television - is not the solution, but just a medium, and marketeers should not fall for their agencies like in 'the emperor's new clothes'.

Here are a few questions you should ask yourself, in case you think about engaging in Pinterest - by Becky Lang from Zeus Jones.

"The point is, sometimes forcing your brand onto Pinterest can backfire. Pinterest is a place for creativity and idealism, not necessarily for all products everywhere. Here are a couple questions to ask yourself before going there with your marketing.

1. Does your product fit with the mood of Pinterest?
...

2. Do you respect Pinterest and its users?
...

3. Do you create media that might otherwise end up on Pinterest?
...

4. Is this just another house for your TV campaign?
..."

Please read her full post.

And have a look at my Visit Pinterest after reading this Post, to understand what Pinterest is desperately missing.

Addendum

 
Via thisisnthappyness.

Design as a Means of Business Improvement

"Design is shrinking the gap between what a product does and why it exists.

Designing is not just about picking the right font or gradient. Stop thinking about design in terms of wire frames or visual style; it is about the product as a whole.

Designing is figuring out the purpose of your product and how you orient everything else around it. And that means that everyone within a company plays a role in the design process.

And that means that everyone in a company needs to learn design literacy. It’s a hard task. Everyone tells their MBA-wielding friends that they should learn to code: “Anyone can do it,” or “It’s going to be the new literacy.” People think code is the basis of a working product. But what about design? How often are people told that they should “learn to design”? 

While everyone involved should know how design works, they should also understand that it can be practiced on anything you make.

The design instinct, above all, is about viewing the world around you as a place filled with opportunities to add more thoughtfulness and care.

Thus, your organization deserves to be just as well-designed as your homepage, and your company’s tweets as crafted as your account confirmation emails.

Which is to say that design should be considered a facet of everything you do, as well as a means of improving your business. Imagine if your site were to slow down. What would you do? You’d try to make it faster, or find an engineer that could. You’d make a conscious design decision to make your site quicker to use, because you understand that doing so will make your offerings more accessible and user-friendly.

Apply that principle of improvement to everything else." - Sahil Lavingnia

Via collaborativefund.

Visit Pinterest after reading this Post

After reading this you will have understood why Pinterest will be a great success for all those boring superficial brands out there, trying to be cool.

Authentically, true cool brands are on tumblr!

"...well, girls like Pinterest.

Their homepage, which features the most popular posts, is the quickest way to communicate what the average North American seems to think “femininity” is. Remember how girls in high school would paper their lockers with pictures of heartthrobs, puppies in baskets, minidresses they wanted, red, fruity cocktails they’d like to get hammered on? Imagine looking in that locker, then being shoved in it and having the door slammed closed on you. That’s a visit to Pinterest.

And that’s why I find it so bleak. Here is a world devoid of science, of politics, of dark humour, of a social conscience. It’s a world where orgasms don’t exist but babies are everywhere. Where “you go, girl!” affirmations rub shoulders with Mountain Dew cupcakes. This domain is sort of like a girls-only clubhouse, but it’s not about expressing innermost desires, just surface desires—for hair, shoes, nail art, a boyfriend that exists in soft-focus black-and-white.

It’s not a subculture, either. It’s the same idea of femininity that the two biggest female entrepreneurs of the past decade—maybe ever—Martha and Oprah, made their fortune selling. And it infuriates me because it’s so damned archaic - Pinterest circa 1912 would be fundamentally the same." ...

Please read the full post: Pinterest is all pink, puppies and pretty ponies - Here is a world devoid of science, of politics, of dark humour, of a social conscience. Via underpaidgenius.

S/he who likes it (pinterest) a little bit more intellectual, may follow me at pinterest.
Or of course directly at tumblr, the real thing: brandpoems and 'this message is too wide to fit your screen'. 

Braille Mobile Phone: Any Implications for your own Product Development?

Looking at this Drawbraille Mobile Phone (Design Concept), what might that imply for your own products?

Wouldn't it make sense to incorporate Braille into your packaging, stickers, car doors, interior, ...?

"Designer Shikun Sun has put together a stylish mobile phone design idea for the blind - via Yanko Design:

DrawBraille Mobile Phone is one of the most compelling concepts that focus on making mobile phones easy-to-use for the blind. The entire UI and input keys are in Braille and even the touch panel reflects this system. The design and approach have a surreal finish to it and I am quite sure that Shikun Sun is on to something big with this!

More information, including photos and a video, can be found at Yanko Design here"

Image and quote via workman.

 

Best Damn Christmas Ever!

Via thisisnthappiness.

May All Your Wishes Come True!
Thx for following. See You next Year.
ralf 

[L/M NET] Helge Tenno "Simple (part 2 of The next 80%)

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

The reason large parts of the corporate Internet is boring, difficult and of little direct use / effect is because we are unnecessarily complicating it. The Internet should be one thing: simple.

This is the second part of my presentation The next 80%, find the first part here:
Part 1: Introduction

 

.

Let me demonstrate with a couple of examples how even minute tasks get unnecessarily complicated online.

Example A:
Comoyo is an Internet based content service. The first thing that happens as I fill in the form is that it refuses the password that I use on 95% of all my Internet accounts. Why would you do that? Why would you start of by inviting people to a service they don’t know what is, offer them a log in and the first thing you do is just crash the whole process? If the system is to complex then redesign the system. We are putting to much of the responsibility on to people, instead of IT.

Example B:
This is the beta version of my Internet bank, the picture is from a sneak preview they offered their customers. Now, I have a bank because I need help doing bank-things. Most often (95% of the time) this means checking my account or paying some bills. The best thing the bank can do is offer me a service that makes banking better. But they don’t. Approximately 15% of the interface is spent on banking, the rest of it is navigation, CRM or a media platform that wants to sell me stuff I don’t need. They give me everything except the actual banking service that I should be demanding (people are just to polite and don’t know that their experiences are being robbed online. In the words of Richard Saul Wurman, the creator of TED: “I would have designed a much better Google interface, it’s not difficult.”).

Now, the reason the Internet isn’t simple, is because of technology. We are treating online as something complicated, something that doesn’t work, something we don’t understand. – And my question is: how much do we really need to understand?

Take a look at other pieces of technology: bread, asphalt, language, bicycle, chairs, door knobs. Now do you think about these things as technology? They work and they are, no questions asked. But this is not the case with the Internet, why?

Understanding the nuts and bolts of the Internet is as important to a business as understanding the complexities of the mechanics that goes on inside the door when we twist the door nob.

Unfortunately the fog of technology diffuses the process of building something meaningful by trivializing the discussions and spending to much time focusing on irrelevant details. When we think of the Internet we are not thinking business models, identity and brand value. We are thinking users (what is a user?), HTML5, responsive design (why would you offer the same service in every situation?), apps or clicks.

The Internet is fascinatingly simple, if we just stop referencing it as technology and start thinking of it as a loaf of bread – because our customers already are.

(ralf says:
All those gurus out there are very deep into the technologies and secrets of the internet. But they cannot transcend the easiest mechanics of it.

To the opposite of my father I never wanted to understand a radio, a television set or loudspeakers. And he was limited by that understanding. He always told me that small speakers cannot - due to the laws of physics - create deep sounds. But they can these days. I showed him. He said: No they can't. They just sound like they can.

We are in the very early stages of the web. We have to get it out of our way. We have to understand that it is not important to understand it. We do not have to understand oxygen to understand that we have to breath. We even do not have to understand that we have to breath. We just do.

We just have to take care of the web's independence, its neutrality, and ubiquity. We must take care that politicians do not sell it to corporations like they did with our water systems and resources ... as simple as that.

The more simple a medium (in McLuhan's sense) is the more precious it will be for us and our future.)

Helge works as a Planner for SDG, helping brands and organizations discover WHY they are valuable in consumers lives, and HOW they can create deliberate value on the arenas and inside the interfaces where they connect with them. Twitter: @congbo

LEGO rules the world ..solves Rubik’s Cube Faster than Human World Record

I WANT A CUBESTORMER II!

 
Via Helge Tenno, member of lead/marke NET.

Puma aiming to market compostable Trainers, T-shirts and Bags

"We are confident that in the near future we will be able to bring the first shoes, T-shirts and bags, that are either compostable or recyclable, to the market," Puma boss Franz Koch told the German business magazine Wirtschaftswoche.

He explained that the company was working with partners on developing products on the principle of the "cradle-to-cradle" design. "It follows two circuits, the technical and the biological: I can use old shoes to make new ones or something completely different, such as car tyres," said Koch, who has led the sports clothing company since July.

"In the biological cycle, I can make shoes and shirts that are compostable so I can shred them and bury them in the back garden. We are working on products that meet these two criteria."

Via theguardian.

Jelly Bean Animation Video

Via jovoto.

We Love @BLYSS_choc - Guess Why!?

01 - Because we love great chocolate.

02 - Because we love a good story.

03 - Because we love fantastic pictures.

04 - Because we admire great branding.

05 - Because we love focus.

06 - Because we love consistency.

07 - Because we love authenticity.

08 - Because we love true entrepreneurship.

09 - Because we love a good strategy.

10 - We love vision. We love passion.

And - last but not least - because we love, we truly and deeply love, to discover a brand, a company, an entrepreneurial spirit NOT following 30.000 people to get 30.000 followers.

This fact - you might judge it minor - made me have a look at the product when CemB retweetet BLYSS_choc.

This small fact makes all the difference between truly building a brand and mere selling a product as fast as you can.

Lyss, we wish you all the best with BLYSS!
Only great people will build great brands! 

Steve Jobs' 10 Commandments to Manage his Creative Process

Via hitenshah.

By Leander Kahney. Click for a larger image.

See also Dieter Rams: "We Design Nature" - Video and his 10 Principles of Good Design.

Dieter Rams: "We Design Nature" - Video and his 10 Principles of Good Design

Please enjoy Dieter's "Objectified" - and reflect upon his below 10 principles of good design.

And please test every principle against the great (or not so great) design which comes to your mind - even (or especially) your own product's design.

These 10 principles - as a poster - should beautify every designer's, agency's and marketeer's wall!

 
Via Helge Tenno, Member of lead/marke NET.

Dieter Rams' 10 Principles of ...

@TheThirdClub - or: To All the Brave Entrepreneurial Wo/Men: Creativity & Innovation Desperately Need You!

(Note: This is a cross post with my distinctive leadership blog)

We just founded The Third Club!
Get to know more about it here (ya, it's German).

(Polaroid by Douglas Wilson > available here) 

At the moment we are 12 brave wo/men - but want to allure all brave wo/men out there! Just to give you a very small hint on what we are talking about please inhale the following list.

(Yeah, I know, some 20.000+ great people are not on that list.
But you do know: there is no definitive list of great people.)

This is not about names. The personalities beyond them will give you a pretty good picture what I am talking about. They are the wild-card characters of entrepreneurial personalities and spirit, of motivation, engagement, and dedication I would love to see @TheThirdClub:

[L/M NET] Adrian Ho > Think(ing) Different.

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

I have a long history with computers. I got a Sinclair Z81 for my birthday one year and the 16K ram pack for my birthday the next. I did maths and computer science at college where we learned Pascal on Vax mini computers. My history with computers became intertwined with my history as a planner when in 1992,  I started working on my first account: AST Research, a now defunct PC manufacturer and shortly afterwards Sun Microsystems, a now defunct workstation/server manufacturer.

In 1996,I started working on Microsoft and the next year Steve Jobs returned to Apple. By then, Apple had ceased to be relevant – our sights were set on companies like Netscape, Sun and Oracle. Along with most others I assumed that it would be too little, too late. And when the “Think Different” advertising launched, my assumption was confirmed.

I remember asking my colleagues, “How can an ad about what you are, a thing that everyone already knows, change what you think about a company?”

In fact, I don’t think it did. It was everything that came after that changed how we think about that ad.

And for me, it was everything that came after that changed how I think about computers, about technology, about advertising and about marketing.

Goodbye Steve.

(ralf says: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." RIP Steve.)

Adrian is founding partner of Zeus Jones a branding company believing actions speak louder than words and that modern brands are defined by what they do not what they say. He speaks (and writes) regularly about non-communications based models for marketing & branding. Twitter: @adrianho

"Jobs taught his entire organization to play in the span of product generations rather than product introductions"

"Jobs is ahead of his time in other ways too: He has taught his entire organization to play in the span of product generations rather than product introductions.

Apple designers say that now, each design they create has to be presented alongside a mock-up of how that design might evolve in the second or third generation.

That should ensure Apple’s continued success for a long time, aided, of course, by the tremendous momentum that Jobs’s leadership has provided the company."

Via.

Innovation: Must-See > iPad Game that Uses Physical Objects on Top of iPad

"Today Disney announced a new iPad game that uses physical objects on top of an iPad. How does it work? Well, here I visit the inventor, Etienne Mineur, who shows me how it works. More on the Disney game here.

There's something deeper here, though. Etienne is an inventor who comes up with simple solutions to interesting problems and here you get some insights into his mind.

This video was made at the LIFT conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on February 3 of this year." - Scobelizer

 
Via Helge Tenno, Member of LM/NET.

Innovation: Architecture's Future!?

Photo and quote via kliniczero.

"Landform building is out  Landform Building: Architecture’s New Terrain

The book is a sustained look at “the evolving relationship between architecture and landscape,” with a specific focus on geomorphic megastructures—that is, buildings that look like mountains and other earth forms—vegetative ornament, including green roofs, and complex interpenetrations between architecture and the surface of the earth (semi-subterranean structures, structures penetrated by bedrock, and so forth)."