The Grand America is a luxury hotel in Salt Lake City, UT. With 775 rooms, the 24-story hotel is one of the select few to earn the title of AAA Five Diamond Hotel. Apart from fancy rooms with "Murano crystal chandeliers, handcrafted Richelieu furniture, English wool carpets, Carrera Italian marble, and the finest fabrics," the hotel features a handful of high-end stores, including the brand new JouJou: A Curious Boutique for Toys and Treats. Local firm Struck was in charge of developing this whole new little world.
Struck was delighted to rebrand The Grand America Hotel's toy store, we completely embraced the challenge of bringing the environment to life. It's a realm where imagination takes flight — in the playful form of fire-breathing dragons, elusive fairies, robot warriors and peculiar monsters. This haven for child-like curiosity includes a stunning new interior, a full brand identity, promotions, merchandise and packaging. Struck sourced original toys and books and filled it with lavish and rare gifts. The finished location is a magical experience for guests young and old, mixing hand-crafted installations with interactive digital canvases and delicious treats. Contributors included: Struck, Watts Architects, Plastik Banana, Chris DeMuri, The Second Artist and Chase Studio.
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The making of JouJou. I recommend watching this video first before going through the rest of the post.
While I would normally saddle you all with plenty of opinion, there is a lot to see in this post, so I'll keep it to a minimum. This whole project is truly stunning. What I like most about it is that there are no overarching rules or one style that dominates over another. It's the proverbial "throwing on the wall and see what sticks" except that everything has stuck. It's modern, it's baroque, it's digital, it's European, it's fantasy-filled. It's everything any kid could be stimulated by. And for us designers, it's an equal treat.
For detailed information and more how-did-they-do-that? details there is this PDF to satisfy your curiosity.
Some of the identity assets for use in packaging.
Objects in their 2D and 3D renderings.
The two fictitious companies that "make" the flying machines.
Finished store. Click image for bigger view.
Finished store. Click image for bigger view.
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The store includes an interactive wall called Monsterpiece Theater consisting of ten different animated monsters, each contained in their own unique frame and environment. Monsters were designed by Struck and Mister, animated by Plenty.tv and developed by Welikesmall. The rendered monster assets were brought to life using Mac minis, Arduino Uno prototyping boards and the open Frameworks C++ toolkit. Each monster consists of a custom monster application built in openFrameworks, powered by its own Mac mini. Those minis are then paired with an Arduino prototyping board wired to an IR sensor which allows us to temporarily bridge the gap between the digital and physical world when each monster detects and interacts with a human presence.
Apple Inc. uses the Apple brand to compete across several highly competitive markets, including the personal computer industry with its Macintosh line of computers and related software, the consumer electronics industry with products such as the iPod, digital music distribution through its iTunes Music Store, the smart phone market with the Apple iPhone, magazine, book, games and applications publishing via the AppsStore for iPhone and the iPad tablet computing device, and movie and TV content distribution with Apple TV. For marketers, the company is also establishing a very strong presence to rival Google in the advertising market, via its Apps business and iAd network.
Steve Jobs, Apple's co-Founder, described Apple as a "mobile devices company" - the largest one in the world (Apple's revenues are bigger than Nokia, Samsung, or Sony's mobility business).
For several years Apple's product strategy involved creating innovative products and services aligned with a "digital hub" strategy, whereby Apple Macintosh computer products function as the digital hub for digital devices, including the Apple iPod, personal digital assistants, cellular phones, digital video and still cameras, and other electronic devices. More recently, the full impact of a very well throught out brand strategy has come into focus - and one in which customer experience is central, and the Mac is no longer the hub of all things Apple. The company now offers a harmonised, synchronised, and integrated user experience across all of its main devices (iPad, iPhone, and Mac), using iCloud as the hub.
Apple's core competence is delivering exceptional experience through superb user interfaces. The company's product strategy is based around this, with iTunes, the iPhone with it's touch screen "gestures" that are re-used on the iPad, and the Apple Apps store all playing key roles.
The Apple Brand Personality
Apple has a branding strategy that focuses on the emotions. The Apple brand personality is about lifestyle; imagination; liberty regained; innovation; passion; hopes, dreams and aspirations; and power-to-the-people through technology. The Apple brand personality is also about simplicity and the removal of complexity from people's lives; people-driven product design; and about being a really humanistic company with a heartfelt connection with its customers.
Apple Brand Equity and Apple's Customer Franchise
The Apple brand is not just intimate with its customers, it's loved, and there is a real sense of community among users of its main product lines.
The brand equity and customer franchise which Apple embodies is extremely strong. The preference for Apple products amongst the "Mac community", for instance, not only kept the company alive for much of the 90's (when from a rational economic perspective it looked like a dead duck) but it even enables the company to sustain pricing that is at a premium to its competitors.
It is arguable that without the price-premium which the Apple brand sustains in many product areas, the company would have exited the personal computer business several years ago. Small market share PC vendors with weaker brand equity have struggled to compete with the supply chain and manufacturing economics of Dell. However, Apple has made big advances in becoming more efficient with its manufacturing supply chain,logistics and operations, and it can be assumed that as far as like-for-like hardware manufacturing comparisons are comcerned, Apple's product costs are very similar to those of Dell. In terms of price to the consumer, Apple's computer products have an additional cost advantage: the company does not have to pay another company for operating system licences..
The Apple Customer Experience
The huge promise of the Apple brand, of course presents Apple with an enormous challenge to live up to. The innovative, beautifully-designed, highly ergonomic, and technology-leading products which Apple delivers are not only designed to match the brand promise, but are fundamental to keeping it.
Apple has expanded and improved its distribution capabilities by opening its own retail stores in key cities around the world in up-market, quality shopping venues. Apple provides Apple Mac-expert retail floor staff staff to selected resellers' stores (such as Australian department store David Jones); it has entered into strategic alliances with other companies to co-brand or distribute Apple's products and services (for example, HP who was selling a co-branded form of iPod and pre-loading iTunes onto consumer PCs and laptops in the mid-2000s - though in retrospect this may now just have been a stepping-stone). Apple has also increased the accessibility of iPods through various resellers that do not currently carry Apple Macintosh systems, and has increased the reach of its online stores.
The very successful Apple retail stores give prospective customers direct experience of Apple's brand values. Apple Store visitors experience a stimulating, no-pressure environment where they can discover more about the Apple family, try out the company's products, and get practical help on Apple products at the shops' Guru Bars. Apple retail staff are helpful, informative, and let their enthusiasm show without being brash or pushy.
The overall feeling is one of inclusiveness by a community that really understands what good technology should look and feel like - and how it should fit into people's lives.
Apple Brand Architecture
From a brand architecture viewpoint, the company maintains a "monolithic" brand identity - everything being associated with the Apple name, even when investing strongly in the Apple iPod and Apple iTunes products.
Apple's current line-up of product families includes not just the iPod and iTunes, but iMac, iBook, iLife, iWork, iPhone, iPad, and now iCloud. However, even though marketing investments around iPod are substantial, Apple has not established an "i" brand. While the "i" prefix is used only for consumer products, it is not used for a large number of Apple's consumer products (eg Mac mini, MacBook, Apple TV, Airport Extreme, Safari, QuickTime, and Mighty Mouse).
The list of Apple's Trademarks reflects something of a jumbled past. The predominant sub-brand since the introduction of the Apple Macintosh in January 1984 has always been the Apple Mac. Products whose market includes Microsoft computer users (for example MobileMe, QuickTime, Bonjour, and Safari) have been named so they are somewhat neutral, and therefore more acceptable to Windows users. Yet other product have been developed more for a professional market (eg Aperture, the Final Cut family, and Xserve).
The iPod Halo Effect
Though Apple's iPhone and iTunes music business is profitable in its own right, Apple's venture into these product areas was based on a strategy of using the music business to help boost the appeal of Apple's computing business.
Apple is using iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and now iPad to reinforce and re-invigorate the Apple brand personality. At the same time, these product initiatives are growing a highly relevant, appealing brand image in the minds of consumer segments that Apple has not previously reached.
In a so-called iPod halo effect, Apple hoped that the popularity of iPod and iTunes among these new groups of customers would cause these segments to be interested in Apple's computer products. This does seem to have happened. Since the take-off of the iPod there has been a dramatic rise in Apple's computer sales and market share.
A couple of years ago, Apple's aspirations for the iPod halo effect was was highlighted most strongly when it used the slogan "from the creators of iPod" in its promotion of iMac G5 computers. In this instance, the Apple brand came full-circle - having been built into a branding system that originates in the personal computer market, then leveraged into the consumer electronics market, and then back into the consumer personal computer market.
This halo effect is extended with the hugely successful Apple iPad tablet computer. Great customer experience with iPhone (and familiarity with Apple's touch screen gesture controls), combined with a great product in its own right, has made iPod a huge success that in turn is drawing even more people to Apple's Mac computer products. In a move which brings matters full circle, the 2011 Lion version of Mac OSX brought to the Mac the same touch screen gesture controls which iPad and iPod users have learned.
This is extension of a common user experience across Apple products was further strengthened by the introduction of the Apps Store to Mac OSX in mid-2011. Mac users can now buy their OSX applications with the same convenience as iPad or iPhone users can buy iOS Apps. Apple has announced that in mid-2012 it will further harmonise the user experience of Mac and iPad users by introducing even more features from iPad into the new Mountain Lion version of the Mac operating system. With the introduction of Mountain Lion, Apple will drop the Mac part of the name from the operating system, so that it will be called just "OS X", rather than "Mac OS X".
This small but important branding change opens the way for Apple to consolidate, perhaps into a single Operating System, the software used across its multiple devices.
Expect the Halo to Speak - Siri and beyond
Speech will be the next dimension in which Apple will gaining synery across its product lines. Expect the natural language speech processing and interactivity capabilities introduced in October 2011 on the iPhone 4S to be introduced first on the iPad (which uses the same operating system and A5 processor as the iPhone 4S).
Apple is giving substance to speech interactivity by giving it a character - a personal assistant called "Siri". Siri can be somewhat customised by using different languages and idioms (for example, there are three versions of English speech available with country-specific accents and pronunciation - US, UK and Australian). Presumably other customisation or personalization features will also be introduced (perhaps user choice of name and other "identity" characteristics).
Siri highlights the marketing genius of Apple: speech control and interactivity are not new features on computers or phones. For example, smartphones running Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system have had very similar functionality to Siri for some time. When Apple created the Siri "personal assistant" which gives these otherwise rather hard to describe features a character, consumers were given a hook around which they could finally understand what voice interactivity was all about.
Having taught customers to use touch gestures, Apple is now going to teach us how to speak to computers (almost unavoidably, in a specific Apple dialect of speech interaction).
Apple Brand Strength Now Creating Financial Success
So far, Apples' branding strategy is bearing fruit. For example, Apple reports that half of all computer sales through its retail channel are to people new to Macintosh, the company's sales and margins have been growing strongly since 2006, and Apple has achieved several "best ever" quarterly financial results in recent years, and in early 2012 when Apple's share price passed $500 per share for the first time, the company was the most valuable business in the world with a market capitalization which exceeded oil company Exxon, the previous top business.
Leveraging the success of the iPod, Apple launched the iPhone (released in July 07) to extend the brand even further. Apple's buzz marketing efforts in the first half of 2007 were truly superb, culminating in the release of one of the most highly anticipated products for many years - and launching apple into a completely new market: mobile handsets. By July 2008 the buzz about the 3G iPhone resulted in over 1 million units being sold in the first 3 days of its release in over 20 countries around the world. This success was repeated in 2010 with the introduction of the iPad tablet computer, and in March 2011 with the launch of the iPad 2 which sold 1 million units within 24 hours.
Apple Re-entering the Corporate Market via the iPhone and iPad Halo Effect
Though no-one at Apple would say so today, the next phase of Apple's strategy seems focused on the Corporate marketplace.
A long time ago, Apple had a fairly strong market share in large companies.
A long, long time ago (at the end of the 1970's) the first spreadsheet program (VisiCalc) was launched on the Apple II. The first PC (the IBM PC) to run a Microsoft operating system (PC DOS) did not appear until 1981. When Microsoft launched its Excel spreadsheet in 1984 it appeared first on the just-released Apple Mac, such was Apple's presence among accounting and finance departments.
Even though Apple effectively stopped competing for corporate business during the 1990s, the Apple Mac is still used in corporate environments. Microsoft still has a vigorous applications development team totally dedicated to writing business software for the Apple Mac. New versions of Microsoft Office for Apple Mac still come out approximately 2 years before similar functionality is placed in the next version of Microsoft Office for the Windows operating system.
Over the next few years it seems likely that Apple will re-focus on the Corporate marketplace: The company provides regular updates on the proportion of Fortune 500 companies which are either trialing or deploying iPhone (currently over 90%), and the iPad. In 2009, when Apple announced "Snow Leopard" (the then-latest version of the Apple Mac operating system) it included features allowing Mac computers to fully support Microsoft Exchange. This enables corporate IT departments to support business users who wish to use Apple Macs for their main email clients. Apple's latest version, Mac OSX Lion (released in Summer 2011) includes all the functionality needed to use a Mac as a business server.
Also, Microsoft continues to bring out advanced versions of Microsoft Office for Apple Mac, and - very significantly - in mid-2008 Apple announced a software upgrade for the iPhone which allows iPhones to be fully supported by Microsoft Exchange email servers. Corporate IT departments can now include iPhones as email clients.
One aspect of Apple's strategy seems clear: to use the popularity of the iPhone and iPad to break back into large corporations, sell lots of those devices, and have Apple Mac back on the desks of large businesses (or more probably - in the laptop bags of middle and senior managers in most large businesses).
The Macbook Air and iPad are clearly designed for business markets as well as for consumers, and Apple continues to display its mastery in smoothly morphing customer experience and brand preference from one product category to another.
As we say; no one in Apple will currently admit to such ambitions, but Apple's branding strategy is clearly expanding to include business and corporate markets once again.
After Halos - Clouds
The next step in Apple's marketing strategy is the Apple iCloud, which delivers a seamless experience for using and sharing content across all your Apple devices (iPhone, iPod, iPad, or Mac). iCloud enables a common "it just works" experience for using content across all of Apple's mainstream products. iCloud positions the company for a future where customers experiences and their digtal lives transcend the hardware devices which they use, and enables Apple to extend the brand experience well beyond individual products.
Apple has invested in a 500,000 (soon to be one million) square footApple data center in rural North Carolina. This data centre this will be used as the core of a data repository for Apple's iCloud services, which will enable Apple to leverage it's customer franchise into an even broader market space. Apple iCloud is one of many ways in which Apple and Google are fast becoming arch rivals.
iKnow Siri?
Once Apple hand-held device users have become acustomed to this style of interactivity, presumably natural language speech interaction will also be extended to the Mac - in whatever form-factor Apple's full-function computers have evolved into by then. Perhaps longer-term, it can also be assumed that a user's Siri personal assistant will be used to embody and create a feeling of continuous experience across different devices, with Siri seemingly moving with us from device to device.
This continuity across devices will be possible because Apple is using iCloud to offer customers device-independence and multi-device synchronisation - so that whichever Apple device you move to the experience continues because the new one will "know" what you were doing on the last one and can pick up dialogues such as chat messages where you left off.
Apple's Original Apple Macintosh Marketing Strategy
It is now nearly 3 decades since the launch of the Apple Macintosh (on January 24, 1984). Having proven itself and already gained considerable popularity with the Apple II, Apple chose to announce the Apple Mac in one of the most famous-ever commercials, aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on 22 January 1984.
The formal product release came a couple of days later on January 24th, 1984.
In addition to the innovative Apple Mac graphical user interface (based on concepts from Xerox PARC), the Mac's industrial design - shown below - was revolutionary for the time. Interestingly, it share's the same screen size (9 inch) as a relatively new PC format: NetBooks, and had a just slightly smaller screen size than Apple's 10 inch iPad and Macbook Air products.
The first Mac (above) had just 128KB of RAM and a 400KB 3.5-inch floppy disk drive, and a 9-inch, 512x342 pixel monochrome display.
The original Mac graphical user interface was revolutionary in its day. It introduced the use of the mouse and features such as icons, fonts, folders, and audio to mainstream computers.
The Facebook IPO has both the financial and marketing communities abuzz, and with good reason. Facebook is the king of the social media hill, and its growth and ability to attract a loyal and highly networked audience is to be admired.
For brands, however, online social networks are far from the Holy Grail of marketing. The research is increasingly clear and compelling that for brands that want to be social and generate conversation, a far bigger and more powerful force is real world, face-to-face conversation.
It has been said that online social media is “word of mouth on steroids.” Key to that argument is a belief that online conversations will spread to hundreds or thousands of people (and maybe more) with the click of a mouse. But while that is theoretically possible, it is not the way online sharing usually works. Most links that are shared reach only 5-10 people. And the huge legions of Facebook fans, it turns out, are not so actively engaged with the brands they once “liked.” Fewer than 1% of brand fans on Facebook have any type of active involvement, bringing those huge numbers back down to earth.
Meanwhile, our research finds that 90% of word-of-mouth conversations about brands take place offline, primarily face-to-face, in people’s homes and offices, in restaurants and stores, really anywhere people congregate. These conversations bring with them greater credibility, a greater desire to share with others, and a great likelihood to purchase the products being discussed than conversations that take place online.
So if not via Facebook and other social networking sites, what can brands do to get conversations started? It is important to fight the urge to start your marketing strategy with a particular tool or approach. Instead, start a story that consumers will want to talk about. What are the messages about your brand and category that make you talkworthy?
Next, it’s important to tap the right talkers. Who are the consumer influencers in your category, and your brand advocates? When and where do they talk, about what, and why? Often the people who have credibility when they talk are not the target customer. And the places to reach these influencers will not flow naturally from your media optimization plan unless you’re clearly focused on word of mouth as a primary goal. Media with the largest concentrations of influencers will surprise you.
Once you have your message and target in mind, only then does it make sense to choose the channels through which to reach people and to encourage sharing. And it turns out, the biggest and most productive channel to spark conversation is not online social media, but paid advertising. Fully one-quarter of conversations about brands include an explicit reference to ads. In fact, television advertising is far and away the single biggest driver of consumer conversation. Far from being a dinosaur, as some pundits say, television and other traditional media play a key role in today’s social marketplace.
Today’s consumer marketplace is highly social, but not because of particular platforms or technologies. The businesses that will be the most successful in the future are the ones that embrace a model that puts people– rather than technology – at the center of products, campaigns and market strategies. Those who achieve the greatest success will recognize that there are many ways to tap the power of today’s social consumer.
The great social wave is an opportunity that no business can afford to ignore or look at myopically. It’s happening all around us – and to the continuing surprise of many, it’s mostly happening face-to-face.
Picture three men racing through a tall hedge maze.
The first man runs off and begins following paths randomly, hoping to stumble upon the exit.
The second man is more methodical. He puts one hand on a wall of the maze and resolves to keep moving forward slowly, never taking his hand off the wall. Eventually, thanks to the rules of topology, he knows he’ll find the outside.
The third man pushes and shoves directly through the hedges in a straight line, finishing in thirty seconds flat and declaring himself the winner.
Did the third man cheat?
Maybe. But he also won.
How to cheat in business
If you’ve read everything in the world about how to make your business better and it’s still not better, I bet I know what the problem is.
If you’re doing everything right, but find yourself unable to stand out from your competitors and are barely able to keep your head above water, I can guess what’s missing.
The problem is that you’re listening too closely. You’re implementing too literally. You’re following too many conventions, societal norms, expectations of friends, “the way things have always been done,” and best practices.
To stand out, you need to think outside the box. You need to play by fewer rules.
Am I really going to advocate cheating here? Well, sort of.
And also, not really.
See, if the hedge maze race I’ve described above was a formally sanctioned Hedge Maze Runners of Northern Michigan competition with a prize purse at stake, and contest rules clearly stating that no contestant may run directly through the walls of the maze, then we can safely call our third man a dirty cheater and say he’s a miserable human being, and so on and so forth.
But what if the three men were racing out of the maze because a child was drowning in the lake outside? Do we call the third man a cheater now? Or do we call him smart and probably even ahero, because he thought of a lightning-fast solution that didn’t occur to the others?
There are two important points I’m trying to make here with my silly maze metaphor:
Whether or not “defying the normal way of doing things” is brilliant or a travesty is a matter of circumstance, and a matter of opinion. Breaking rules isn’t right and it isn’t wrong. It just is.
We are all, right now, in a maze of our own. Some of the rules of the maze called “life” serve us and protect us, but some are forcing us to plod along with one hand on the wall, making our way slowly to the finish, while the kid drowns in the lake.
The rules you’ve been following have nudged you into a box. And if that box is serving you and everything is perfect, then great.
But if life could be better — if you don’t have all that you’d really like in your business, your life, your relationships, your family, and everything else — then it might be time to take a close look at those rules and see which ones you can start to disobey.
How to be crazy in business
If anyone thinks I’m going to suggest cutting out the middlemen in the wealth-acquisition chain by robbing a bank, relax. I don’t want anyone to do anything stupid.
Quite the contrary. I want people to stop doing stupid things, like taking the long route instead of the shortcut simply because the map says they should.
I recently heard from a man who had a job in the city.
He hated his job, but he had to have the job so that he could afford his house. He didn’t like his house much either, but it was all he could find that was close to the city. And he had to be near the city to keep the job he hated, so that he could afford the house that he didn’t like but had to keep because it allowed him to keep the job he hated.
So he quit the job and moved to the country, where the land was cheap, and became a freelancer, working remotely for a lot less money. His old job was an impressive, professional job that he had worked hard to get, and everyone thought he was crazy for throwing it all away, going independent.
But he didn’t think he was crazy.
He was making less money, but because of his new, lower cost of living, he was netting much more. He’d found a way to make less money and have more money, which is just about the easiest way ever to get a raise.
All of the most successful people do things that others call crazy, because innovation always comes before genius, and innovation is — by definition — always new. If you’re the first person in your group of peers to do the most brilliant thing in the world, your peers will still think you’re crazy because you’re breaking out of step. But that’s exactly what’s required to be successful.
Look at Steve Jobs.
Look at wacky old Albert Einstein.
I even know this lawyer dude who gave it all up to start a blog, and people thought he was crazy, too. (Only, he really is crazy. Seems to work for him, though.)
Want to really make a change? Then you need to look at what you’ve always done and what most people do and ask if there’s a better way. You need to ask if you want to keep playing by the rules that don’t serve you. You need to be willing to be called “crazy.”
A primer in entrepreneurial disobedience
I’m hosting a webinar on March 2nd that’s all about learning to identify, question, and (if necessary) break the rules that are stopping you.
But don’t go signing up just because I said you should. That would be entirely too obedient of you.
About the Author: Johnny B. Truant just released his novel The Bialy Pimps despite the fact that it’s totally crazy for a business and human potential blogger to write a novel about fame and bagels.
