Haven't had chance to post for a while, I'm off to Crayon London - and can't wait for it, they're a nice bunch of folks!

I've been checking out the new Habitat site. Some nice flash and clean layout. I'm sitting reasonably close to my laptop and having a problem reading it. Now I've got good eyesight, so what's the problem?

Typography treatment. In order to dial up the 'cool' the type is light grey on white. Looks quite nice, useless as functional design.

So I've taken the time to run the palette through juicy studio to check the contrast, no surprise it fails miserably:

The difference in brightness between the two colours is not sufficient. The threshold is 125, and the result of the foreground and background colours is 93.

The difference in colour between the two colours is not sufficient. The threshold is 500, and the result of the foreground and background colours is 276.

Colour Brightness Formula
The following is the formula suggested by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to determine the brightness of a colour.

((Red value X 299) + (Green value X 587) + (Blue value X 114)) / 1000

The difference between the background brightness, and the foreground brightness should be greater than 125.

How disappointing.

I've been working through a visual exercise to convey brand personality. Should be pretty straightforward...

When you're attempting to ask someone to classify their business the usual suspect questions are rolled out - what drink you you be at a dinner party, you know we've all done it.

How about applying the BPS (brand personality scale) - the big 5 to the problem? This is where it starts to get interesting. I've previously looked at Imagini - it's quite interesting, although somewhat limited. You can only select one element.

What happens if you believe you belong in more than one category? What happens if you're looking at one thing but decide to answer a different way.

Quite some time ago I was looking at Dart Motif and how that could be used to help out online campaigns, around the hover time. Could this style technique to used in profiling? It's certainly an interesting question to answering a difficult graphical challenge.

Labels: Brand, Research

When there's a whole raft of methodologies and tools at your disposal for answering briefs, the first port of call is to go for the most complex type.

Why? Is it to show off that you have the experience? Believe you will get better insight? Or just to confuse people on purpose?

No matter what the brief is - whether a two day project or a six month programme, the core framework remains the same. There's no need to dress this up in complex terminology - we're all guilty of this.

Do I need a methodology to explain this?

Those folks at Apple have done a great job on the new iPod, well not a massive surprise there.

It's basically a cut down iPhone - great! But the clever part is how they're really showing choice. There's something for everyone, even the basic shuffle is cool.

It's always a challenge to deal with a whole bunch of different consumers - and here the price points are considerably different. You either create segments or build a somewhat diluted proposition that is everything to everybody.

The naming works perfectly. The latest offering isn't iPod 2 or something that simply (sure it will over time) replaces the current iPod, but by adding the 'touch' descriptor it is differentated from the rest in the range, without alienating them.

Labels: iPod

I received my home insurance renewal yesterday, a massive pack of small print, that I'll never have the time to read through. Yes, yes I know it's in the detail that counts, but I'll never get around to it. What I want is the quote price. That's all that really matters.

Think customer - renewing insurance sucks, every year it's a big pain in the backside.

Today, as if by magic I was invited to renew it online and get four bottles of wine for the bother of doing so. This is smart.

It's top of mind - the offline pack reminded me that it needs to be done. I know the price, all the detail is there for when I want to read it, I certainly wouldn't want to attempt this on-screen, there's far too much to read.

The extra incentive caught my eye - had they got clever and had in my profile I drink wine? Probably not. But the entire experience was a good one. Alot of campaigns are so-called integrated, in essence they mean TV, outdoor and DM.

And yes, I will be renewing it with the company.

How can the project process stop that 11th hour 'hold the presses' moment. My view is people don't spend enough thinking time reviewing the strategy and approving it with 100% belief.

It always amazes me that everything has gone well, approved gateways etc then just when you think it's in the bag along comes can we change that please.

As as answer to this, I am exploring the use of a customer model. So when someone asks the million dollar question, the constantly updated model can show that it's not important and been considered. This creates a new challenge of showing that you're : a. clever clogs, b. don't want to do the work or c. don't agree with the client.

When planning the strategy for an online campaign or communication, planners start at the beginning - desk research, searching for insight...

This is already done and should have a fair amount of credentials behind it. It's the role of the brand manager. They know the audience, what makes them tick and how to differentiate from their competitiors.

To some extent you could end up with two brand propositions. Why? Are the customers different for online? Maybe.

So if this is the case and the experience with the brand is different from online to offline, how does the cross over. I may choose to view/collect information/purchase online but may also interact with the brand in the real world - I am the same consumer!

Digital planners should spend time with brand managers and really understand how the total customer experience can be planned.