John Winsor

Paper or Digital?

I love photography. I'm a bit of a nut about it. For a long time, I really wanted to pursue it as a career. You know how it goes. Other things got in the way. Now, I'm just another amatuer hack. That said, I love living vicariously through other people's images and products. And, I'm absolutely hooked on dpreview.com.

So in this digital world we live in, I was shocked to recieve my annual B&H Catalog the other day, all 454 pages of it. I used to love this catalog. I'd spend hours checking out all of the new products. However, this time I wasn't sure what to think. I thought, "Why did they waste so much money and paper printing this thing?" Even more profound to me, I wondered how I was supposed to use it. I mean, it doesn't have google search, does it?

I'm amazed how in such a short amount of time the digital experience has reconfigured our brains to go anywhere and to find anything. I can only imagine giving a telephone book to my 6 year old boys in a couple of years. "Dad, what do I do with this?"

I think it's time or B&H to let go of their catalog.

Throw Out the Ego

It always seems like the most interesting things happening in marketing are at the grass roots level. While no one would call Spin Master a small toy company, with over 600 employees, it always seems to be doing some innovative things. Their launch of Bakugan Battle Brawlers, a game played with balls that become monsters when they're rolled across the magnetic playing board, is a a case in point. To get the momentum, the company got out where the kids were. They hit summer camps and local fairs to introduce the somewhat complicated game to kids. They've combined this with a variety of other marketing including a half-hour show on cartoon network.

It's worked. According to the New York Times, Bakugan is sold out.

It seems, the momentum has been created because of a couple of factors. First, Spin Master baked the marketing into the product, making the same narrative for the game as for the TV show. But, bigger than that, they left their egos at the door. As the Times quoted Anton Rabie, "We have no ego about where the ideas come from."

The Right Place at the Right Time

I was perusing Amazon today and found this, Foreclosure Self-Defense for Dummies. Half the battle in business is being in the right place, at the right time, with the right product. Wiley, the publishers of the Dummies series seem to have it dialed.

Ubiquity

When I first glanced at this page from the New York Times last week, I assumed it was an article about Target. Who wouldn't? Sure the target here is a little different than the logo. But, Target's target logo has become so ubiquitous that it even has more cultural weight than a red target in and of itself. It's a great example of brand singularity and clarity.