Product Site Worst Practice: Geberit

Someone just asked me: “Hey, you wanna blog about a really bad user experience?” and I said: “Not really.” But after I saw this, I couldn’t help it, because missed brand engagement opportunities make me mad.

This is a Microsite for Geberit, makers of Bathroom applicances. They are trying to introduce the Japanese way of, you know, cleaning up after you are done with your business. Any creative would have had a field day with this briefing. Instead, what this brand ended up with is a stale, boring, marketing-speechy, product website that is neither engaging nor credible. No pun intended, but this looks too watered down to make this something people would want to send on to others.

Compare this to the Philips Shave Everywhere campaign. Personal grooming for men: also not an easy topic for brands to dare make engaging. Brand managers at Philips could have argued that the concept for the site http://www.shaveeverywhere.com/ was way too racy or impromper. They didn’t, and they won lots of awards, and more importantly: the site became viral. Geberit missed the chance to make this a fun, engaging experience. And don’t come to me with: oh yeah, but the target audience is older and more conservative. Conservative people are folders or crumplers, too. That’s an insight for you, right there. What a shame.

Get Wireframing from Grace Smith

A must-see for all experience planners:

http://www.gracesmith.co.uk/get-wireframing-the-all-in-one-guide/

Most useful feature, ever: GMail Undo Send E-mail

How often did you regret sending that e-mail that you wrote to someone in a fit of rage, or where you accidentally cc’d someone that shouldn’t see what you really think about them? It has happened to all of us.

Well, you now have 5 seconds to undo your possibly career-killing e-mails when you use Gmail.

After enabling the feature, Undo Send works much like Gmail’s other “undo” features. When you send an email, you get a message confirming it has been sent, along with a link to “Undo.” This message lasts for 5 seconds, at which point you lose the opportunity to take it back.
While that might not be much time, it’s probably enough to pull back emails where you forget an attachment, forget to cc someone, or catch an obvious typo. As for emails you later wish you hadn’t sent because of the content, Gmail still can’t help you there.

Via Mashable

Earth Hour: Switch off your lights for earth

To raise awareness, in 2007, our Leo Burnett colleagues in Sydney came up with Earth Hour, getting local government, the press and the residents and businesses of Sydney to switch off the lights for 1 hour. Because great ideas are worth repeating, 2009 will hopefully see another earth hour. By now, the concept has been exported to a whole bunch of other cities, and we hope that it catches on in Europe too.

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Download February Cultural Fuel Newsletter

It’s late, but still juicy:+

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Twitter research says: friends are more important than followers

An analysis by Taly Weiss (of Trendspotting) on Twitter user behavior examines the social saturation and the saturation of content, as well as the Reciprocity of exchanges between users. For anyone who is looking into using Twitter, this might be an interesting read.

Here are the main take-aways:

1. Twitter users have a very small number of friends compared to the number of followers and followees they declare. This implies the existence of two different networks: a very dense one made up of followers and followees, and a sparser and simpler network of actual friends. The latter proves to be a more influential network in driving Twitter usage since users with many actual friends tend to post more updates than users with few actual friends. On the other hand, users with many followers or followees post updates more infrequently than those with few followers or followees.

2. A link between any two people does not necessarily imply an interaction between them. In the case of Twitter, most of the links declared within Twitter were meaningless from an interaction point of view.

Benjamin Button and Viagra

Just found this beautiful spot by Z Mexico, which is a great example of how cinematic ideas can inspire ad campaigns. Highly reminiscent of Benjamin Button, the Viagra couple becomes younger, instread of older. A simple communication idea, beautifully executed.

Thanks to Florian for the link!

Microsoft Future Vision

In this Video, Microsoft shows their future vision. Basically, it seems the future is all about Microsoft Surface and really intuitive productivity: technology embedded into everything, Minority report-style, but with more soothing music. In comparison with other future visions, I think the timeline is somewhat realistic. Although, come to think of it, this being Microsoft, I would add a couple of years for the Service Packs until all this stuff actually works.

Thanks Valentin for the link.

Ego-branding benchmarks: Will strip for Penthouse if 100K people join my facebook group

Today, I was one of the last 10,000 people to be invited to join a group on facebook which has a sole topic: the lady who started the group will take off her clothes for Penthouse if she gets more than 100,000 followers.

It’s a pretty straightforward strategy of the “Lonelygirl” variety:  use combination of social media plus male insight (in this case: i don’t care if I am being used to make someone else famous, as long as she takes her clothes off). That’s the oldest value propositions in the book. Still, it’s a pretty cheap and effective way to raise awareness for your career as a model, or actually to raise awareness for Penthouse (or whoever is behind it).

Homelessness Crisis in the UK by Radiohead and Leo Burnett UK