Posted by Susan Isaacs
Yesterday was a great day. Why?…. Well that was when Phil showed me unequivocal proof that this whole social media thing may take off after all.
I present to you exhibit A:
I know what you’re thinking…”AWESOME TEE!!!” I hope you’re also wondering what this t-shirt has to do with social media.
Here’s the thing: that snazzy fashion must-have can be purchased on Amazon.com. As I’m sure you’re aware, Amazon encourages shoppers to write reviews of their products, and well, this is where a beautiful foray into the wilds of social interaction happened.
The first 2 reviews were your run of the mill “I love the shirt” types, but then reviewer number three took the unorthodox approach of writing an over-the-top imaginative narrative that began like this:
“This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to ‘howl at the moon’ from time to time (if you catch my drift!)”.
It goes on from there.
This singular act of creative writing unleashed the power of a whole host of hilarious follow-up reviews written in the same vein.
You’re going to want to set aside a little time to savor this highly entertaining hijacking of the review tool.
Start by checking out the entire first funny review and a few of the 55 resulting comments.
Then go ahead and treat yourself to some of the other reviews. You won’t be sorry. I promise.
New potential hobby: “spicing-up” the Amazon product reviews!
Oh, and if you buy the shirt I want to hear about it.
Posted by Andrew Davies
The original title for this post was going to be” Greenwashing Fail, ” after I saw this packaging at the nearby Home Depot this past weekend.
You probably can’t read the disclaimer form this picture but it says
“not intended to imply environmental safety either alone or compared to other products.”
Now immediately I thought… Greenwashing!! But a few quesions come to mind:
- 1. why call it eco- anything if you’re not implying some sort of environmental goodness?
- 2. If you don’t want to give the wrong impression about environmental claims…. why call it eco-something?
- 3. If you’re trying to Greenwash…why put the evidence on the front of your packaging and on your website?
- 4. After reading this post from Easy Eco Blog, I found out that there are some eco benefits to a few of the eco-sense brand products… so why the strange disclaimer?
It’s effect, as one would imagine, is to breed some skepticism and confusion as to what Ortho’s trying to protect themselves from. Possibly a marketing fail.
If any of you know what the deal is with this wording please share.
Posted by Susan Isaacs
Having fallen prey to the non-bacon-related flu last week, I’m WAY late in doing a recap of the Savannah Urban Arts Festival (May 6-10).
Before anything else, I want to say how lucky our fair city is to have Tony and DaVena Jordan working to make this a better community. If you’ve never met them, Tony and DaVena, the Founder/CEO and Executive Director (respectively) of AWOL, are 2 of the most enthusiastic, hard-working, big-hearted individuals you’re likely to come across, who work tirelessly to change the lives of hundreds of kids in Savannah. With sheer tenacity they managed to pull off the first ever Savannah Urban Arts Festival, including bringing some amazing guest speakers and talent into town for the event.
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Posted by Susan Isaacs
It’s fairly safe to say that after this past weekend’s hectic combination of the CommerceV3 User Conference and the Savannah Urban Arts Festival, we’ve been in recovery. Pulling double duty can be a challenge, but sometimes you’ve gotta put on your big-boy pants if you want to get it all done. We did and it was worth it!
It’s a lot to recap, so I’ll tackle the User Conference today, and the Savannah Urban Arts Festival tomorrow.
First, I’ve got to say “thanks” and kudos to the CommerceV3 crew for putting together an outstanding conference for their customers…and letting us participate in all the fun.
CommerceV3 (CV3) is a web-based platform that enables online merchants to create and manage their web storefronts. We’ve had the privilege of working with many of the CV3 customers over the years, doing front-end design for their stores. It’s very rare that we get to meet the customers in person (as they’re from all over the US), so the conference was a real treat in that regard.
The goals of the event were to bring the user community together, educate them more about the software and ways they could promote, optimize and improve their online presence. Our role was to lead a session on effective page layout and also sit down for one-on-one sessions with customers.
We have a tendency to assume that no-one would be interested in all the nerdy design stuff we geek out on, but when you walk through a little sliver of it with a room full of non-designers and discover they’re interested in this stuff too, suddenly you feel like less of a dork. We had the pleasure of advising customers as they critiqued their store layouts based upon the design principles we’d presented.
The overall feedback from customers was that the event was very informative and well worth the trip to Savannah! Participants left feeling enthused and full of ideas on how they could improve their stores and increase sales.
Nicely done team!
Posted by Andrew Davies
Don’t you just love it when this happens?
Click to view fullsize
Posted by Susan Isaacs
Being one of the least fashionable people in existence, I can’t say I pay a whole lot of attention to what’s happening in the fashion world (though lord knows it might be helpful!). I did stop dead in my tracks a few weeks back while noodling around online, when I came across photos from the Chanel Spring/Summer ‘09 show.
Of course, I don’t recall a darn thing about the clothes, but I do recall the incredible display of monochromatic handmade flowers and foliage.
AMAZING. 7000 flowers, 4800 back-breaking hours, and something ludicrous like 4000sq meters of paper.
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Posted by Andrew Davies
Every now and then we get into a discussion around the office about whether it’s still a good idea to be a “triple threat” design firm instead of picking 1 avenue and specializing. I’m always in favor of diversification, primarily because I think I have the designer’s version of ADD where I can’t sit still in one medium for too long, but I have to admit there are some challenges with managing and marketing 3 seemingly disparate disciplines, (more on that in another post).
But recently, I stumbled on to 2 pieces of confirmation that we’re doing the right thing.
The 1st comes from Karim Rashid’s manifesto (his Karimanifesto if you will, not my word) that I recently read in Daniel Pink’s book, “A Whole New Mind”. #1 on the list… Do Not Specialize. Granted that’s easy for Karim to say, being a world reknowned product / furniture / interior / whatever designer, but if the principle’s good enough for Karim it’s good enough for me.
The second piece of confirmation came in the form of our latest project, branding an indie movie called “The Action Hero’s Guide to Saving Lives.” The project started with a phone call from a friend of mine, Opie Cooper, needing help with some key art for the movie he just helped direct. (Key art - see, title treatment and a poster or 2). Having worked with Opie before I knew this was going to be a fun project and so jumped in feet first. Plus it had Patrick Warburton in it and who wouldn’t want to work with the Tick?
Here’s a look at the poster we ended up with…
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Posted by Philip Joyner
Happy Cinco de Mayo!
As a huge fan of the groups that will be performing in the Savannah Urban Arts Festival, I thought I’d give you a run-down of the festivities that I’m most looking forward to. A “pre-cap,” if you will.
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Categories: Advertising, Branding, Events, Greatness!, Innovation, Inspiration, Just for fun, Marketing, Pop culture, Savannah, Sustainability
