CRATE & BARREL
As might be obvious from one of my earlier posts, I am a huge fan of what the creative team at Crate & Barrel do with their online marketing assets. Their stylists can take a simple idea and render it into something mesmerizing and seductive. And they are consistent with it - week in and week out their website, catalogs and email design reflects an uncommon focus of great aesthetics.
This spring kickoff blast just jumped out of my inbox right into my retinas. And it's not just the main hero shot - I don't see many emails that feature a tertiary row of promotion as clean and commanding of your attention as the 'Knife of the Month' banner.
Most marketing departments would flinch at running a promotion that features no product but a plain white ceramic bowl (with a low price point) above the fold. But I have a hunch that by virtue of the elegant beauty of it, the house list recipients responded enthusiastically. I'd love to see the open rates on this one.
What strange timing for this spat between tech titans Apple and Adobe. Apple introduces the Flash-hostile iPad, which needs Flash functionality in the worst way if it hopes to have any relevance as a video delivery device, and then starts a philosophical catfight with the software company who has a monopoly of the most dynamic applications for their computing platform. Makes little sense.
But like most things in the business world that make little sense on the outside, it probably makes the most pragmatic kind of sense on the inside. This whole thing smacks of some kind of front for a deal of some kind - licensing, partnership, merger, acquisition, or some such corporate body sculpting. As only the very tight inner circles at these companies are privy to the real story, I won't even guess as what the final dénouement will be. But I'll bet that in under six months time Apple and Adobe will kiss and make up and we'll have some kind of Flash license in place for the newest Apple devices, or an Adobe-created workaround to accomplish the same end.
Went on a Twitter rampage last night, looking for an infusion of new info and ideas about design and branding into my daily parade of tweets.
When the dust cleared, the results were impressive. I added a few dozen great resources to my follow list. Once I got started checking out these rolls from a wide array of great agencies, designers and journalists it was hard to stop. In visiting the home sites of these folks it was inspiring to see so many firms out there doing great work.
Not all of the entities doing interesting work had interesting Twitter feeds. I added only the ones that spread the most interesting ideas.
If your lust for branding or design news and ideas knows no bounds, here are a few accounts to follow.
winner
ANTHROPOLOGIE
The creatives at UO continue to run circles around their peers in online retail by defying conventional wisdom of email marketing - they actually have fun with their designs.
Most retail direct marketers are so consumed with calendar planning and CRM tactics that they become blind to true creative development. The thinking seems to be that if you make all the right strategic moves and don't miss any seasonal promotions you'll maximize your ROI every time you deploy a mailing.
In this recent example of a rare home furnishings promotion from apparel-centric retailer Anthropologie, a dollhouse concept is used to help us visualize how to reinvent our interior space. Below this artist's rendition of your new personality - er, I mean bedroom - makeover, there are other ideas for finishing out a quasi-boho pad: wallpaper, window dressing and funky light fixtures.
Something this warm and fanciful will steal your eyeballs away from all the other stale, predictable promotions in your inbox – no matter how well segmented and strategically conceived they may be.
All in all, a boffo direct mail promotion to catch the eye and open the purse of the 35-50 year old single college educated woman making upwards of $145k per annum who most likely lives in close proximity to an urban area and spends roughly 19% of her annual salary on clothing and non-essentials. (Did I guess right, Anthropologie?)
Found an interesting entry from last February on the Blue Sky Factory blog about Facebook's Titan project and put it on my Posterous. Project Titan is an initiative that hopes to take advantage of Facebook's privacy settings (such as they are) to create a full-featured email network.
I'm mentioning it here partly because it's an interesting post and partly to serve notice that I will no longer be duplicating my Posterous content here on sfinsf.com, to avoid confusion about authorship. Going forward I will only post my own writing here and sharing streams on Posterous.
Feel free to check out some of the great things I am digging up on the net via my Posterous site!
