Christopher Johnson is a branding consultant with a PhD in linguistics.  His book, Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little is filled with examples of great (and less-than-great) brand names and taglines.

He explains why certain taglines, ad campaigns, and brand names work, and why others fall flat.  Often it’s simply because of how they sound.  Other times it’s because of the clever use of metaphor.  One of his examples is Maytag, which for many years used the metaphor of “The Lonely Repairman” to communicate an important but mundane product benefit – reliability.

Here is a review from the New York Times, also.

This article in the New York Times  describes how the new push toward open floor plans and groupthink style offices may actually inhibit the generation of true insight.

Many great thinkers and creators have talked about the importance of solitude – as this article quotes Picasso, “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.”  Yet the trend both in schools and offices is toward fewer private spaces and individual thinking sessions.

The author also discusses the problems with group brainstorming sessions.  Please take a look and share any thoughts.

The January 2012 issue of Quirk’s contains several useful articles, including one about the components of customer experience and a couple of shorter pieces about social media.

Perhaps the most compelling article, though, was this one by Gerry Katz entitled “How to be a Good Research Client.”

Last month, Elizabeth participated in a panel on social media and reaching underserved populations from a public health perspective. There was a lot of discussion of Facebook and Twitter and effective means of leveraging those tools. There was no mention, however, of Pinterest.

Pinterest is gaining a lot of popularity, specifically among the female market.

If you aren’t familiar with Pinterest, it is essentially a digital design board where you can “pin” images or articles from anywhere on the internet. Others can “repin” things from your board onto their own, and you can establish a set of regular boards that you want to follow. It is highly visual and, in some ways, aligns with the image basis of the ZMET interview, relying on visual stimulation and discovering ideas rather than searching for a specific item or image (as is discussed in the above article).

As a follow-up to the last Deep Dives, which dealt with magic, Jerry Olson sent me the attached ad that he scanned from his local newspaper.  It’s an ad for various celebrity fragrances – including those from Jessica Simpson, Taylor Swift, The Biebs, and Rihanna.  Celebs have been endorsing scents for a long time, but there’s been a wave of these over the last year or two.

As you can see from some of the descriptions, the products are supposed to contain some of the essence of each celebrity, which presumably is then transferred to the wearer.  Even the packaging reflects some of that essence.

As expected, there is some pretty good marketing around these fragrances, including this video from Rihanna and this one from Bieber.

Welcome to 2012!

Thanks to Jerry Zaltman for sending along this short TED talk from James Geary, author of I is an Other, a great new book about metaphor.

Geary explains how we all use and understand metaphor, and describes very clearly how metaphor shapes cognition.

From the world a sports, an article that deals with the power of the unconscious mind.  This is hardly a new idea, but this article describes how the Green Bay Packers football team uses visualization techniques to enhance the performance of their players.

Perhaps they needed more positive thought before yesterday’s game!

The Harvard Business Review features a Q&A with Dr. James Pennebaker, who describes research which suggests that we unconsciously reveal our personality through our choice of pronouns.

For example, if someone asks you about the weather and you say, “I think it’s hot,” rather than simply, “It’s hot,” that says something about you. (People who are self-focused, depressed, and/or lower in status tend to use “I” more frequently.)

Pennebaker has authored the book, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us.

James just finished Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.  If you’re unfamiliar with Kahneman, he is a winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and he helped revolutionize our understanding of how people use the “non-rational” part of their minds to form judgments and make decisions.

This book is basically a summary of his life’s work and the discoveries he has made.  Unlike many scientists, he doesn’t write like a troll.  So it is mostly an easy and fascinating read.  He delves deeply into unconscious cognitive biases, framing effects, overconfidence, and use of language and symbols.

Unfortunately, there is the obligatory shot at marketers, who he implies are all somehow unethical for using these insights to their advantage.  I wonder if he feels the same way about the marketing team at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, which has done such a wonderful job of marketing this book and earning Kahneman considerable royalties?

Other than those two or three sentences of self-righteous nonsense, it’s a brilliant book.   Here are reviews from the New York Times and also from Jonah Lehrer in the Wall Street Journal.

With the proliferation of social media and online purchasing, we may start hearing of more research that falls into the category of “Big Data.”

This is the analysis of consumer digital footprints to create profiles of their personality, values, and purchasing patterns. This two-part series explores Big Data analysis and its application. It does not replace the need for a deep dive understanding of the consumer, but in time it will likely change the way companies perform segmentation.

Part 1

Part 2