In many ways, building a Web site is like building a home. To be successful, each must begin with a solid implementation strategy that will closely guide-and serve as the foundation for-the entire process. In the building industry, months of careful planning ensure that those desiring a Spanish Revival home do not end up cooking their breakfast every morning on an Early American antique stove. Essentially, the choice of home style guides every decision made about each detail of the home’s construction, giving the architects and builders a solid framework to work within. Additionally, this initial choice of style creates a framework for long-term decision-making, guiding homeowners in the selection of new furniture and providing parameters for updating decor and making repairs.

(more…)

It’s popular to say that the next President of the US will be chosen based on sex or skin color or experience, but I know the real answer. The candidate who unleashes the power of information design will steal the show. Remember Ross Perot—the man’s looks and voice were certainly not his charm—but he engaged people with charts and graphics that conveyed complicated topics in terms that they could relate to.

The power of good information design is its ability to show relationships between events, numbers and items. Good information design is achieved when the display of the information enhances its meaning. Topics that are hard to grasp, such as amounts and probability, are prime candidates for graphic depiction. That’s why I was so delighted to see The New York Times create a graphic to put the annual cost of war in perspective in its January 17, 2007 edition. The graphic showed the $200 billion being spent annually on the Iraq war and then showed what $100 billion could buy instead (universal health care for all people in the US without it), what $10 billion could buy (carrying out the 9/11 Commission recommendations), etc. At least now I know what the monetary trade-offs are.

When Charles Gibson, television anchorman of ABC World News Tonight, wanted to convey the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans one year after the storm, he sought a graphic representation. On air, he contrasted the hefty telephone book of 2005 to the much slimmer book of 2006, and it was immediately obvious how many people and businesses had not returned after the storm. Television is a medium of images, and in addition to its ubiquity, imagery is the source of its power. In the instance of the phone book demonstration, Charlie Gibson was using an image (the phone books) within an image (the television broadcast), doubling the impact.

I’m well aware how easily images and graphics can be manipulated to distort meaning. What I’m hoping for is a candidate who will unleash the power of graphics for good, not evil.

So, in 2008, “It’s the picture, stupid.”

I hear that there is a new search engine with my name on it: Cranky. Actually, although I might be attitudinally suited, it’s really aimed at people age 50+ and I’m younger than that. It’s the brainchild of Jeff Taylor, who left his previous big hit–Monster.com–to create Eons for the boomer generation and now this search engine. The home page for cranky.com actually talks about “cranking up an engine” as the inspiration for the name but I think cantankerous connotations couldn’t have been far behind.

Cranky is based on the premise that serving up search results based on what other people of a similar age wanted to see is useful. I question this premise. How much of anyone’s curiosity is based on age? Yes, before the age of 10, it is, but after that, I think other factors overtake age. Since Cranky likes to point out the virtues of living to be 100 years old, how similar are people from ages 50 to 100? It strikes me that such a broad demographic is a marketing ploy, not really a community of interest.

By the way, when I used the Cranky search yesterday, it listed the most popular search topic as Sex. I think that proves my point. Is that so different than the results for 30 and 40 year olds?

Online community can be an important tool in differentiating and de-commoditizing brands. The notion of “community” is the through-line between many of the most successful online brand experiences, a driver of the current Web commerce resurgence, a basic tenet of the “Web 2.0″ concept, and is giving many brands a new way to create one-on-one dialogues with their customers. In any discussion of the role of online community, it is important to distinguish—first and foremost—between brands that live and breathe exclusively online and brands that use the online medium to extend a traditional brand experience.

(more…)

Have you heard that the IRS has money it wants to give each one of us—at least those of us who use a phone? Since these days every man, woman and child has a phone, that really does mean everyone. It’s a refund of the federal excise tax we paid between 2003 and 2006 on long distance telephone service.

That’s the good news; the bad news is that they’ve made calculating the refund ridiculously convoluted.

The instructions for IRS Form 8913 include this gem:

“You will need your phone bills for the 41-month refund period.”

Well that stopped me right in my tracks. I’m a very organized person—reputedly, one of the most organized in the nation if friends and relatives are accurate character witnesses. But even I don’t save every phone bill. Recognizing that reconstructing one’s telephone calls for three years is near impossible, the IRS offers an alternative. Just take a standard $30 refund. So that’s what I will do along with everyone else. I won’t feel that I necessarily received restitution but I’ll have no choice because of the complexity of proving otherwise.

As a simplification expert, it is always injurious to my health for me to read the IRS instructions. Another gem in the same instruction booklet includes a description of how people who used prepaid telephone cards should get their refunds (thank goodness I’ve never used one). Here’s the actual example they provide to CLARIFY the process: “Example 2. S purchased the PTC from O. O is a transferee that purchased the card from R. R is a carrier. O is eligible to request a credit or refund. S cannot request a credit or refund because S did not purchase the PRC from the carrier.” I certainly hope that S, O and R graduated summa cum laude.

Aren’t we all complicit in a charade here? We spend millions of dollars to get professionals to help us pay money to the government and then more money to get the money back. Simplifying the tax code cannot come soon enough for me.

Aaah, the Fourth Quarter. The time for frantically spending every last dime of this year’s budget, while planning for what to do next year. If developing or revisiting your brand strategy is among your goals for 2007, following are five tips to consider during planning that can help you avoid making costly mistakes at launch.

(more…)

Announcing the appointment, Alan Siegel, Chairman and CEO of Siegel &
Gale, said: “We are very pleased to have a person of Alan’s caliber and
experience with us at this important stage of growth on the West coast.
Together with his marketing and communications skills he brings and important
dimension to our firm across the board, and also to our clients, as we
position ourselves for growth worldwide.”

Read the complete article

3M: Innovation
Disney: Magic
Nordstrom’s: Customer service

At the core of the world’s most valuable brands lies a single strong idea that serves as the compass for everything these organizations do.

The traditional approach to brand positioning has been to analyze consumer needs, evaluate the competitive landscape, and establish a positioning that takes advantage of gaps in both. However, that approach is fraught with dangers—consumers change (and don’t always know what they want, anyway) and markets shift. In the end, by following this approach, you are likely to be left with a positioning that requires continuous reinvention and redefinition—leading to lack of consistency, a confused corporate culture and, ultimately, increased costs.

(more…)