I’ve been away, lured back by this photo via fluffyfollies, of all places (don’t ask). In the 60s, plastic leather had passed its prime and the marketers decided that they wanted to make the products distinctive and memorable. So they created a creature called the Nauga (for Naugahyde, a branded vinyl product). Needless to say, it wasn’t the huge success that the Mad Men had predicted. Johnny seems nonplussed.
One of the great first lines in any rock song: “Pack it up, buddy gonna shut you down.”
Given Mayor D’s closing speech (which still puzzles me) and the vote, it’s appropriate.
In case you missed the original piece in the May 11, New Yorker, Gladwell weaves his usual thoughtful red thread across the ages, linking contrarian approaches to battlefields and basketball.
In the course of his wandering, Gladwell lights on Vivek Ranadive and the implications of his real-time processing work (most visible in the successful business he created, TIBCO):
The world runs in real time, but government runs in batch. Every few months, it adjusts. Its mission is to keep the temperature comfortable in the economy, and, if you were to do things the government’s way in your house, then every few months you’d turn the heater either on or off, overheating or underheating your house.” Ranadivé argued that we ought to put the economic data that the Fed uses into a big stream, and write a computer program that sifts through those data, the moment they are collected, and make immediate, incremental adjustments to interest rates and the money supply. “It can all be automated,” he said. “Look, we’ve had only one soft landing since the Second World War. Basically, we’ve got it wrong every single time.”
You can imagine what someone like Alan Greenspan or Ben Bernanke might say about that idea. Such people are powerfully invested in the notion of the Fed as a Solomonic body: that pause of five or eight weeks between economic adjustments seems central to the process of deliberation. To Ranadivé, though, “deliberation” just prettifies the difficulties created by lag. The Fed has to deliberate because it’s several weeks behind, the same way the airline has to bow and scrape and apologize because it waited forty-five minutes to tell you something that it could have told you the instant you stepped off the plane.
Much to the chagrin of certain readers, I’ve not written about most recent test drives. In the abstract, test drives are a great deal of fun, an opportunity to see what’s out there, what’s timely, and to speculate on the availability of funds and one’s willingness to balance bread and circus.
In reality, either one goes to purchase a car driven by necessity (i.e., the lack of a drive) or one is out to be seduced. Everyone who goes for a test drive recognizes this in one way or another, as does the manufacturer, advertiser, dealer, salesman, and everyone else in the food chain.
Which means that one must work hard to separate fact from fantasy and accept just how many clothes are being removed. There are side issues that enter into the discussion, including age-appropriate behavior, buyer’s remorse, and the effectiveness of monkey-gland injections. None of these will be discussed here.
Saturday we drove a brace of Mini Coopers. They are terrific little cars, more attractive for the relative scarcity of small, fun-to-drive cars in the United States (in Test Drive 1 we eliminated the Jazz and Civic Si). Were we across the herring pond, there would be other choices — Cinquecento, Clio, Polo, Punto, Twingo, Fiesta, Getz — but we’re here, and the Mini is better for the lack of comparison.
Conclusions:
1. Mini has nothing in common with Alex Issigonis’ version of same (for more on Mini of old, see post on MSN cars). The concept of engineering a modern car with sufficient go and luxury and safety equipment has nothing to do with the manifest of making efficient transport for post-war Europe.
2. Mini is one of those rare devices that, like the iPod, is life-affirming. It is engaging; it makes you feel smarter, better looking; it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It deconstructs the notion of a car and provides aspects of memory in the same way that Disney makes you feel nostalgic and self-conscious at the same time. When the Chris Bangle comes through however — as in the pie-plate speedo or the phony toggle switches — the seriousness of BMW is absent. The playfulness of the brand butters over the niggles.
3. For a relatively heavy car, it drives and handles well. It feels solid and the steering is direct. But there are caveats. The smaller the wheels, the better it drives. Those 17″ run-flat wheels in particular would be hard to live with in winter and city driving. Even on new pavement, they rumble too much. And the sport setting is useful only if you’re planning to use the car on track days.
4. The Sport flavor is a good bit more fun than its lesser sibs. Less 400lbs (or restricted to city traffic) the turbo would not be a must; current config. makes it worth the extra expense, especially for highway driving. The turbo has some lag; it spools most effectively above 3000 rpm. I’d not be surprised to see a supercharger supplant the turbo in future iterations.
5. Minis are best looking in bright colors — red/black and yellow/black being the two most attractive. The Mini whispers ‘Screw the middle age crisis’ and lets one get away with it in ways that a Porsche or Corvette never could enable.
6. Most Stateside Minis are sold with automatic transmission. Which makes sense, as manual is a dead technology. But the driving fun here has to do with being engaged with the process. Though I knew all along that I prefer stirring the gears, I realized that my attraction to little cars is in the engagement — the feeling I had in 1968 when I first went to Britain and wound up fully engaged in driving a Humber Hornet — with a non-syncromesh stick shift (in my wrong, meaning left, hand) that I didn’t much understand and a side of the road to which I wasn’t comfortable.
If I’m going to drive, it ought to be engaging. As of today, I’m going back next Friday to drive them again and maybe buy one. Not sure I’ll get the bright color (Pepper White and BRG being the available models outfitted with the right amount of kit), but at least I will have come to peace with the bread and the circus. Years ago I was seduced by cars, so I might as well be engaged.
Wunderkammer, the on-line magazine, has an interview with designers (landscape and graphic) Shalansky and Lee on the subject of typography and culture. Thought-provoking, especially as electrons replace ink.
The many flavors of innovation
Diego Rodriguez. he of Metacool, is elucidating twenty one principles of creative development. They are thoughtful and important. He’s plowed through nine, which I thought I’d share in a shorter form. Read the details as they appear on Metacool:
1. Experience the world instead of talking about experiencing the world
2. See and hear with the mind of a child
3. Always ask: “How do we want people to feel after they experience this?”
4. Prototype as if you are right. Listen as if you are wrong
5. Anything can be prototyped, and you can prototype anything
6. Live life at the intersection (innovation lives at the intersection of desirability, viability, and feasibility)
7. Develop a taste for the many flavors of innovation
8. Most new ideas aren’t
9. Killing good ideas is a good idea
More soon.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tzuGhKZeYk&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thepalaceoflight.com%2Findex.html&feature=player_embedded]Ogilvy is doing terrific things with Shredded Wheat. First the Palace of Light web site with terrific YouTube ads (Palalce of Light being the original Shredded Wheat factory and the boss, Frank Druffel, who puts the ‘no’ in innovation).
Interesting that it was Kellogg that invested in acquisitions and marketing during the last depression, investments that left Post (in 1930, a company of equal size and market influence) at the starting post.
Nice touch: the reference to the ‘Post Shredded Wheat Company’ (as in post-modernism).
Now the newspaper ads, including today’s in the WSJ:
An Open Letter to Progress
Has progress taken us to a better place?
I’d say it’s taken us for a ride. (Probably in a carbon-coughing oil guzzler.)
Honestly, what thanks do we owe progress? We’re up to our necks in landfill, down to the wire on resources, and climate change is out to get us — or at best leave us with a nasty sunburn.
Historically, civilizations are destroyed by achievement. The Romans took a bad turn on the road to ever-onward. And no sooner had the Pharaohs built those jumbo triangles and giant cement cats than they flushed themselves down the Nile.
When it comes to food, progress has pushed molecules ahead of meals, hormones over homegrown, and our cattle have become clones.
That’s why progress plays no role at the Post Shredded Wheat Company.
Here, we put the ‘no’ in innovation.
Henry Perky created the Original Shredded Wheat in 1892. One man. (Him.) One ingredient. (Wheat.) One machine. (The machine.)
And although many back then thought the idea of pouring milk over food was foolish, today we see all sorts of chemically enhanced, artificial fiber-infused, carb-refused cereals – a far stretch from simple, honest nourishment.
Post Original Shredded Wheat, on the other hand, hasn’t changed. It is still just one simple, honest ingredient which naturally comes with fiber, vitamins and minerals.
Why would we mess with that?
Frank Druffel.
Jet Blue gets viral marketing and does it right in a series of three 90-second ads.
Enjoy.
Via Frango