Science Inspired Design

Turning Dunes Into Buildings

Tutorial Tattoos

Who discovered DNA?

Who sang 'Living La Vida Loca'?

The man who discovered DNA is Frederick Miescher.

We don't have to tell you who did the vida loca song.

Years ago some of us at Lateral were pitching on Intel's advertising. (We were working at DDB Chicago at the time).

We had acces to Intel's intranet and found profiles of their employees.

All the people we saw had at least registered 5 patents and some of them were even nominated for the Nobel prize.

These people were brilliant and we had never heard of them before.

We felt these people were not getting enough recognition for their work.

And we felt that other people - rock stars, movie stars, professional athletes- might be getting a little bit too much recognition for their talent and efforts.

We came up with a campaign which starred these Intel employees 'Living La Vida Loca' together with celebrities. (showing their 'cribs' visiting the Oscars etc)

The campaign was meant to give them the recognition they diserve, in a funny way.

Intel did not buy it and maybe they were right.

But we are pleased to see Philips understands that pop culture reaches more people than science.

And they have found a cool way to solve this attention problem.

Their LED implants are meant to help discover diseases and monitor the effectiveness of drugs.

Few people are really interested in diseases (unless it is THEIR disease of course).

A lot of people are interested in tattoos.

Which is why Philips is telling a story about moving tattoos instead of a story about diseases.

Science will probably never become part of pop culture.

But Philips' scientists have invented a way to deal that.

What You Will Be Doing Next Year: Foursquare.com

At Lateral, we think we know what will be the next big thing after Twitter: Foursquare.com

Why?

Because the people who were on Twitter first are now on Foursquare.

Because the people who invested in Twitter first have now invested in Foursquare.

Because the founders of Twitter have now invested in Foursquare.

But most of all because it's simple, relevant and fun.

Find out for yourself on http://www.foursquare.com/

94wines.com Is On To Something But Gets It Only 94% Right

Sure there are people who like to know that a certain wine was made from a certain grape growing on a certain soil which gives the wine certain tones added by the barrel which was made of…


Others just want to know: “Will I like it?”

The ‘others’ have now got their very own brand, and we are a little proud it’s Dutch like us.

94wines.com doesn’t fool around with unpronounceable French names, maisons, barrels and other complicated stuff, they just ask you a few questions and send you a wine that will suit your personal taste.

The only thing we find a little bit disappointing is that when you click on a wine number (a wine number, we love it: so true to the essence of their story!) you still get descriptions using terms like “full body” and “a combination of Chardonnay and Viognier”

But hey, maybe we are just being brand purists.

If you like wines that you will like, visit 94wines.com


(Update: we were contact by the ppeople at 94wines.com  Turns out they only mention names like Chardonnay because they are required to by law)

And You Think You've Got Problems?

People working in the idea business know coming up with ideas is not the hardest part of the job.


There are two things much more difficult than coming up with new ideas.

The first is recognizing a great idea.

The second is realizing it.

At Lateral we put a lot of energy in realizing new ideas.

But we know we have never worked as hard at making an idea come true as William Kamkwamba.

William was born in Africa. And after seeing a windmill which generated electric power one day, he wanted to build one.

He did not know anyone who could teach him.

He had no Internet to look for tips & instructions .

In fact, when he first saw a computer and the internet years after he built his wind turbine, he went nuts because it could have saved him years of trying.

Not only did he not have any help, people in his African village made fun of him.

But William did not give up. He built his wind turbine and taught others in Africa to build one as well.

He also taught people to teach other people so the knowledge would spread faster.

Next time you have a great idea and find it hard to realize it because of your busy schedule, a skeptic boss or a tight budget, compare the obstacles in your way to those of William Kamkwamba.

He didn’t give up, and neither should you.




(If you want to read William Kamkwamba's fulll story order his book at http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Harnessed-Wind-Electricity/dp/0061730327 )

Esquire Magazine AR

Esquire Magazine takes it's first augmented reality steps.

Meeting New People? Get A New Business Card

Most people design a single business card (or have one designed) and take it everywhere they go.

When you think about it, this is not a very smart thing to do.

Because using the same business card all the time, means you are using the same thing to make a good impression on lots of very different people.

Designer Maurizio Russo realized this and created a special business card for a special audience.

For his trip to Japan he designed a series of  Maurusso vs Godzilla toy businesscards.

We like his toy business card idea a lot.

But we like the fact that he first thought about the function of a business card even more.

Possibly The Best Brief Ever

In his excellent book "Buyology" Martin Lindstrom describes one of the greatest briefs ever.

It was for the design of the 3rd coke bottle from the left.

The brief was simple (which is always good) but very demanding (which is even better, but you can't do that without making it simple first).

The brief said: "We want our Coca-Cola bottle to be recognizable even when it is dropped and gone to pieces".

It is a very weird demand.

We can't imagine Coca Cola actually worrying what their bottle would look like broken.

But it is also a brilliant demand.

It challenged the designer to come up with something incomparable.

And it forced Coca Cola to approve only of something incomparable as well.

The brief forced both designer and client to be brave.

The world could do with more briefs like that.

Live Social Media Count

Is this a great tool to show clients how big social media have become?

Or a great example how the web is becoming more and more about 'real time'?

Anyway, it's  great and we thank dutchcowgirls.nl for pointing it out to us and Gary Hayes for creating it.

These Are Sausages.

We have to admit, we were a bit shocked when we saw them at first.

And we consider ourselves creative open minded people.

This has to be strangest sausage packaging in the world.

It's wild, modern, balloony, festive...

It's definetly not something you would immediately associate with sausages.

The Russian designer and client have to be nuts.

Or are they both geniuses?

They might be if you look at the alternative.

Which is to go for a design that is all about sausages.

Which would make it look like all the other sausages in the supermarket.

Let's say this sausage brand is totally new.

So it would have to start getting some market share at the cost of other sausage brands.

Looking exactly like all the other brands would mean that consumers would probably not notice the new brand.

Looking like a wild party sausage from disco space will definitely get people's attention.

The way we see it, this new design could fail quite easily.

But so could a "safe" design, and the rewards for this weird design could be much higher, because it is almost a new category by itself.

Go strange sausage go!

Not Your Average Car Commercial (Thank God)

Why do all car commercials look the same?

(You know, shiny car drives on empty road in desert/mountains/forrest).

Because that's what most car manafacturers want from their ad agencies.

They think it's safe, because nobody can hate it or not understand it.

We think it is very dangerous.

Not only are these commercials boring the crap out of consumers, but they also don't tell anything special about the brand.

Fortunately, there are a few car marketers out there who do get it and have the guts to produce some great stuff, which makes people fall in love with their brand.

Mini is certainly one of them.

Microsoft's Future Looks Good

This is our fourth post on Microsoft already.

And we do tend to critize the brand's communication.

Not this time tough, we like this video.

It's not desperately trying to sell it something, it's just showing us a possible future.

A future that looks rather good.

No It's Not A Nike Commercial

Atelic from duckeyejey on Vimeo.


In fact it is not a commercial at all.

But we like it, and it made us wonder why commercials are rarely as interesting as this video?

Nerds To The Rescue

A couple a days ago we wrote a post about Microsoft's advertising and it's image.

To put it mildly: Microsoft's image could be better.

And that's because of bad communications and bad communications alone.

Sure, they have made some mistakes like Vista (ok, big one there) and their business methods in dealing with competitors are sometimes bullying.

But Google made some screw ups as well and made a very questionable deal with the Chinese government.

And why is Microsoft not getting kudos for Bill Gates charity work?

At Lateral, we believe nerds will save the planet.

Because they do not have some (political or religious) ideology that guides them, but because they see a problem or need and aim to fix it or answer it.

Watch this video and you will know what we mean.

We love Bill Gates for his foundation and we kinda like Microsoft as well.

We could even grow to love Microsoft if it would fix it's advertising and other communications.

On Transparency: The See Through CEO

At Lateral we talk about transparency a lot with clients.

One reason is that it could threaten their business.

By that we mean that consumers can now easliy compare everything they do and offer to their competitors, so if their offer and behavior isn't the best of the best they will lose customers.

The other reason is that it is a big opportunity.

By being transparant as a company you gain consumer trust and likeability.

Wired Magazine wrote a great article about transparancy called "The See Through CEO".

You can read the first part here:


Pretend for a second that you're a CEO. Would you reveal your deepest, darkest secrets online? Would you confess that you're an indecisive weakling, that your colleagues are inept, that you're not really sure if you can meet payroll? Sounds crazy, right? After all, Coke doesn't tell Pepsi what's in the formula. Nobody sane strips down naked in front of their peers. But that's exactly what Glenn Kelman did. And he thinks it saved his business.

Last year, Kelman was the newly hired CEO of Redfin, an online brokerage firm that was, as he puts it, "the ugly red-haired child" in the real estate world. Redfin was trying to turn the industry upside down by refunding people two-thirds of the commission that real estate agents normally charge. Customers loved the idea - why the heck did you need to hand over 6 percent of the price of your house, anyway? But agents hated it for destroying their fat margins, so they began blacklisting Redfin, refusing to sell houses to anyone who used the service. Kelman was struggling to close deals for his clients.


His first reaction was to keep the situation quiet and pretend everything was OK. "We were really ashamed that our customers were getting pushed around, so we tried to keep it this dirty little secret," he says. But when months went by without any improvement, he decided to take a different tack.




Kelman set up a Redfin blog and began posting witty screeds about the nasty underbelly of the real estate business. He denounced traditional brokers, accusing them of screwing customers with clubby, closed-door practices. ("If we don't reform ourselves, and take out all the sales baloney, too, people will come to hate real estate agents the way they hate tobacco companies or Big Oil," he wrote.) He publicized Redfin's internal debates, even arguments about the design of its Web site. He mocked himself: One post described how he had sat at a college job fair for hours, waiting in vain for a single student to approach him. ("This was particularly sobering because it meant we had outlosered our neighbor to the right, Ford Motor Company," he wrote.) Meanwhile, in the blog's comments, old-school agents were unleashing hissing attacks on Redfin. Kelman left the critiques ine and lashed right back, in full view of his customers.


His enemies got nervous. All this intestinal spew seemed maso chistic. Worse, it was probably bad for business. Everyone's business.


But customers loved it. More and more signed on to use Redfin, and by the beginning of this year, Kelman and his crew were closing several deals a day. "Instead of discouraging customers, being open about our problems radicalized them," Kelman says. "They rallied and started pulling for us."

Like some crazed convert, he trumpeted his epiphany: "I honestly believe that if Redfin were stripped absolutely bare for all the world to see, naked and humiliated in the sunlight, more people would do business with us." Follow me, he urged.

And many have. Radical forms of transparency are now the norm at startups - and even some Fortune 500 companies......

Read the rest of the article here:   http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/wired40_ceo.html

Inflatable Safety Belts

After airbags, we can't help thinking "what took them so long?".

Still, Ford has a winnner here.

Add A Sixth Sense To Your Mobile Phone

3 things are important to us in this video.

The first is, that this "device" was made from mainstream consumer available technology which only costs $350.

The second is that is was made by just one guy.

And the last thing is, that the presentor is NOT talking about something that is to come in 10 years.

(the presentor did mention something about 10 years, but she was refering to the whole thing being implemented into brains!)

This technology will be mainstraim in about 3 years.

Every mobile phone will have this.

Repeat: every mobile phone will have this.

Which means that consumers will be able to compare your brand and product more easily than ever.

Which means that you, marketer, have to do two things, and you better do 'm fast.

First make sure that you have covered your basics: make sure you are planet (environment, labourors, animals ) friendly and that your price and quality and service are highly competitive.

The second thing you have to do is a bit harder but the rewards are much higher.

 Make sure that you are incomparable.

Have incomparable functions, incomparable design, incomparable distibution, incomparable service and a very clear and incomparable brand story.

Things are becoming more comparable very fast.

Make sure people don't view your brand or product as just a comparable thing.

The Boom Of Social Media Visualized

(Click on picture to enlarge)

Microsoft Sucked At Advertising, Then Got It Right, Then Started Sucking Again

Nobody likes Microsoft.

But everybody uses it.

Why? Because Microsoft may not be the hippest, not the easiest to use, not even the brand that offers people the latest technology.

What Microsoft does do well, is offer great value for money.

This video shows Microsoft ad's from 1990's till 2009.

In 2008 Microsoft for once had a message that was perfect for them.

But they just had to screw it up again, trying to be really cool in 2009.

Microsoft: you are functional and great value for money.

You are not cool and you don't have to be.

People love functional.

People hate brands that try to be cool when they are obviously not.

Stop trying to be Apple and start being Microsoft.

In the end people will you for it.

One More Must Visit Website : Listorious.com

Only a week after the introduction of the list function on Twitter, Listorious.com already collected over 5,000 list you can follow with just one click.

Marketing, comedians, mimes.....marketingmimes, they have a list for all your interests.

Websites We Highly Recommend (5 of 5): Mashable.com

Social media is all about real time.

And news about social media does not get more real time than Mashable.com

Twitter before it's tweeted, Google before you can Google it.

Websites We Highly Recommend (4 of 5): wonder-wall.com

If you have anything to do with interior design, you have to visit Japanese wonder-wall.com

And if you don't have anything to do with interior design, you should as well.

Their website is just too beautiful to miss.

Websites We Highly Recommend (3 of 5): PSFK.com

PSFK.com is a great source of inspiration.

You should visit it every day.

Or at least once to download their free "Good Brands 2009" report.

Websites We Highly Recommend (2 of 5): Trendwatching.com

Want to know what a "Twinsumer" is?

What "Generation G" is all about?

Trendwatching.com's newsletters will keep you up to date on all mayor consumers trends.

Some of them are really enlightening, some just tell you stuff you already now.

But hey, all of them are free, so sign up!

Websites We Highly Recommend (1 of 5): Twittratr.com

Twittratr.com was created during the US elections by Obama supporters, who wanted to know how their candidate was being talked about by Twitter folk.

Now Twittratr is a non-perfect, but very quick tool to check the way people feel about your brand.

Twitter Working On Integrated RT Function

This week Twitter introduced lists, now they have announced to introduce an RT function soon.

RTs (reposting something someone else wrote and mentioning their name) was invented by users, and will now be integrated so users can RT by just a single mouseclick.

That's one of the things that fascinates us about Twitter: it's users really shape the social platform.

Users lead, Twitter follows.

Lego Augmented Product Demo

Lego Augmented Reality from Sjaak Alvarez on Vimeo.

Not the latest, but still one of the most relevant augmented reality applications out there.

The Posting Economy

The Urban Cursor

Danish designer Sebastien Campion created the urban project Urban Cursor "in order to explore the bond between the physical world and the numerical world".

We don't know about the last part, and really don't care.

It's original and people are obviously having fun with it.

Sometimes that is just enough.

Can Advertising Create A Need?

Below you will find a recent blogpost written by UK advertising legend Dave Trott.

It is so good, we just had to publish it on our own blog.


Here it goes:

Akio Morita was the founder of Sony. Apparently how he got started was that, after the war, he bought several dozen wire-recorders from the US army.

These were an early form of tape recorder. When he bought them he didn’t know what he was going to do with them.

He knew the possibilities of this new technology excited him. The trouble was, there was no demand for it.

Being unable to record sound and instantly play it back was not a problem that needed solving. At least not for the average person.

Before Akio Morita could satisfy a demand, he needed to create one. So he wrote a small pamphlet about the uses and possibilities of a wire recorder. And he distributed it to schools in the Tokyo area.

Pretty soon the schools were clamoring to buy his wire recorders. He sold out, and that was the start of Sony.

Years later he saw the possibilities in transistors. Until that point, radios and TVs had used big old-fashioned ‘valves’.

These looked like light bulbs. They were about the same size and just as fragile.

Akio Morita realized that by using transistors instead, he could make technology smaller and tougher. In fact, truly portable for the first time.

One of his first uses of this was a tiny radio. At least it was tiny by the standards of the day.

It was about six inches long, four inches wide, and an inch deep. The problem was the demand for a portable radio didn’t exist.

So, before he could satisfy a demand, Morita knew he needed to create one.

He told his salesman they should demonstrate how amazing the radio was by popping it into their shirt pocket. The problem was it didn’t fit.

So Morita had hundreds of shirts made with slightly oversize pockets. He issued these for each of his salesmen to use when demonstrating the radio.

Sony created the market for tiny portable radios.

Years later his research and development people came up with a tiny tape cassette player that gave great sound. But it had no speakers. And it couldn’t record.

The Sony marketing department said the product wouldn’t sell. No one was asking for a cassette player that didn’t record and only worked with headphones.

Akio Morita knew, before he could satisfy a demand, he had to create one. So before he launched the product, he gave it away to opinion formers.

Professional musicians, recording studios, music journalists, composers. They all talked, and wrote, about the fantastic quality of the sound. Pretty soon the public were clamoring to buy it.

That was the Sony Walkman.

But before Akio Morita created the supply, the demand didn’t exist.

Adam Morgan wrote the book “Eating The Big Fish” which launched the concept of ‘challenger brands’.

Adam was telling me about an experiment in Canada. A company wasn’t sure about the value of its advertising. So, to see what would happen, they only advertised in half the country.

Sales didn’t seem to go up, so they stopped advertising.

Instead they did a coupon drop over the entire country. But only half the country used the coupons. Guess which half.

If the demand doesn’t exist, you can’t satisfy it.

Henry Ford said, “Before the automobile existed, if I’d asked people what they wanted, they’d have said faster horses.”

People aren’t visionaries. They can’t know they want something that doesn’t exist.

Sometimes you have to create the demand before you can satisfy it.

That’s called advertising. Creating a demand.

Akio Morita said, “The greatest assistance I had in growing my company was the total failure of nerve on the part of western businessmen to make a move without research.”

Marshall McLuhan put it differently. He said, “Running a business based only on research, is like driving a car by looking in the rear-view mirror.”


(you can find more off Dave Trott's wisdom over at www.cstadvertising.com/blog)

Tokio Fashion Week: Hand Models

Why pay big money to super models, when you can use hands to show your collection?

This cute little video which was shown during the Japan Fashion Week in Tokio is sure to put a smile on everyone's face.