Pure Thinking

Sales & Samples

This stat whacked me across the tête this morning: According to Edison Media Research and Arbitron, nearly one in three shoppers who try a sample will buy that product in the same shopping trip. That's way higher than I thought, and sort of makes me wonder why more salespeople aren't stuffing brownies down my throat every time I'm at a supermarket.

I have one theory for this, and it involves the dichotomy of choice. On one hand, we all adore choosing one thing over another, and find a lot of fun and and psychological satisfaction in customizing our own product experiences. On the other hand... have you ever been to Super Target? The toothbrush aisle is enough to make an Emerson out of me, and if someone was there to even suggest one brush over the other, God knows I would  take it and run. In other words, people love making decisions, but they need more help making them than we think. So, when packaging quits talking, it's good to pass that responsibility back at an actual person - at least while we're responding to them at a rate of 30%.

Read more on sampling's glory here.

fubiz // light

fubiz is a French blog that does an incredible job tracking creatively inspirational imagery, design, and art, and they throw enough visuals out to keep you occupied even if you don't speak French. Recently they posted some awesome shots of light painting by Lapp-Pro (Jan Wöllert and Jörd Miedza), and they're even better than some of the light graff that's been working its way through Europe. Check it out here.

Chrome Remixes

Last week, I pointed you to the nerdish comic Scott McCloud created for Google Chrome.

Well, the kids at Gizmodo--being the troublemakers that they are-- created a friendly competition to photoshop the crap out of that comic, and they've found their winners. I guess you have to be a bit of a tech dork to appreciate a bunch of other tech dorks taking punches at Google--but, ok, I have the snotties, and I'm blogging, and it just doesn't get much nerdier than looking at comics while sucking boogers back up your nose -- so I'll admit to living in that area.

See them all here.

Staying Creative, as the Only Creative

There's a good article over at Coroflot about creative environments, efficiency, and maintaining the energy that creative types often pull their best work from. It made me sort of nostalgic for those spray adhesive soaked days of ad school, and it took up a solid ten minutes-- so wins all around.

CP+(A)B= Fat Fighters (Fat Liars?)

I'm just about speechless, so I'll let The Egotist do the talking.

"First, you make us fat with your inarguably fantastic cross-media approach to infiltrating our lives with everything The King, then you turn around and sell us a book explaining how we’ve been tricked into being fat. Pure. Freaking. Genius. (And we’ll admit, we can’t wait to read the book to absorb your insights.)"

I can't wait for it either, but in an entirely different way, because we all know by now not to take any book coming from CP+B at face value. If you don't know what I mean by that, let me refer to one from the comment vaults:

"Just so you know, Hooplanetics is already out. For those who had the brains to figure it out, it was secretly bound inside the back cover of the Hoopla book. (check out the scissor line clue around the naked man). Oh, and by the way, what friends of yours worked at CP+B? And what do you know about Alex B.? I’m guessing you don’t even know him enough to make a judgment. Good luck."

...So who knows what this book really contains. Knowing "Alex B," it's probably a chicken egg and straw. I just hope it's something teachers can use in ad class to demonstrate how advertising sucks your gooey brains out, because it will communicate that message it in the exact way that will make those kids just die to be in industry. Bittersweet, no?

Chris Bolton

Chris Bolton is (!). He's experimental, exploratory, and kills it on execution. He is vinyl's best friend. I would pay to have him as my best friend if he didn't live in Helsinki. I know I'm making him sound like a diety, but his work is so good it hurts-- and man, it hurts so good.

Tears of Bolton joy-- the ones Michael never gave you-- found here.

Liqurious

Notcot, one of my top stuff-hunting destinations, functions via one of the best ways to ensure your content stays fresh: Let millions of other people find it for you. This is probably why the site always has such a satisfying selection of good things. Art, design, new campaigns, new products - it's all there, and it's there in large quantities.

As the site has grown in popularity, the necessity for subject-specific offshoots has paved the path for sub-sites like Notcouture (fashion) and now Liqurious, an in-alpha cocktail paradise tracking anything from drink recipes to Absolut's latest packaging design. It's looking good so far, and it will probably look even better around 2 pm on account of it being Wednesday. Prime yourself to booze here.

The World is Free

On the random chance that some of you have been hankering to read Thomas Friedman's international bestseller The World is Flat, I felt it within my responsibilities to tell you that is now available for freesies. Click here to nab the audiobook in the form of a three-section download, made possible by what looks like a marketing ramp-up to Friedman's up-and-coming book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How it Can Renew America.

Thanks for sharing, Core77!

Comcast Knows Everything

Brandon Dilbeck talked crap about Comcast on his blog, and Comcast heard about it. That doesn't seem weird at face value - it's the age of information, gossip spreads, etc. - but if you look at it more closely, it's not just weird, it's creepy.

Here's the rundown: Brandon does not write for Gizmodo, or Engadget, or any other blog where doing some crap talking is easily notable. He writes for his own blog, a modest blogspot roost called Brandon Notices. So when he wrote a post entitled Comcast Makes me Sad, he hardly expected the company to address his problem via email only hours later. However, that is exactly what happened, thanks to the efforts of Frank Eliason, a Comcast rep hired to scour the internets for relevant chattiness.

So is it customer service? Brand management? Stalking? I don't know where I stand, but it's somewhere in the middle of "Whoa, neato," and "Where's my mace?" Learn more here.

Unimark International: A Retrospective

Unimark International ruled the '60's and early '70's with their revolutionary approach to design and marketing. Then, they died.

Fun read and great visuals here.