Experience Design

A Double D for Marketing

You can’t be a designer without encountering the Double Diamond Innovation Model. The model goes something like this: It’s a great way to think about the design process, even if I prefer the design squiggle, where everything upfront is a chaotic, swirling squiggly line of the unknown that gradually morphs and straightens into a line…

Just Enough to Start

Back when we still had offices in downtown buildings, a panicked freelancer pulled me aside and said, “you’re asking us to build a plane in mid-air. It’s just not possible.” Good UX designers know the power of discovery and upfront research. They know that only through interviews, observations, and mining available data can they begin…

The Many Colors of Apple’s Dominance

To become the world’s second-most profitable public company – trailing only Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco – while simultaneously being recognized as the world’s most beloved and relevant brand, requires a special kind of marketing jujitsu that only Apple can pull off. Such mastery and long-term commitment allow the company to position itself…

Transformation Nation

Indoors and unbound, a restless nation begins to imagine its digital future Our collective anxieties, heightened by both the real and imagined threats of the pandemic, helped accelerate a year of business digital transformation so historic that the long-term impacts are still being unpacked. For nearly a year since the pandemic began, people have had…

Prime Day Revelations

The annual sales event offered marketers a treasure trove of data to observe a nation at nest Prime Day aka “Black Friday in July” began six years ago as a way to reward Amazon Prime subscribers with a day of deals. For 2020, a year with more horrifying twists than HBO’s new science fiction hit…

Marketing in the New World of Social Distancing: Part III

Reopening requires recalibrating expectations as brands and consumers seek ways to survive Searches for the phrase “when will the economy open” jumped 450% this week, according to Google Trends, a data point that should come as no surprise to consumers and businesses impatiently waiting to read the official roadmap for return that scientists, economists, and…

Marketing in the New World of Social Distancing

When Sequoia Capital called coronavirus the Black Swan event of 2020, few foresaw the swiftness with which the hedge fund’s early March prediction would unfold across the United States. Two weeks later, in the face of a global pandemic, many Americans have radically shifted their behaviors to “flatten the curve” and, sometimes reluctantly, adopted social…

Resurrecting Retail at NRF 2020

While technologists and marketers gathered in Vegas at the 53th annual CES in Las Vegas to gawk at the latest and greatest in connected toilets, the retail industry gathered shortly thereafter in New York City from Jan. 12-14. But instead of looking for cool tech breakthroughs, attendees sought solid ground to re-build margins and keep…