A short and sweet look at why Sarah loved the new Westjet website launch
Trust me, there’s some good PR snippets in there. It’s quick and dirty and saturated with delightful PR goodness. Love it.

Second, this longer post found on the MarketingSherpa Blog
This is something I’m personally going to practice… no more shotgun press release-olny approach (this barely works at the best of times). Instead, marketers and branders need to take a more rifle approach by getting in touch with your media outlets on a personal level: “So don’t even bother with the darn press release. Just send me a personal note and tell me why your specific story should be published” OMG such good advice. Go do it. Now!

dw

Westjet unveiled a new website this morning and it’s looking pretty tight. One thing for sure that can be said about the new design is they realized what was important for visitors. Can we take a stab and say that “Book a flight” was #1 followed by “Check in” being #2 followed by “Contact someone to bitch or praise” being #3 followed by “Give me the best freaking deal of the century” being #4?

Definitely like how uncluttered the site is now and how, when I’m looking for flights, they give me a range of dates with prices to choose from on a slider bar. That makes sense.

When accessing the site on my iPhone it initially goes to the regular site, but then redirects to a VERY simple, text-based site with the following prompts- Check in, Contact, Terms, Privacy Policy, Technical Requirements, Click to visit non-mobile website.

I can’t look for flights, book a flight, access Westjet Vacations, or check status without clicking through to the non-mobile site. Now sure, there are a lot of users just checking in but, um… probably would have thought that out a bit more.

Once through to the non-mobile site on my phone, moving around and booking something is relatively easy.

So, overall impression on the new design is, well, meh. But I think it does the job and will have a decent shelf life of a couple of years. 3/5 stars!

The purpose of the app is to help us crazy drivers ease up on acceleration and braking, which, apparently, wastes fuel—up to 10%. Hmmm… I get the concept of the glass of water. I do. I used to know someone who had a jar of pens in his truck that would surely had toppled over if he floored it or slammed on the brakes. His truck seemed to last a long time and I seem to recall that he saved on fuel.

What I don’t get is how this is going to help Toyota sell more vehicles. Is the idea of “ecodrive” gonna entice more vehicle owners to, perhaps, give Toyota the time of day next time their looking for a new car? Or will this just be another “fun-for-five-second” app we all download only to forget about in a few days?

I guess I’ll just have to try it out and let you know.

“Simply put, no one really cares about the logo anymore. Today, people are more interested in what a brand can do for them. Great brands are discovering that logos or advertisements are losing relevance, and instead put their efforts into creating social brand platforms that invite participation and create value in authentic and relevant ways. The real reason the Gap logo failed was that it wasn’t backed by any of this; the same goes for Tropicana and the rest.”

Source: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662542/the-real-lesson-of-the-gap-debacle-logos-arent-key-anymore

2010 Brand forecast:

Simpler is better (posted Feb 25)

We’re inundated with constant messages, ads, invites, emails, pings, pongs, dings and dongs. Some people feed off of this, what I like to call “InfoCane”, but there are more people out there who just want what they’re looking for and that is all.

Everything us brand managers and marketers need to do in 2010 should be made to simplify, make simpler, be simpler and simpler to find.

Find yourself skim reading more than you ever have before? That’s cause we’re constantly trying to take in more and more information, quicker and quicker. Sure, we could slow ourselves down and relax a bit. But what fun would that be!

In making things simpler, we can start by creating content that’s easy to skim and help people find the information they want quickly and easily.

Simpler may not be as fun for us info-junkies, but for our customers, it’s what will ultimately allow them to have a nice and easy experience with your brand.

Experiential

Didn’t write – must meant to say that customer and brand experiences will be a huge, huge deal for brands in 2010.

Ad Hoc

Didn’t write – but wanted to mention that marketers will need to be on their toes this year, ready to respond, interact and be ad hoc with their interaction with customers.

Design Focused

Didn’t write – but as we all know, design trumps most other factors when it comes to marketing. Design should be at the forefront of our thinking every single day.

Intelligent

Didn’t write – but as we create new experiences and interactions with our customers, they need to be intelligent. That’s what customers will expect more and more.

Environmental – and not just the “green” kind. We’ll be seeing more emphasis on healthy living in general. As with “simple”, we’ll be seeing less meat, less packaging, less chemicals we don’t know, less extravagance. In contrast, we’ll be seeing more recycled materials, more innovation with previously unrecyclable products.

Mobile – Seems like a given. But we’ll be seeing mobile applications that do everything but wash our cars for us. As with “Mavericks”, mobile will continue to be a playground for crazy innovative and experimental products that are interlinked with marketing campaigns that go far beyond the cell phone.

Design thinking takes on a new challenge as the ones who do it best look at the future of the book. My immediate impression is that they’re probably pretty spot on.

One thing’s for certain, books will definitely be digital, although I, as well as I’m sure many of you, still concede to the love I have of reading a physical book – feeling the pages; taking in the smells of the paper and binding glue; losing ourselves in the serif fonts and aged white space. So good. But so gonna get replaced by the unbelievable interaction and access to information we now crave, and will receive, buy the book of the future.

Check out IDEO’s Future of the Book.

The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.

All the cool brands are orange.