Yes, another airline is doing it. Using fun, personality, design to differentiate themselves from others.

Image from . The inflight safety demo is worth watching too; also from One Large Prawn.

Thanks to Martin for the initial heads up!

As with Virgin, consistency and integrity (to the stated brand values) are key. And some people won’t like it; but those who do will love it!

This is a follow-on post from China the Ikea of businesses.

Differentiation by service: make a same-same product but pair it with specialised and targeted services that becomes the core differentiator.

To follow on from the previous examples – we could be looking at same-same laptops paired with a 1-hour global replacement service and automated remote backup.

You too can now become a manufacturer overnight!

The availability of components and white label parts, as well as the expertise to assembe these into just about anything at attractive price points.

Or just buy and rebadge complete goods!

What are the implications?

Zero differentiation.
Hollow brands.
Minimal actual choice for consumers.
Lots of busy-ness in the short term.
Lots of unsustainable businesses to fail. Resources to waste.
More demand for easy-fix shallow marketing.
More spam.

What are the …

There seems to be a trend for documentary channels like Discovery, National Geographic and History to focus on “sensationalist” shows these days.

I am referring to the seemingly endless parade of shows about war (human wars, animal wars…), weaponry, fighting/combat skills, people blowing things up (in the name of learnings of course), daredevil biologists doing rude things to unsuspecting animals (leave it be – just you remember what …

(At least when it comes to commercial goods and services. A lot of the really good stuff about is still free!)

It seems obvious doesn’t it?

Clients agonise over cents. They will choose a sweatshop manufacturer over one that employs people with Downs Syndrome. And yet at the same time, they will splash out obscene amounts to use some celebrity’s face in their product endorsements.

Maybe customers prefer the cloying …

Marketing managers have now more or less learnt the topical key words – emotional engagement, authenticity, engaging in conversations…

But the doing of marketing is still essentially flawed – because marketing is still treated as a standalone function at the end of a linear service/product development pipeline. Marketing is still treated by many businesses a veneer/façade function, and thus necessarily shallow.

You want to be authentic, genuine, appeal to …

Just like we are personally subjected to the tugs of what I should do vs what I want to do, businesses are similar affected – what the world, “common wisdom”, “experts”, trends, and the media tell them they should do, versus what their leaders and people truly want to do.

In the race for authenticity and differentiation, doing what everyone says you should is probably not a good idea. …

Why is Ikea food so crazily successful in Singapore? There are two large Ikea stores in Singapore. They both have huge restaurants. By my estimation, the restaurants appear to occupy about 15% of the available retail floor area, an not-to-be-sniffed-at area.

Interestingly, the restaurants seem to always be packed to capacity. Clearly the restaurants are a great revenue source for Ikea. Who would have thought it?!

Ikea appears to …

Don’t you just love it when the little things work perfectly?

I opened this packet of sugar today and the perforated strip tore perfectly across as intended.

I wonder if this was a deliberated designed, tested and perfected user experience element of this product. It would be nice to think so. That someone cared enough about my experience to do this small detail well.

What small customer …

There are specific conventions used in the design of packaging for the different things we can buy at the supermarket. We learn to read these conventions and become part of our automated parsing of our environment.

I think this is why the packaging visuals of the Bio-X range of insecticides caught me completely by surprise. My immediate reaction was “Ooo this one is for getting rid …