Gossip is marketing umami
It's what gives your customers a rush
There's a scientific theory that language evolved through gossip. No, really.
What's Facebook but gossip at global scale?
It's the equivalent of people lazily roasting their relatives, acquaintances or bosses. Off the newsfeed of course.
A whispered "Did you know that...?" is a guaranteed attention magnet. It adds spice to long and boring afternoons or nights.
Pulp publications have lived for decades on this simple insight. Shine a light into areas that shouldn't be seen and the whole world wants to take a look.
'Leaks' have now become standard for 'Launches' The next big thing needs old woman's tales to spread and be talked about.
Remember the story about the iPhone engineer who 'forgot' the prototype at a bar?
It was bought by a tech publication, made into a major story about the new features (iPhone 4) and kept hitting the headlines for weeks. Sales took off like never before.
Now what is the unwritten part of the story? The engineer who forgot the iPhone did not lose his job. Small but significant detail.
Like the secret ingredient added to a dish to make it irresistible, gossip is the spice that makes marketing spread better.
What's life without a little umami?
The Apple Sales Engineer didn’t lose his job
Do you find it easy to make decisions?
The boss who makes million dollar investment decisions in a flash. But struggles over which ice cream flavour to choose.
The dreaded shoppers who insist on seeing every single thing in the shop. With the perfect pattern on the fabric.
We've all seen people look over the hotel menu a hundred times before they finally point to the item they want.
We are making decisions all the time. Except that we label them as choices.
Should I go for a walk today? Or put it off to tomorrow?
That client proposal can wait until I'm in the right mood.
Can I allow my kid to play video games for another 15 minutes?
What should I make for dinner tonight?
These are not tidy, linear processes.
How many times have you road rolled the toothpaste tube before remembering to buy another pack?
Or forgotten to pick up batteries until the remote control goes on the blink?
Asking ourselves which decisions we make easily and the ones we're conflicted over gives us great insights into how we operate.
We can't tell ourselves lies. Not for long anyway.
But we have no trouble arriving at snap decisions about people just from their external behavior.
What do you think? And what's your mantra for arriving at decisions?
If you can’t draw, Blush
Most people can't draw a straight line. Not beyond stick figures anyway.
We can't be good at everything, right?
But what if you could mix and match illustrations from good artists?
Shorter hair. Longer leaves. A change in the city's skyline.
A design plugin is offering you the option of meeting the artist halfway.
Like people mixed and matched music to create tracks, it's exploring what happens when you give people the power to modify something already drawn.
Enabling you to change expressions, positions and colours.
Sounds like fun? So you can assemble an entire scene from multiple illustrations by different artists.
Imagine you found an illustration for your blog post but the colours didn't pop. And you wanted the character to leap instead of standing still.
It's not for everyone. I don't see this growing like mix and match music.
The number of people interested in tweaking an illustration or playing with colours will be much smaller.
It's like the artist told you what you can change.
And it's clearly for people who have no design skills at all.
So why bother? Because it is an interesting idea. Halfway between providing the tools. And the finished product.