Spark by The Hartman Group

Trends to watch: Bespoke customization

Trend: "Customize It!"

The trend toward customization is playful, fun and anyone can do it. Today, consumers can customize almost anything and everything, from t-shirts, bandages, stamps, Kleenex boxes and sneakers.

But, taking customization a step further brings us to the spirit of bespoke goods. A term traditionally used to refer to tailored clothing, these items of specialization are made to the buyer's specifications and now cover anything for chocolates to online experiences.

Here are a few of our favorite brands that get customization right:

M&M's: Who would have thought a candy that's been around since 1941 could be so trend leaning. But M&M's is having some fun. Its online tool allows you to personalize your own M&M's by choosing your own color, message and even photo.

Bespoke Chocolates: While even evoking the spirit of customization in their name, the made-to-order Bespoke Chocolates are made by hand, in small batches, with customized recipes to best feature the flavors of each chocolate.

Cookthink: Bespoke even extends itself beyond customized-made-for-you and into "what am I craving right now?" Cookthink, an online recipe and cooking tips site, allows consumers to search for recipes by any combination of ingredients, cuisines, dish types and moods to help answer your craving questions. Let's face it, sometimes your in the mood for something a little sweet, the next you're a little salty. Now there's a tool to help you create your craving!

My Cuppa: And then there's the My Cuppa mug, which adds a bit of whimsy and playfulness to the everyday task of customizing the daily hot beverage. Available in both tea or coffee styles, the mug helps mix your favorite brew just how you like it by matching the color guide on the inside for your perfect-every-time milky concoction. So, find out if you like it "Classic British," "Builders Brew" or "Just Tea."

What does this mean?
In many ways, this really is the next wave of luxury. And with this trend we'll see larger brands becoming customizable in effort to appeal to consumers' growing desire for playful, personalized luxury.

Weekly Six: White boards, bar chefs and butchers

IdeaPaint
Let your walls do the talking...

Bar chefs' try a fresh take on cocktails
'Farm to glass' concoctions put the kibosh on mixes

Hipster hottie butchering phenomenon
Young idols with cleavers rule the stage

Splenda does Facebook
Facebook turns focus group with splenda product-sampling app

San Fran Mayor does Healthy
Newsom's fresh idea: mandates on healthier food

New ad plays locally, offends globally
After ad beef, BK apologizes yet again

Enjoy!

Weekly Six: eye-tracking ads and viral videos

Ad eye tracking
The first poster that responds too people looking at it

Alice dot com
"Alice" aims to change household shopping habits

Microvolunteering
The Extraordinaries: Will Microvolunteering Work?

Not So Slick, but Still Tasty
The UnFancy Food Show, Brooklyn’s answer to the Fancy Food Show

And in celebration of Independence Day:
The Top 10 Drinks Only America Could Have Invented

And, one of the most viral videos of the week:
Squirrel Eats a Lemon

Enjoy!

Weekly Six: popcornsicles, iPhone apps and kiddie spas

 

Global cuisine
School lunches from around the world

The popcornsicle
New take on popcorn: iced on stick

Kiddie spas
More spas catering to kiddie set

Under the heading of "Who doesn't have an iPhone app":

Dunkin Run
Dunkin’ Donuts Online Ordering & iPhone App

Whole Foods goes mobile
Whole Foods Market Recipes on the iPhone

iBacon is here
...and for the bacon lovers out there, cook bacon on your iPhone or iPod

Enjoy!

Weekly Six: chicken feed, phone art and banana juice

Giving new meaning to "chicken feed"
The Energy Potential of Chicken Droppings

The First Lady of Food
First Lady Michelle Obama Becomes The New Leader Of America's Food Movement

Best Buy goes Brammo
Best Buy to Test Electric Motorcycle and Bike Sales

iPhone art
In celebration of OS 3.0...we give you iPhone art

Buying organic
See which of the country’s largest food producers are behind your favorite organic snacks

23 banana-inspired innovations
From Recycled Banana Box Art to Banana-Flavor Beer

Enjoy!

The world of social networks...literally

A map of the world, showing the most popular social networks by country, according to Alexa & Google Trends for Websites traffic data (June 2009). (Good luck deciphering the subtleties of the colors!)

Burger King's meat-scented fragrance

It's hard to know even what to say about Burger King's new scent with a hint of flame-broiled meat that "captures the essence of that love and gives it to you," other than we're buying some right now on firemeetsdesire.com!

Weekly Six: Gardening Mama, Post-its and Facebook's demise (?)

Gardening Mama: Nintendo gets a green thumb
Billed as "the first ever gardening game on Nintendo DS," Gardening Mama challenges players to plant, water, fertilize, prune, and harvest

Facebook's Fatal Error
At 12:01 a.m. Saturday, 200 million Facebook users will make a mad scramble to claim a user name...Is this the beginning of the end?

10 most creative people in food
Here are Fast Company's picks of the folks changing the way we eat

The Carl's Jr. Channel
Carl's Jr. Pairs With Popular YouTuber for Viral Success

Fun with Post-Its
Got Post-Its? New ideas to keep you busy on deadline (the music, if you’re curious, is Röyksopp)

Island bars: The first all-American chocolate bar
The Hawaiian chocolate industry in taking off thanks to two producers
Original Hawaiian Chocolate
Malie Kai

Enjoy!

Grant Achatz: pushing the boundaries of experience

Today, the food section on The Atlantic is featuring an animated slideshow in which Grant Achatz of Alinea demonstrates how to engineer true experience into the dining experience….A reimagined take on Benihana.

Diners eat off of a communal setting "plated" on gray silicone mats that cover the entire table, breaking the typical boundaries of the white restaurant plate, as well as the personal boundaries of the diners themselves.

Here, Achatz "plates" the food directly at the table for diners to interact and engage with the process.

For more on Grant Achatz and technoemotional cuisine, download our white paper, Technoemotional: An innovative cuisine trend emerges.

Gamer Grub: the non-physical functional food

There’s functional food and there’s functional food, and then there’s Xtreme functional food. 

While we applaud Biosilo Foods for thinking beyond physical health with Gamer Grub, their entrée into the functional food snack category, we’re not so sure about the wisdom of tying the brand so patently to a narrow consumer segment.

Weekly Six: Cheese rolls, snoedels, and crunchberries

Here is the week that was, interesting finds and online items abuzz:

Farmers' markets go the hospital
Hospitals host farmers markets–hit or miss?

Cheese roll in Gloucester, Enland
Great pics of Cooper's Hill cheese-rolling (caution...some nudity!)

Produce search trends
This AllRecipes.com chart shows food searches patterns on the web as related to fresh fruits/vegetables.

Self-Sustainable Chair
This dress/chair combo comes with shoes you pump as you walk. Get too tired, just sit down!

Wanna snoedel in bed?
This isn’t spooning nor is it a dainty German pastry to nibble on while watching episodes of Lost.

Are Crunchberries real berries?
Reasonable consumer would know "Crunchberries" are not real, judge rules

Enjoy!

Indulge for a good cause

Maybe indulgence is healthy when it goes toward a good cause? Good for the conscience but not so much for the waistline. But who cares when you can save doggies and feed the homeless?  This may be a great  opportunity for CPG companies looking to leverage “classic” brands (read less-than-healthy) by coupling it with a good cause. Keep in mind that consumers are savvy and will only respond positively if a brand and charity are believable in the same space. Haagen Dazs helps save the bumble bees- YES! Little Debbie for Diabetes Awareness- not so much.

Guilt-free donuts
Eat a glazed or jelly-filled at a Southern California  donut shop on National Donut Day and feed the homeless this Friday, June 5.

Drink CSDs and help save animals
Drinking soda may not be best for the body, but with artisan made Margo's Bark Root Beer, it's at least good for the soul.  All proceeds from sales benefit local animal shelters and dog-rescue organizations. The story behind Margo's Bark is real sweet, too. A 7-year-old elementary student made root beer for a science-fair project that turned out so tasty, his family decided to bottle it and name it after the family dog, Margo.

Beer blogging: Cold frosty fiber

In the US, we see lots of supplemented foods and beverages on the supermarket shelves. But in Korea, they’ve taken functional drinks to a whole new level with a fiber-enriched beer. Billboards in Seoul tout it as “The Stylish Beer with Fiber.”  This is a great example of taking functional foods way too far.

Functional foods and beverages that have had success tend to be products that make cultural sense such as calcium + orange juice. This works for consumers because orange juice is opaque, the calcium is more readily dispersed. Calcium is opaque, orange juice is opaque...makes sense. (Calcium and carbonated soft drinks...not so much.) And, to consumers, calcium and orange juice already signify a healthy way to start the day. A functional product that has been less successful is Special K protein water, one reason being protein is perceived as being at the very least opaque and not exactly thirst quenching.

While stylish beer with fiber may seem like a great way to get some more fiber in your diet, it takes away from the original reason we drink beer: a quenching bit of escapism that makes life seem more interesting and fun. Fortified fiber will continue to do well in the more sober and inherent breakfast isle.

Weekly Six: online memorials and virtual assistants

Here is the week that was, interesting finds and online items abuzz:

New services promise online life after death

The Shopping List Is Making A Comeback

New Earthmate packing doubles as a CFL recycling kit

BillMyParents Launches Online Payment System for Teens, Parents

Recession? No Better Time To Hire A Virtual Assistant

Organic Dairies Watch the Good Times Turn Bad

Enjoy!

Starbucks social networking campaign goes awry

Example #6,438 of why brands should quit thinking that Twitter is a great way to connect with their customers:

Starbucks recently announced a major ad campaign designed to recruit online fans. In addition to large-format posters touting the chain’s coffee quality in six major cities, the clever marketing team decided to harness the power of online social networking sites by challenging their customers to hunt for the posters and be the first to post a photo of the poster on Twitter. In addition to the fact that there is nothing remotely interesting about the challenge, it never dawned on the powers that be that they were opening themselves up for a landslide of user-generated criticism and parody.

Case in point: Filmmaker Robert Greenwald was releasing a documentary that criticized Starbucks anti-union labor policies on the same day as the campaign. He thought to himself, “Why not invite fans of my position to play at the same game?”  So he simply tossed out a blog post on one of the many anti-Starbucks web sites encouraging people to take pictures in front of Starbucks stores holding signs that criticized the company’s “anti-labor practices.” Then he invited users to upload the photos onto Twitter and tweet them out to followers with the same hashtags Starbucks designated for their own campaign:  #top3percent and #starbucks.

Within hours many dozens of photos of Starbucks haters with their signs started to flow through Twitter from all around the country.

While we certainly do not share Mr. Greenwald's political views, we can’t help but applaud his efforts to expose the naïve thinking that characterizes most marketers responses to social networking technology.

The world is a most dangerous place.

Or, as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for…

Weekly Six: Billboards, tastecasting, crowdfunding and chicken trends

Here is the week that was, interesting finds and online items abuzz:

Bank spreads the love
FirstBank gives giant ads to tiny businesses

Tastecasting
Test-tasting social media groups chat up local eateries

Crowdfunding
A new business model in which the customers are investors

Black Garlic
Sweet meets savory with this new ingredient trend

Star Trek Innovation
10 innovations inspired by Star Trek...boldly go where no man has gone before

Backyard chickens no longer a trend...
The Slate Trends Curmudgeon slays the mighty backyard chicken trend...

Enjoy!

Branding work from the bottom up

As an example of "bottoms up" branding work, this Southwest flight attendant, David Holmes, became an online sensation and was dubbed the "rhythmic ambassador" of the airline at a recent shareholders' meeting.

Want customer smiles like these? Before any brand experience can resonate with the consumer, it must first appear credible and authentic to the team members. After all, if your team members can't take the brand seriously, there is little chance your customer will.

And in order to get critical buy-in from your team members, they, in turn, must truly believe they are part of something "real," "meaningful" or "larger." This belief can't be ordered or scripted from the top down - via a pep talks or a mission statements - but must arise as an indigenous impulse. Our research identifies two critical components to this impulse.

First, in order for your team members to believe they are part of something "real," the brand must have attained some level of cultural legitimacy in the larger social world. What we mean by this is the brand (or brand experience) must reside within the indigenous collective conscience, within the set of options that are seen as authentic or real, and not necessarily a by-product of the artificial, impersonal, homogenous nature of capitalism. That may sound complicated, but think about it. Southwest has already established itself as an airline that is more approachable, more relevant and with a sense of humor to boot (think: "You are now free to move about the country.") As the rapping flight attendant says, "You will not get that on United Airlines, I guarantee you."

In the retail world, no matter what Albertsons does, until they address the fact that they are not viewed (by most consumers) as a relevant, interesting feature of contemporary collective life, Albertsons cannot lay claim to any degree of cultural legitimacy. By contrast, when you talk to consumers about Trader Joe's, you'll notice their eyes alight with a twinkle. Never mind that Trader Joe's may be every bit as concerned with turning a profit as Albertsons, there is still something unique and personally compelling about the Trader Joe's experience such that it achieves a certain legitimacy in our contemporary culture. Put simply, Trader Joe's is currently "culturally meaningful," interesting and salient in a way that Albertsons is not.

Secondly, in order for team members to find meaning and "authenticity," in the brand, they must first respect the organizational structure of power. Again, this may sound complicated but in reality it is a pretty simple proposition. Devout followers - brand evangelists—will only "legitimate" or "respect," authority structures that appear natural and justified. Traditional top-down authority structures appear arbitrary and capricious, the product of mindless bureaucratic logics strikingly similar to much-maligned parenting techniques ("you'll do this because I said so, after all, I am the boss"). While the high-five at the end of the Southwest shareholders' meeting may have been utterly awkward, David Holmes continues to steal the show.

By contrast, many successful brands, especially in retail, have taken the unusual step of letting lower-level team members play an active role in management—both of the everyday workloads as well as the assorted elements of the retail or brand experience (product sets, promotional campaigns, etc.). By opening up the authority structure and encouraging active participation by all, your team members will respond as if they are engaged in something, well, real. Similarly, flexible, horizontal organizations with few layers of authority also foster the perception, if not the reality, that task at hand is less anonymous and ever more meaningful.

We believe that the successful brand designers of today (and tomorrow) will increasingly recognize that good brand management is as much about understanding how to organizationally manage their brand as it is how to deploy the products and services themselves.

Does dissing yourself make you more attractive?

Hey, can I help the fact that I’m a bald, aging hipster who needs glasses to drive at night?

From the hallowed halls of academia we find another case of evolutionary psychology—which is all the rage these days—proving what most of us have intuitively understood all along.

The use of self-deprecating humor—basically insulting one’s self—makes one appear significantly more attractive, so long as your status is high enough.

“Self-deprecratory humor seems to be a form of 'costly signaling'—displaying an obvious handicap, like a peacock’s tail that requires strength to lift—that can demonstrate your overall robustness,” according to Gil Greengross and Geoffrey Miller at the University of New Mexico.

And, as one might expect, they also found that such tactics don’t work nearly so well for folks with poor self-images and low self-esteem.

So if you’re a putz like me, don’t go around admitting so. But if your George Clooney, the best thing you can do is make fun of the fact that you are George Clooney.

Hey Russell Crowe..are you listening?

Permissible indulgence taken too literally...

Mars Inc. has launched their first new chocolate bar in over 20 years. It is called “Fling” and  is being promoted as decidedly anti-monogamy.

The following is a promotional postcard for the candy bar aimed at the adult female segment:

And no, this is not a joke.

The possible URL confusion seems to be causing quite a stir as well. Gotta check those URLS!