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or, an introduction to my portfolio and brand.

Hi folks! It has been a while since my last posting. I’m afraid that, beyond my own expectations, school has further ramped up since the final project. This is a bit of my own fault since I decided to add two additional classes with larger outside projects. As a result, I am currently involved in producing an online magazine, a branding project and all of my various portfolio-related projects.

While my portfolio is still being developed (Object Oriented Programming makes things such fun), I wanted to show off my business card. Hit the cut for various looks and information!

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As a resident of Vancouver, I see a lot of umbrellas. Back when I lived in California or at school, I’d see umbrellas but they were generally plain or I wouldn’t be paying attention to them. However, here in Vancouver, I see a lot of umbrellas with some sort of company or organization logo on them.

Clearly a company put a serious amount of cash into this venture (a quick search online reveals prices range from about $10 to $20 per unit) and the products were likely given away to employees. Perhaps other places, like the Vancouver Public Library (I don’t believe they carry umbrellas, but we will use them for the sake of example), might print an umbrella with the library name as a fund-raising attempt. Either way, personalized umbrellas are expensive.

As I walk down the street, I see tons of different logos and names to the point of habituation. I just stop caring what the logo is or the brand on the umbrella is; it is just an umbrella. As a design student, I try to make myself take a second look as I am interested to see what the company or organization is as well as looking at their logo. It is interesting to see what a company uses to represent itself. However, I’d imagine the average person would simply ignore logos after a time. In a lot of cases, the logo doesn’t even have a company name attached or there is no explanation of what services a company actually provides. So is the entire point just to get one’s logo out there and make people more familiar with a company’s brand name even if they don’t understand anything else about the company?

As I understand it, the inherent idea behind such a venture is to spread awareness and subconscious recognition of a brand name or logo. Say you are presented with a choice of 5 companies to pick from. If one had seen, even passingly, one logo more than the others, one might be more inclined toward that product as they feel more “comfortable” with that company. My question, though, is if this sort of advertising is really effective? However, I suppose given the price-point of billboards or other sorts of advertising, umbrellas are quite a cheap way to, at the very least, increase recognition of a company or a logo. Still, I feel that there must be a better way to advertise.

Dear ______ Pizza,

My apartment building is often hit with your “coupon” packs advertising all sorts of great deals on Pizza. As a student on the lookout for good deals, the one that caught my eye was “Pizza Buffet – All you can eat Pizza! Any Time. $4.99.” I thought to myself, “All you can eat pizza for $4.99? I have to check this out.” There were no listed restrictions on the usage of the coupons or anything so I was excited when I stopped by last night (Saturday, Febuary 4th). Unfortunately, your coupon was false advertising. It turns out that the coupon is only valid during the weekday and at lunchtime; none of which were printed there.

So I’m being told that this coupon is not valid for reasons that are not listed anywhere. As far as I know, that is false advertising and misrepresentation; both of which could get your business is a bit of trouble. Annoyed, I could have argued about it with your employee but he was new (he had to check with the manager, perhaps you, about the validity of the coupon) and there was no reason to be that kind of person. Instead, I purchased a small pizza for $10 with my three toppings and took it home.

However, you have broken your contract with me and severly damaged your brand image. As a result, I feel that your business is no longer trustworthy and I am unable to recommend it to anyone nor eat there myself, despite the pizza being tasty. In fact, I’ll more likely complain to them because my expectations were not met. In the future, I intend on going to pizza places closer to me with whom I have a better experience.

I would highly recommend printing full details regarding your offers so this kind of scenario does not happen again.

So I’ve spend quite a bit of time typing out how I think that the Microsoft Zune has issues. At least with the marketing that focuses on “social” activities. The primary issue with it is that there are too many DRM restrictions and the fact that when they’re listening to music, people don’t want to be disturbed. The end result is that I feel the Zune is being totally misrepresented.

However, there is something that appears to be a strong step in a really good direction. That is the new DAVE (Digital Audio Video Experience) device from Seagate. The primary point of the device is to allow immediate syncing and innerconnectivity between various items. To reach this end, it comes preloaded with wireless, bluetooth and a USB hub. Thus you can have one device that streams music or videos to your cellphone or use it to store items or share between two computers over wifi. The possibilities are tremendous.

Apparently the device can also send data from one device to another; a direct transfer so-to-speak. However, I am not entirely sure about this. The representative says that there is a security system built in so that unauthorized people can’t access your data, but how would that allow people to send from device to device? The product demo/announcement will be on Thursday, so we’ll have to see then.

It gets 10 hrs battery life with constant usage and has no screen (which is why I wonder about the setting of permissions for others to access data).

Ultimately, I feel like this is the way we want to go. More than the Zune which has a music focus, this kind of device has a video/person focus. This allows the device to be tremendously more useful. It seems like it would be a horrible annoyance to have a Zune and be listening to music when someone wants to send you something. I mean, they’re interrupting your music. But imagine this DAVE at a tradeshow. You can have a digital business card that you carry around with you on the device and when you meet someone cool, you can transfer that data to them. Heck, since it will sync up with wifi, you can even just put it on their computer or cell phone (with bluetooth) should they not have one of these devices. The possibilities are endless, not to mention that the device is tiny. You could stick it easily in a pocket or in a briefcase. Depending on the access system (say, through a cellphone), you would never have to actually take it out!

The future is pushing to interconnectiveness, much to the unhappiness of the big industries (aka due to DRM). People will find a way around it because they can. For example, There was a note today that someone has already claimed to have finished hacking the DRM of Vista and it was released today. These things don’t take much work to accomplish, no matter how much time is spent developing them. In any case, the futher into the future we go, the more important personal security will be. I believe at some point, the option of embedding electronics (like a computer, a neural interface or a storage device) under the skin or in the body will become available and widely acceptable. So what will this mean for personal security? Could someone hack into your brain? Only time will tell to see what technology is developed, but it is something that needs dire consideration.

The original report on the DAVE as well as a video interview with a guy from Seagate
Press Release Announcing the DAVE

While exploring my various favorite weblogs, I came across this article over at Gizmodo.

It seems especially appropriate as an addendum to my previous post about the nature of the Zune advertising scheme.

Microsoft Zune propaganda welcomes you to the social, but that’s only about a 58% welcome, because sites around the blogosphere are noticing that around 42% of the songs they’re trying to share Zune-to-Zune are on the “Zune sharing prohibited” list. Even that three days/3 plays DRM slapped on every shared song is not enough for those moneygrubbing and paranoid record labels.

Out of 50 songs tested by Zunerama, Universal and Sony artists were the most represented on the prohibited list. That’s particularly frustrating when you recall that sweetheart deal that Universal Music Group and Microsoft dreamed up for the Zune, making everybody pay through the nose for the right to share Universal’s music on the Zune.

Suddenly the Zune becomes more and more untrue to the brand advertising that Microsoft has set up for it. In fact, I would see this as false advertising and the broken trust further degrades my willingness to purchase a Microsoft product. If I were a Zune owner, I’d be rather angered by this revelation as the core “value” of the machine is suddenly limited.

At first I thought the issue was just affecting ZunePass users, but then I read this over at Zune Thoughts:

I decided to do a test myself to see if the 50% figure had any truth to it. Since I don’t have a Zune Pass account (and can’t without a credit card billed to a US address), my test is limited in scope and should be taken with a grain of salt. I purchased eight songs from the Zune Marketplace Top 30 Songs (most from the Top 10), selected from various genres, and tacked on two KT Tunstall songs for good measure for a total of ten songs, nine of them from different artists. I then created a “quick list” on the Zune (the dusty white one) that had the synchronized songs and tried to share the songs with my other Zune (the dysfunctional black one). The results? Of the eight Top 30 songs, only five were allowed to be shared – that’s a 38% failure rate. If you factor in the two KT Tunstall songs, seven of the total ten songs were shared successfully (a slightly better 30% failure rate).

On the other hand, Tycho seemed quite happy with his choice despite not being able to use the function. And as one blogger writes, “Some As underwhelming as the 58% is, I need to remind myself… that figure is still 58% higher than would have been possible on any of today’s iPods. This is a groundbreaking music sharing approach, and it will only get better from here.”

However, I think the key issue at hand is that Microsoft established a base idea of what the Zune can do and the end result has been much less than satisfactory. I know we are all trapped by DRM, but if you can’t share all your music, don’t focus your campaign around it and hope people won’t find out!

As I walk around downtown Vancouver, I see tons of people listening to music on their iPods, CD players, or whatever other method they choose to use to enjoy their music. These individuals, trying to pass the time as they hurry from point A to point B, hardly even bother looking at me as they hurry by.

There is a psychological barrier that wearing headphones or earplugs creates between the listener and the rest of the world.

Putting on headphones in public, in essence denying the world, is probably more thrilling than the act itself would suggest. The kind of social force-field it generates is something I’ve needed to blunt the outside world for quite some time – and the ability to institute a directorial vision, even while in a grocery store, can’t be overstated. I challenge you to listen to Kate Havnevik in some crowded place and not find yourself miraculously transformed into the protagonist of a spontaneous film. Tycho, Penny Arcade

Looking at them, one feels like they aren’t interested in talking, aren’t interested in interacting; they just want to kill the time. For the most part, this tends not to be the case, but the image is definitely there.

This is why Microsoft’s ad campaign of “Welcome to the Social” for their new Zune is so odd. Listening to music is a very personal activity, so why do they think that it can be turned into a social event?

What am I talking about you might ask? Here are some handy Zune advertisements you might find interesting. ( I won’t even get into all the stuff I find wrong with these ads. That is a post for another day. … Although watching them again makes me seriously want to go into it in depth. Sorry to post so many, but I wanted to make sure I got all of them.)

• Picnic Ad
• Battle Ad (This is the best one I’ve seen)
• Concert Ad (Also a decent ad! I wonder if the advertising unit is finally pulling things together?)
• Couple Ad (Then again, maybe not)
• Dog Ad (ditto)
• Spinners Ad (extra ditto with sugar on top)
• Snow Ad (not half bad)

Understandably, the Wi-Fi is one primary advantages that the Zune has over the iPod. This isn’t to say that the Zune is an iPod killer; the iPod does too many things too perfectly for it to be such, but the Zune certainly has potential.

Tycho over at Penny Arcade, put together an interesting newspost about his lack of displeasure at owning a Zune (much to the surprise of many). His situation may be unique (or not), but he does go into depth about some of the advantages that he has discovered with the Zune.

Tycho continues on his discussion of the Zune during his experience at CES (as a side note, why was it so hard to find out what “CES” stands for on its website? I want information, I was given a noisy flash movie. Great webdesign folks, just great.)

I had hoped that there at CES I would have an opportunity to use the Zune’s social features – its “higher brain functions,” as I put it – but I was only there Thursday, after the place had largely thinned out. Near the Microsoft booth I was happy to see many devices speaking wirelessly – so many I had to scroll! – until I realized that they were named after genres, and were (in fact) the display units, which added greatly to my shame.

The two times I had an opportunity to share files were interesting – once on the floor itself, and once in the plane on the way back. In both cases, my offer was rebuffed. This actually feels terrible when it happens, because you’re trying to show someone something that is important to you and they don’t care. But let’s be clear: when someone is listening to music, that’s private. They are actively eschewing the outside world, and here you are – with some song they’ve never heard of – interrupting their lives. Let me also state that your music stops when doing this – even for someone that buys into the device philosophically, I mean… Jesus Christ, guys.

So, Microsoft, where’s the social? If I’m at an event and I want to play someone a song, I can give them my 5 year old, banged up, 10 gig iPod and let them listen to the song. More than likely, we would just have music on the stereo playing and everyone talking. No Zunes OR iPods in sight.

In conclusion, I think that Microsoft’s marketing scheme is the best thing it has going for it on the Zune because it is the primary advantage one has in using the Zune over an iPod, but the campain is also exceedingly bad. I quoted Tycho so much primarily to show the case of a “typical” Zune owner (except that he would have a much higher chance of interacting with Zune owners, I’d imagine, than most people). He is happy with the service, and in fact provides him with better service than he could obtain else-wise, (of course, if this article about Apple deciding to open the Fairplay DRM format is correct, the usefulness he finds there could potentially change). The real gold of the Microsoft Zune ad campaign is “the social” and as I hope to have demonstrated in this post, the Social doesn’t want to be social. The Social want to listen to their damn music in peace.

P.S.

oh, and Microsoft? Please don’t make ads like the one below, ok? They truly say nothing about your product and don’t even begin to get me excited about it.
One Zune Ad

Also, I’d just get rid of “Squirt.” Just do it. You don’t even have to tell anyone. Everyone already understands.