Science fiction’s bleak futures mirror your customers’ daily frustrations. Trade quick wins for human-centered marketing that honors real lives and belonging. Solve problems, restore connection, and watch your brand grow.
Agile began as a manifesto and became an industry. When design teams adapt it without dogma, tension turns into flow, scope changes stop derailing, and client collaboration beats paperwork.
The basic elements of highly successful online videos are really just fundamental principles of human interaction, and you can apply to nearly any form of communication (especially marketing). While there's no way to guarantee that anything will "go viral," studying and applying those basic elements…
Smell sells. Tap scent marketing’s subconscious power to lift mood, memory, and sales. Choose simple, context-smart fragrances, tune the intensity, and watch productivity rise without customers noticing why.
Stop casting wider nets and fix the holes. Competitive CEOs chase metrics while customers crave emotion. Talk to people, design sticky experiences, and watch each effort land more loyal customers.
If your team was the last surviving band of humans in a city overrun by zombies, you wouldn't let just anybody through the door would you?
As much as our work at Forty is about “touchy-feely” stuff (psychology, emotion, metaphor, experiences, etc.), I’m still a numbers guy at heart. That’s why I get so frustrated every time I hear someone recommending crowdsourced design services like [99designs](https://web.archive.org/web/20130115155…
Once you’ve sorted out your company’s roots (purpose, values, style, etc.), you’ll find yourself faced with the challenge of trying to hold all that information in your head when making a decision. One of the best tools for dealing with this situation is a metaphor: a concept that ties these element…
Business is historically a male-dominated endeavor, so it’s no surprise that the stereotype about what it takes to succeed in business involves traditionally masculine characteristics: aggression, tactical thinking, bravado, ruthlessness, objectivity, ego, pride, sports metaphors, war metaphors, etc…
Screenwriter William Goldman once wrote of the movie industry that “Nobody knows anything. Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out, it’s a guess…nobody, _nobody_–not now, not ever–knows the least $#\*%@# thing about what is or isn’…
Every year, _Inc._ magazine ranks the [5,000 fastest-growing companies](https://web.archive.org/web/20111126125601/http://www.inc.com/inc5000/list/2011/) (privately held) in the United States. They just recently released their 2011 list, providing a fresh set of data on the movers and shakers acros…
The biggest mistake people make with website redesigns is thinking that it’s _just_ a website redesign. They see the new site, everything seems to work, and they call it done. Meanwhile, their SEO juice is leaking all over the floor. Their rankings are going to suffer, and they don’t even know it ye…
Over the years, we’ve found that there are three foundational elements to almost any brand: purpose, values, and style. ## BRAND PURPOSE Research cited in _Built to Last_ (by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras) indicates that purpose-driven companies can outperform the general market by a 15 to 1 ratio. T…
The typical modern consumer generally assumes quality and functionality as given, so what they’re really seeking are experiences that help them to fulfill their psychological needs (affiliation, aspiration, and identity). A key way to satisfy all of these needs is to cultivate a "tribe" around your …
Executives tend to be short-term thinkers. Their career has grown through easy-quantifiable successes, and they’re constantly pressured — by other short-term thinking executives — to base their actions around short-term metrics. It’s all about what happened last quarter, or last month, or even last…