After years of soul searching, experimentation, and dipping our toes in the water, we here at Forty have finally committed to fully adopting the Agile methodology across the board. This is a pretty radical change for a marketing agency. The Agile methodology was developed in the software industry, a…
When you're designing something, it's easy to fall into the trap of designing it for yourself. If you tend to be an emotional decision-maker, you might focus on feelings and sensations rather than raw data. Conversely, if you're a detail-oriented decision-maker, you might skip all that emotional "fl…
When I was young, I had a really pessimistic view of marketing. I thought advertising was about emotional blackmail and manipulation, branding was conceptual mumbo-jumbo, design was pointless visual fluff, and public relations was just a way to hide your faults and deceive your customers. Taken toge…
A customer’s attention: it’s exceedingly difficult to acquire, experts measure it in milliseconds, it vaporizes if mistreated, and it’s worth far more than gold or diamonds. Scared? Don’t be—it’s putty if you know how to handle it. **Attention is the most fundamental unit of design.** Once you get p…
With campaign season in full swing, I’ve had some recent chats with my colleagues about the universally weak and uninspired nature of campaign signs. It seems like political marketing is about nothing more than putting your name on a solid color background (usually blue or red), and maybe adding som…
Alltel’s faux lawsuit fizzled. Forced jokes, cardboard characters, and fear of offense drained the story. Viral needs craft and risk, more novelist than ad shop, or the web shrugs.
It is estimated that there are around 85 million websites in existence at the time of this writing. By the time you launch your website, it will probably be closer to 100 million. The days of “If you build it, they will come” are long gone. Don’t lose hope, though. Your website can receive the atten…
Stop copying competitors and build a site people want to visit. Focus on useful content, stickiness, professional craft, and ongoing care. Challenge assumptions, measure wisely, and keep refining with love.
Once upon a time, marketing was about hyping the benefits of a product in order to convince you to buy it. Whether you were happy didn't matter much, because you already had your money and had moved on to other customers. In a contemporary consumer society, however, that's thankfully no longer a sus…
Stealth marketing blurs the line between clever and creepy. From overt BMW films to disguised Mercedes trailers, buzz wins until backlash hits. In a networked world, deception travels fast.
The world’s biggest branding crisis isn’t accounting scandals, poor customer service, or ugly logos—it’s executives’ paralyzing fear that they’re going to do something wrong. Imagine that you’ve just been chosen as the new CEO for a Fortune 500 company. The numbers you see each morning are comparabl…
Misconceptions about the purpose of a corporate identity system often cause companies to limp along with a sub-standard business image. Find out how you can avoid these common mistakes in your own organization. (Update: Many thanks to Antonio Mariscal, who took the time to translate [a Spanish versi…
Compelling stock photos, catchy slogans, and memorable marketing copy have just a fraction of the branding power of a single human being. Think of all the great ad campaigns you’ve seen in your lifetime. Now think of all the great people you’ve known. Family. Friends. Teachers. Classmates. Coworkers…
Having recently been consulted for a corporate naming project, I thought I’d post my personal guidelines on how to dodge the most common naming landmines. Over the years, I’ve put together a mental checklist that I’ve used when working on naming projects, and this seemed like a good time to put the …
The LA Times is feeling the effects of the population’s media consumption moving away from print, but their $10 million solution leaves much to be desired. Large companies tend to get so wrapped up in their own momentum that they fail to notice that the rest of the world has changed direction. The m…