When Zettwoch and Horton get together ...

We’ve had the pleasure of working with two great visual storytellers on two of our favorite projects: the Scott Smith Photographer video game, which featured the 8-bit genius of Dan Zettwoch (see this post for a behind-the-scenes look at its development), and the McCormack Baronland poster, which showcased the skills of Will Horton.

Both projects were a blast, and both projects, not coincidentally, were award-winning.

Lately, Dan and Will have been collaborating on some fun projects. Their latest is Chicago Cubs: A Century of Suck, which you can find in its full splendor on Manolith (a snapshot is below).

With apologies to Cubs fans — okay, not really — we thought we’d share.

:: Posted by Eric Ratinoff ::

The truth behind a good story

Some say the devil is in the details. Now forensic scientists are saying that’s where the truth lies, too.

According to a New York Times story, researchers are looking into ways to tell fact from fiction in criminal investigations.

Kevin Colwell, a psychologist at Southern Connecticut State University, has advised police departments, Pentagon officials and child protection workers, who need to check the veracity of conflicting accounts from parents and children. He says that people concocting a story prepare a script that is tight and lacking in detail….

In several studies, Dr. Colwell and Dr. [Cheryl] Hiscock-Anisman [of National University in La Jolla, Calif.] have reported one consistent difference: People telling the truth tend to add 20 to 30 percent more external detail than do those who are lying.

In other words, details — perhaps consequential, perhaps not — are the signals of truth. That’s why cutting to the chase when you’re trying to tell your story may not only strip the life from it, but it may strip the believability from it as well.

If you want to tell an authentic story, don’t skimp on the details.

:: Posted by Eric Ratinoff ::

Candor is “in”?

In “Angry Ads Seek to Channel Consumer Outrage,” New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliot asserts that advertisers are sharing our frustration with the economy by making ads that “echo consumer anger” and

take an outspoken, provocative tone that is unusual for mainstream marketing messages, which typically try to avoid aggrieved attitudes for fear of alienating audiences. The change reflects the significant shift in sentiment as the public reacts to the wrenching and, at times, frightening financial events of the last year.

Later in the piece, Marc Brownstein, president and chief executive at the Brownstein Group advertising agency in Philadelphia, says because consumers are feeling beat up,

Marketers “have got to rebuild that trust” … by being “brutally honest” in their ads.

“Candor is in,” he advised.

Hold on: candor is “in”?

I see two ways of reading that statement, neither of them good:

1. If marketers are using candor now because it’s “in,” then it’s calculated candor and thus, by definition, is not candor. Or…

2. Before they realized candor was in, what was in among marketers was bullsh*t.

Perhaps people do crave sincerity now even more than usual, so you can’t blame them if their BS detectors are tuned especially high.

But candor, Mr. Brownstein, is not “in.” It’s essential, now as always, if you want to build trusting, long-term relationships with the real people in your audience, and turn them into loyal advocates.

If you just want to sell them something, well, be patient. I’m sure this whole “candor” thing will pass soon enough.

:: Posted by Eric Ratinoff ::

One good post ...

Our good friend Dan Zettwoch just wrote a great post about the work he did with us on the Scott Smith Photographer video game. Dan talks a little bit about his process, and how the game is different from most of his other work (which is also pretty great; you should poke around the blog and check it out).

Two of the coolest things about the post are how Dan shows Scott’s building (and the former act3 World Headquarters) at Shaw and Marconi on The Hill in historic South St. Louis, first as photographed in preparation for the illustration …

… and then in full pixellated glory …

… and also his sketch for the final photo shoot scene …

… and then the scene as rendered for the game …

For higher-resolution looks at these images, be sure to check out Dan’s original post.

Of course, if you haven’t played the game yet (or in a while), you should! It’s like a trip back to the world of Atari …

:: Posted by Eric Ratinoff ::

Yeah, What's Your Story?

We have used the question/tagline “What’s Your Story?” in various capacities over the last few years; it once was featured prominently on our website, but it is less prominent on the site now.

Lately, though, “What’s Your Story?” seems to be popping up everywhere.

Certainly, act3 can’t take credit for pioneering the use of “What’s Your Story?” as a tagline, but it nevertheless seems blogworthy to catalog uses of it as we see them, and assess their effectiveness.

So, here are two:

The first, seen at right, was spied today as an ad on Facebook for the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Strangely, in a quick cruise around the Medill site, I found no mention or use of “What’s Your Story” at all.

The image is interesting, though I don’t know how much it would’ve caught my eye if my antennae weren’t up for uses of “What’s Your Story.” Certainly, journalism is all about story, and when it comes to “J School,” Medill is universally recognized as among the best — but I don’t know that journalism is really about the story of the journalist, which makes me question whether “What’s Your Story” really fits here, since the ad is trying to entice people to learn more about going to journalism school at Medill. “What Stories Will You Tell?” might have been better, although admittedly that’s not as simple as “What’s Your Story,” and also not quite as interested in you, self-absorbed Facebook user. (I don’t mean to demean the self-absorbed Facebook user, of course — after all, I’m one too. I’m just saying.)

The next one is an ad spotted on Flickr, which I saw the first time back in December:

The link sends you to the What’s Your Story? - Sponsored by Kodak group page on Flickr. As the page explains:

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Kodak’s “What’s Your Story” group gives you the opportunity to not only show the flickr community your photos, but also share the stories behind them.

Tell us who’s behind that Halloween costume. Let everyone know exactly where your stunning vacation shots were taken. And show everyone how you were feeling when you took your favorite holiday shot, and what it means to look at it now. You’ll soon discover the powerful effect your favorite photos can have on other Flickr users.

To participate, simply add your photos to the ongoing discussion threads and tag them accordingly. Or by all means, start your own thread. Here’s your opportunity to discover what it means to tell stories through photography.

So tell us. What’s your story?

Clearly, Kodak has invested some thought into this whole “What’s Your Story?” thing. And they are truly asking for us to tell our story — or rather, you to tell your story. As a bonus, they’ve joined forces with a logical partner — Flickr.

If numbers are any indication, people are responding to this effort: as of today, the pool has 1,368 members and 8,116 items. Whether they’re all using Kodak products is impossible to say, but every time they upload new photos to the pool, Kodak gets a little face time, and an opportunity to develop and strengthen a relationship with those group members, a pool of likely advocates.

So, in the style of Facebook’s thumbs up/thumbs down review of their ads, Medill’s “What’s Your Story” banner ad gets the thumbs down, but Kodak’s “What’s Your Story?” ad and group page gets the thumbs up.

Watch this space for future “What’s Your Story” sightings, and if you see some you think we should review, drop us a line.

:: Posted by Eric Ratinoff ::

What an advocate looks like, disgruntled edition

The Tropicana orange-juice carton never struck me as an iconic package, like the Coca-Cola bottle or even the Heinz Ketchup bottle. (I’m guessing you can picture both of those without a photo, but needed the photo at right to remind you of what the classic Tropicana carton looks like.)

However, for the Tropicana true believers, the orange with the straw sticking out of it was iconic — and should not be messed with.

So when PepsiCo messed with it — scrapped it, actually, in favor of this:

… the advocates howled.

According to the NYTimes,

Redesigned packaging that was introduced in early January is being discontinued, executives plan to announce on Monday, and the previous version will be brought back in the next month.

Also returning will be the longtime Tropicana brand symbol, an orange from which a straw protrudes. The symbol, meant to evoke fresh taste, had been supplanted on the new packages by a glass of orange juice.

The about-face comes after consumers complained about the makeover in letters, e-mail messages and telephone calls and clamored for a return of the original look.

Some of those commenting described the new packaging as “ugly” or “stupid,” and resembling “a generic bargain brand” or a “store brand.”

“Do any of these package-design people actually shop for orange juice?” the writer of one e-mail message asked rhetorically. “Because I do, and the new cartons stink.”

Others described the redesign as making it more difficult to distinguish among the varieties of Tropicana or differentiate Tropicana from other orange juices.

It wasn’t like there were riots in the supermarket aisles about this. I remember seeing the new packaging and thinking, “That’s dumb,” but not feeling motivated enough to give it any more energy than that. But a devoted core of people was motivated:

It was not the volume of the outcries that led to the corporate change of heart, [Neil Campbell, president at Tropicana North America in Chicago, part of PepsiCo Americas Beverages] said, because “it was a fraction of a percent of the people who buy the product.”

Rather, the criticism is being heeded because it came, Mr. Campbell said in a telephone interview on Friday, from some of “our most loyal consumers.”

“We underestimated the deep emotional bond” they had with the original packaging, he added. “Those consumers are very important to us, so we responded.”

Among those who underestimated that bond was Mr. Campbell himself. In an interview last month to discuss the new packaging, he said, “The straw and orange have been there for a long time, but people have not necessarily had a huge connection to them.”

Reminded of that on Friday, Mr. Campbell said: “What we didn’t get was the passion this very loyal small group of consumers have. That wasn’t something that came out in the research.”

Tropicana deserves kudos for responding to that passion, and should be thankful that they have so many advocates who care what their packaging looks like. Now that they know these folks are out there, they need to do something to recognize and reward their noisiness.

Here are prime candidates to tell the Tropicana story. The challenge is to channel that passion into something that’s productive for Tropicana and rewarding for those advocates, something that reinforces the love that’s already there, and encourages continued advocacy and storytelling.

I won’t presume to know what matters to Tropicana advocates, but I bet if you ask them, they’ll tell you. Campbell’s quote suggests Tropicana surveyed focus groups, not advocates, when they considered the design change. Let’s hope they’ve re-evaluated that strategy.

Other companies would do well to learn a lesson from Tropicana’s mistake. Logos, slogans and package designs often get overhauled because someone in marketing or somebody at the advertising agency gets bored and wants to mix things up. (Or more cynically, somebody wants to reap the fees that come from mixing things up.)

That boredom is understandable — and it’s not hard to imagine boredom setting in when you stare at the same logo or design all day, every day. But that’s not what the typical consumer does. Their interaction with the brand comes in smaller doses in the larger context of their daily lives, so they’re likely to have much greater stamina for appreciating a logo than its designer will.

If you feel the itch to mix things up with your look, talk to those advocates first. See how they feel about the old design. And if they agree that it’s time to freshen things up, invest them in the design selection process. Make sure your most loyal fans are on board with the new look before you take it live. Let them tell all their friends that they helped pick out the new logo, and that you cared enough to really listen to their opinions. Then smother them with free gear covered in that new logo. Give them enough that they can give it away to their friends, and encourage them to do so.

In other words, connect with your advocates, not focus groups. And give your advocates whatever tools they want and need that will help them tell your story.

:: Posted by Eric Ratinoff ::

Putting a price on a good story

I ran some calculations last week, and determined that at least in one situation, a good story is worth $12.

My wife had been openly drooling over red patent-leather Dansko clogs for months, eyeing them wistfully whenever we went past the Walking Company, professing her love for these hand-made shoes, and declaring her intent to own a pair “someday.” Being the attentive listener (read: I can take a hint) and crafty gift-giver that I am, I decided to make Valentine’s Day “someday.”

I snuck into her closet to determine her shoe size, and went online to see what I could find.

I turned first to Zappos.com. Two years ago, I delighted her on Valentine’s Day with a pair of wool Ugg slippers that I bought at Zappos, and was delighted myself with the painlessness of the Zappos shopping experience.

The only problem: on Zappos.com, the shoes cost $120. I know, in the grand scheme of things, for women’s shoes, that’s not that much. Nevertheless, I thought I would poke around and see if I could do better.

My online searching added two contenders to the mix: ClogsCentral.com and #1 Birkenstock Costa Mesa, both of whom had the shoe at $108. I had a decision to make.

Twelve bucks is nothing to sneeze at. But ordering from #1 Birkenstock Costa Mesa worried me. For one, they used Comic Sans on their site; this is no small offense in and of itself, but it more broadly suggests questionable taste. When you’re telling the story of your company — trying to earn a customer’s trust and confidence, and convey a message about yourself that you want others to embrace and share — everything you communicate matters. There are no throwaways.

In other words, Comic Sans matters. That, and there was this item from their Return Policy page:

Shipping costs will be refunded only if we shipped the wrong item or if the item was defective.

All returns must be pre-paid. No COD’s.

I decided that $12 was not enough to get me to buy from #1 Birkenstock Costa Mesa.

ClogsCentral wisely eschewed Comic Sans, but their site design, a cluttered mishmash of clashing colors, didn’t exactly win them any style points. And then there was their return policy, which begins nice enough, but quickly turns aggressive:

IMPORTANT!
100% customer satisfaction guaranteed! If you are unsatisfied in any way, we will gladly accept a return provided shoes are in the original condition. ClogsCentral.com reserves the right to deny any returned or exchanged item if it is determined that the returned item has been worn or damaged. If it is denied, it will be returned to the customer and all return shipping costs will be charged to their account. We DO NOT accept worn or damaged items.

As if that wasn’t enough scolding, they then rattle off the 7 conditions under which your return may be subject to a $10 restocking fee.

Now, I knew my wife would love these clogs. But what if despite my snooping to get the right size, they didn’t fit, and had to be returned? With both ClogsCentral and #1 Birkenstock Costa Mesa, I did not have confidence that all would go smoothly.

I looked back at the Zappos.com page. It offered customer feedback based on overall rating; 496 recent customer reviews, with star ratings for comfort, style, and overall happiness, as well as comments; a customer fit survey, which indicated how many people felt the shoe felt true to size and width; and a larger image of the shoe, with six additional views, plus a close-up.

And then there was this, right there on the product page:

Free Shipping
and Free Returns

If, for any reason, you are unsatisfied with your purchase, you may return it in its original condition within 365 days for a refund. We’ll even pay for return shipping!

The story was clear: we want you to know as much about the shoe as you possibly can, but we understand that buying shoes online comes with some risks, so we’re going to take away those risks with a simple return policy that isn’t meant to scare you, and that you can trust.

In short, the Zappos story is simple: great shoes and unbelievable service.

To me, that was a story worth twelve bucks, easy.

And then the story got better. I placed the order, and got the confirmation email which stated that “Because you ordered free standard shipping, you should receive your products within 4-5 business days.”

Forty-eight minutes later, I got an email that said this:

Good news!

Although you originally ordered Standard (4 to 5 business days) shipping and handling, we have given your order special priority processing in our warehouse and are upgrading the shipping and delivery time frame for your order. Your order will ship out today and be given a special priority shipping status so that you can receive your order even faster than we originally promised!

Please note that this is being done at no additional cost to you.  It is simply our way of saying thank you for being our customer.

The box arrived at my doorstep the next day. Talk about a free prize inside.

Of course, the extra-speedy shipping meant that we both saw the box on the doorstep when we pulled into the driveway, which effectively ended any element of surprise (which is why I’m sharing this with you before Valentine’s Day), and then the shoes didn’t fit, so we’re returning them. But thanks to such an agreeable return policy, this was painless, too — Zappos generated the return UPS label for me, and all I had to do was print it out, put it on the box, and drop the package off at an authorized UPS shipping center.

After my first Zappos experience, I was a fan, but after this one, I’m definitely an advocate, and happy to honor the request posed in the email in which they told me my shipping had been upgraded:

If you’ve enjoyed your experience with us, please tell your friends and family about Zappos.com!

Sharing my story has never been so easy.

:: Posted by Eric Ratinoff ::

When the story everybody knows is the problem

What story do you tell yourself when you hear “urban drug dealer”? Do you imagine a blinged-out thug driving an SUV with tinted windows and spinning rims?

What story do you tell yourself about the most effective way to deal with urban drug markets? Do you think about armed police breaking down doors and making undercover buys to nab dealers?

If so, you’re not alone. But according to David Kennedy, a professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, those stories are not only wrong — they make the very real problem of urban drug trafficking even worse.

In an article in the February 9 issue of Newsweek, Kennedy explains that the cliché of the Mercedes-driving drug dealer “is not true. [Urban drug dealers] are scraping by, living at home,” not getting rich.

Kennedy also challenges the tough-cop approach to enforcement:

“We’ve been in this cycle in which law enforcement pushed harder and harder and harder, which drives the community further and further away,” Kennedy tells NEWSWEEK. “That creates additional space for the relatively few bad guys to operate, which makes law enforcement push harder and makes the community step further back.” … Kennedy’s research shows that shockingly small numbers of people—dozens, not hundreds—cause the violence plaguing cities’ worst areas. Most people just want a safe place to live, but feel anger toward heavy-handed police.

Questioning the truth of the standard cops vs. drug dealers story — one so accepted that it has driven the model universally employed by police departments nationwide — Kennedy conducted an experiment in 2004 in High Point, N.C.:

Kennedy got the cops to try a new way of cleaning up the corners. They rounded up some young dealers; showed a videotape of them dealing drugs; and readied cases, set for indictment, that would have meant hard time in prison. Then they let the kids go. Working with their families, the police helped the dope dealers find job training and mentors. The message, which spread quickly through the neighborhood, was that the cops would give kids a second chance—but come down aggressively if they didn’t take it. The police won back trust they had lost long ago (if they ever had it). After four years, police in High Point had wiped the drug dealers off the corner. They compared the numbers to the prior four years and found a 57 percent drop in violent crime in the targeted area.

Said Kennedy, “We’re in this spiral of decline, and the great revelation of the High Point work was that we can consciously step out of that spiral and, in fact, reverse it.”

How powerful are the stories we tell ourselves, the stories “everybody knows”? In the case of urban drug trafficking, the wrong ones were so pervasive and so potent, they were making the problem worse.

David Kennedy didn’t buy that story. Instead, he flipped the script, and as a result, “his tactics are being adopted by police departments from Atlanta to Seattle, with some spectacular results. One crime-infested Nashville neighborhood where Kennedy’s program was used saw a 91 percent drop in crime and prostitution in 2008, largely attributable to Kennedy’s good-cop, bad-cop approach.”

What stories that “everybody knows” are you accepting at face value? How are those stories affecting your beliefs, your behavior, and your decisions? Is the wrong story holding you back?

:: Posted by Eric Ratinoff ::

What an advocate looks like

“Excuse me,” the man said.

I was pecking at my laptop in a Jacksonville Starbucks, earbuds in. I looked up.

“I’m sorry to bother you. I just have one question and then I’ll let you get back to work.”

Maybe it’s because I was in the South (and being in north Florida, Jacksonville actually is the South; most of the chatter I heard in that Starbucks that morning had a drawl), or maybe it was just being approached in a public place, but when this stranger interrupted me and said he wanted to ask me “just one question,” I mentally prepared myself for an invitation to a non-denominational church.

Instead, he asked me this:

“How do you like your Mac?”

In retrospect, I should have known that was coming.

I’ve been a Mac user since 2004, and I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve been asked that very question.

The question is never asked by a fellow Mac user, mind you — Mac people already know the answer. Instead, it’s asked by Windows users, who are either wondering whether there’s substance behind the hype, or who are already creeping toward making the switch and looking for reinforcement.

And every time this scene plays out, I become a Mac advocate.

I love my Mac, so being an advocate is easy. I tell the inquirer of my love — how long ago I switched, how happy I’ve been, that I’ll never go back. The inquirer nods in agreement, one step closer to joining the cult.

Apple never asked me to be an advocate, yet there I am, doing their most vital marketing work on a regular basis. I do this work gladly, because I genuinely love my Mac. And Apple has made it easy for me to be an advocate, because they tell a coherent, consistent story about Macs — a story about thoughtful, intuitive, and elegant design, and how that leads to a simplicity and ease of use that inspires both empowerment and joy — that advocates like me can easily share.

And though I am a total stranger to these people who randomly approach me in coffee shops — I could be criminally deranged for all they know — they want to know what I think, because I’m a real person, like them.

In other words, they can hear it from Justin Long and John Hodgman ad nauseaum, but if they hear the exact same thing from me, a stranger in a Starbucks, it means more.

That’s why when you see somebody pecking away at a Mac in a Starbucks, odds are, they’re an advocate, too. Just ask.

:: Posted by Eric Ratinoff ::

Coffee: A love story

Christoph Niemann’s Abstract City Blog post from Monday, I LEGO N.Y., was the most emailed story on the New York Times website early this week. Using only LEGOs and a few scribbled words and labels to identify the sculptures, Niemann cleverly captured images of New York City in a few simple plastic blocks. My favorite is this one:

Speaking of coffee, Niemann’s previous blog post, Coffee, is an even better illustration of the potential for delight, playfulness, and connection in visual storytelling.

In a series of drawings — done mostly in coffee on cocktail napkins — Niemann tells the story of his personal relationship with coffee, from his accidental exposure to coffee ice cream at age 5 …

… to his adventures with a home espresso machine …

… to his success in becoming enough of a regular that the guy behind the counter would start making his order without his having to say a word.

Hearing somebody’s coffee life story might not sound like the way you’d choose to spend the next 5 minutes of your life. But in Niemann’s hands, the time is as enjoyable as a much-needed coffee break, and the way the story is told is as endearing and genuine as the story itself.

:: Posted by Eric Ratinoff ::