)The essence of elegance
I’ve recently come across an interesting article on elegance. The article has as a starting point a book written by Matthew E. May, “In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing”.
Mr. May is attempting to re-shape the aesthetic concept of elegance historically and anachronistically and begins the exposition with a simple definition of what elegance is: “Something is elegant if it is two things at once: unusually simple and surprisingly powerful” – an all encompassing definition based mainly on the power of adjectives the author deemed necessary to use to justify the theory.
Furthermore, Mr. May goes on with a further clarification of the matter at hand:
“Elegant ideas—products, services, performances, strategies, whatever—all have some degree of these four elements: symmetry, seduction, subtraction, and sustainability”.
Now that part puzzled me a bit. Would it mean that everything meeting these criteria might be ‘awarded’ the absolute value of elegance? I was really curious and started thinking about possible examples. But Mr May was faster than me. He used 3 examples of elegance (I believe it was in “ideas and strategies”)
- Toyota (that being his favourite example of utmost elegance) – as it turns out, Mr May happens to be on Toyota’s payroll ‘advising’ their specialists on design matters (let’s not pull out the market share reports of the newly launched cars).
- In ‘N Out Burger – for those in the unknown, this a “freakishly popular hamburger chain that started in Los Angeles a half century ago” ( I won’t bother discussing the elegance of a fast-food chain)
- First Direct, a British Bank – apparently being rewarded this quality because they don’t have branches (what if all banks became elegant?!)
And as our world is built elegantly symmetric, the author gives examples of lack of taste – the flag carrier of the ship being no other than … Microsoft Word (yes, you read correctly, not Windows, not even the whole application suite, but only part of it) – we all hope Mr Gates’ designers will hear of this and turn MS Word into a more seductive and symmetrical product.
And the bogus goes on.
First conclusion: despite the fact that Mr. May seems to be a keen adept of simplicity, the only way he can describe his ideas and explain concepts is through superfluous adjectives.
Second conclusion: basing one’s idiosyncrasy on certain theories does not grant validity to the theory (quoting Zen does not make the article more valuable).
Third conclusion: always do what you know, i.e. if you’re a marketer, then don’t define aesthetics.
Recession, best time for Corporate Branding, says AdAge.com
A recent article appeared in Advertising Age entitled “Corporate Campaigns Hint at Brand-Advertising Revival” has made some interesting revelation with regard to the corporate world – recession is the best time to hike up your marketing spending, re-do your corporate branding all with the purpose to increase the market share.
The article features a study conducted among some big market players, such as IBM, SAP, GE, Unilever, L’Oréal etc.
Their main points were 3:
1. In times of uncertainty, a company’s duty is to show they’re stable and reliable (SAP model)
2. Others, such as Unilever or L’Oréal are keen on increasing their market share
3. Or simply re-position a brand through added value (the Made in America theme).
The Agency reported significant budget increases to support their spending in the new fiscal year – all this based on a forecast with leading numbers from last year’s results (for example, Schawk, a US company, reported only 16% drop in sales in last quarter as opposed to 22% in the previous one).
Results are to be expected in the light of the new spending, but what it would be interesting is to see their course on the market and their further developments.
