Design is fine for our fashion and our cars, our homes and furnishings, even cell phones and laptops. But public and social services are often delivered on shoestring budgets, making design seem beyond extravagant, superfluous. When times are tough for us taxpayers, as they have been for several years now, we don’t often tolerate perceived...Continue reading
Promotion Out of Demolition: SFMOMA
I walk past San Francisco Museum of Modern Art nearly every work day on my way between my office and BART. The first Tuesday of every month, SFMOMA would be open for free to the public. I would sneak out early from work and check out the new exhibits on my way home. Notice I’m using...Continue reading
The power of design principles: the PRISM survelliance scandal
Here’s my marketing take on the PRISM surveillance scandal currently unfolding for the National Security Agency: it’s as if IBM started making staplers, although much more nefarious.
Public services marketing: it’s like poker, and WiFi, and national parks
Imagine Las Vegas has invented a new card game called Commons Poker. Here’s how you play. You and three strangers each ante $250, for a pot of $1,000. Each of you is dealt four cards, leaving a majority of the deck undealt. Each of you chooses to simultaneously play one card from your hand. If...Continue reading
What is Marketing? It’s More Than Just Advertising
What is marketing? Many people equate it solely with advertising, which irks me. I even caught Shama Kabani doing this in her book The Zen of Social Media Marketing. On page 48, she use the definition of “promoting a product or a service to increase sales.” Not true. It is a lot more than advertising.
Fairness is Innate, Even for Capuchin Monkeys
Fairness is innate, emotional, a visceral reaction. We’ve all felt it. Your sister was the favorite child in the family. A person cuts in line in front of you. Your teammate on a project gets promoted over you. Sometimes we label our reaction as envy or jealousy, but we instinctively know when we’re being treated...Continue reading
Must government operate like a business?
Government is tightly associated with public and social services. Marketing is tightly associated with business. By advocating for the application of marketing to public and social services, am I thereby advocating that government can, should, or must operate like a business? This article from PolicyMic lists some of the recent luminaries who have called for...Continue reading
Thinking Outside the Baby Box
Recently I read a BBC article about Finnish baby boxes and thought the program was genius. It shows the power of using a marketing mindset, and a design approach, to solve a pressing social problem.