I’ve been toying with Chris Anderson’s Long Tail ideas for a few months now; turning them over in my head and trying to resolve some perceived discontinuities: “cult” items, functions of Time, aso. All this in order to arrive at a more complete unified theory, I guess. I’ve even used Second Life as a way to help visualize and discuss these ideas (see above image). Last night I finally grabbed some time to model and render my latest 3D models which I collectively call the “ecoToroid” (I went 3D after seeing those “signal to noise” graphs; and especially that “Sales vs Stuff” image).

As I commented on The Long Tail blog, I’m guilty of not giving this the attention it probably deserves; especially in trying to figure out what this thing looks like in a historical context – I’ve already modified my 3D models once and I could see where they could use more thought and further modification (maybe even reverting back to something more like what I had originally). Perhaps later when I have more time. Anyway, instead of trying to explain what I’m thinking, I’m just going to post a couple of images and see what happens. Maybe these will spark ideas in someone else’s mind. Maybe not. But I figure it’s better than letting these things sit on my hard drive.

I also thought I would open up the comments on this entry. Typically I don’t allow for comments simply because the spam I get is too much bother to deal with on a blog as obscure as this one. There’s also the fact that I need to mod the code so the comment block width works on all browsers; right now you can type well outside the boundary in IE I think – sorry about that. If you want to leave a comment, I’d suggest typing it in a text editor and doing a cut ‘n paste. Hopefully in the near future I’ll fix this page so it’s a little nicer. Til then….

(edit: O-kay. Seems as if opening up one post to comments opens up the others, even though their commenting has been closed. Must be in the WordPress code but I just don’t have time to find out. Having just mass deleted about 500 spam comments, looks like it’s time to close the door for a bit. Oh well.)

(images Copyright © C. Sven Johnson)

In the late 90’s I was working at a well-known and very well-respected company. It was the kind of company that attracted impressive individuals from other, well-known and well-respected companies. One such person came from Procter & Gamble to take over as the (lone) VP of Marketing.

The first thing this newcomer did was schedule every member of every product development team for training; every project manager, every marketer, every project engineer, every industrial designer spent two solid days learning this new development tool. What kind of training you ask? Well, the kind of training that supposedly appeared at P&G a couple years later in 2000, as suggested in the Newsweek article, “Going Home With the Customers” (Link). From the article:

Claudia Kotchka, a 27-year P&G veteran, as the company’s first vice president for design innovation and strategy. And one of Kotchka’s first acts was to embed top designers in brand teams to help rethink not just the superficials – graphics, packaging, product design – but, more importantly, how consumers experience products.

Kotchka now teams with such outside design firms as Palo Alto, Calif.-based IDEO. Their m.o.? Don’t interview consumers – go home with them. Observe, for example, how they use diapers.

(Note for later reference that Tide is listed as an example of a product lacking innovation.)

I’m not saying Kotchka didn’t spearhead this. For all I know she was working with or for the person my former employer hired and moved up the ladder in her place; or, more likely, was her superior and was the reason for the defection. But from what I recall, we were being trained (in 1998) to do what P&G was supposedly already doing!

Further, we were told it was this consumer observation practice that led to P&G’s Tide detergent bottles being modified in order to prevent liquid from running down the sides of the bottle after consumers used the provided measuring cap (discovered, my “encounter” training class was informed, when a team member noticed a consumer had “permanently” placed a towel down near the clothes washer so she could set a drippy bottle somewhere and not make a mess).

We called it “Home Encounters” or something like that, and it was both great training and a wonderful development tool. But if what they’re reporting on wasn’t in successful use at P&G before 2000, I’d really like to know what they’re doing.