Entries Written By Fran Benoist
The100: Peak social media, rebuilding attention and the most beautiful libraries in the world
Have we passed peak social media?… …The Financial Times thinks so ($). Their recent article showed that we’re now using it less and for different reasons. However, there was a bit of brouhaha about the validity of the data. Nick Emmel of Mr President spoke to multiple folk involved and summed it up nicely: “The …
The100: American Eagle, perspective triangulation and gnome bones
“You are not the consumer” Remember the Sydney Sweeney and American Eagle kerfluffle? There was the backlash. The backlash to the backlash. The occasional small kitten died… Mark Ritson has decided to run the data and give an objective analysis based on what the most important people in the room think: The consumer. “It’s early …
The100: Uber’s research playbook, online delivery models and polyphonic ringtones
UberCool Back in 2017, Uber had a problem. Passengers were so unhappy with UberPool that Uber deemed the service a strategic risk to their brand. A hop, skip and some seriously smart research later, Uber launched ExpressPool, which saw lower cancellations and less complaints. Slum dunk. Daniel Kyne has shared how Uber’s research team helped …
The100: Expanding time, talking to animals and Chile’s Atacama Desert
SharkNinja’s $16B+ Product Machine SharkNinja must see more launches than a shipyard. Each year they release 25 new products and also try to enter 2 new categories. Phwoar. Trung Phan has been spilling the beans on how they became a product behemoth: “We immediately got feedback from consumers that they wanted larger capacity. So, we …
The100: The price of American made, judgement economies and 1880s hipsters
Does your brand need to be polarising to be successful? From their grand palaces of ‘hot takes’, some LikedIn ‘gurus’ are of the opinion that your brand needs to be polarising to be successful. But John Dawes of The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute argues that what they’re saying is just that. Opinion. And that the data says …
The100: Selling ideas, yes/yes questions and growing older
Part myth-busting, part reality check, part blueprint Her Serene Highness of Talking Massive Sense, Zoe Scaman, is currently helping one of the UK’s largest retailers with their AI and data infrastructure. And she’s written a field guide to testing, prototyping, scaling and deploying AI across an enterprise. “You also need to know what you’re giving …
The100: Chaos packaging, avoiding errors and building Bluey
The things that haven’t changed John Sills has shown that, despite all of the incredible changes we’ve had to customer experience in the past decade, customers are no more satisfied than they were in 2014. Sills digs into a few areas that have always been true – people are willing to pay more for certainty …
The100: Simulating scent, universally cool and Arun’s roof
Comparing apples to sliced apples When scent is central to a product, on-pack imagery that evokes that scent increases consumer preference. And the more the image stimulates scent, the greater that preference becomes. Fernando Arendar explains Sharma and Estes’ research: “People consistently preferred the versions with scent-related images. They imagined stronger aromas and rated the …
The100: Orangutan theory, virtual restaurants and why leaves change colour
Shipmates wanted It’s all systems go here at Watch Me Think towers and we’re looking for 2 new people who can fit in with, amplify and add to a company that doesn’t do things by the book, just the comic. If you know someone, or know someone who knows someone, we’d be eternally grateful if …
The100: Brand loyalty, innovation adoption and feeding Olympians
Grab some popcorn… A lil’ while back we shared Mark Ritson’s article on Liquid Death neglecting product. But now Will Poskett has entered the chat. And he thinks Ritson is wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong some more: “In short, product differentiation and innovation are very limited in the commoditized bottled water category. Yet despite these …