Be Cool and Stay Cool
What’s cool? Before, it might be iPod. This year, it is definitely iPhone. From wikipedia, we can find the history of iPod. The iPod phenomenon is a typical story of being cool and staying cool. After its first debut in 2001, the iPod concept has been evolved from mp3 player, music player, photo viewer and video player to cell phone while keeping its aesthetics. Along the way, Apple has become the biggest online music distributor. iPod was so cool that podcasting was developed around the device by group of people behind RSS. Naturally, the real question is how to be cool and to stay cool?
In the book “Chasing Cool — Standing Out in Today’s Cluttered Marketplace“, the authors tried to answer the question. Here are some interesting points:
- Give the people what they want. People don’t always know what they want. Give the people something you’re certain they’ll want because you’re certain they’re ready for it. Or as it’s more commonly phrased: trust your gut.
- Group-think: Assign too many chefs to cook up a vision, and the product will taste like something reheated. Michael Francis, head of marketing at Target, discussed this idea of consensus. “When it comes to defining creative and strategy, committee work is lethal. It bogs you down and you second-guess — and we don’t tolerate that at Target.”
- Aesthetic: This is something beyond simply designing something pretty, but rather a holistic aesthetic — the look, the feel, and the soul that when perfectly fused create a genuine point of difference.
- Grow the pond: Move forward with a genuine understanding of how to authentically speak to a market, empowered by a real passion to nurture that market.
- The greatest risk is not taking one. The botto line is that you need to be willing to take substantial risk — and face the possibility of real failure — in order to open yourself up for real success.
- The power of a little less. The key to staying on top involves many things, but beyond knowing when to shift directions or reinvent, one needs to know how to keep that sense of mystique and surprise. Overexposure is the death of longevity.
The book contains stories from Barneys, Target, Courvoisier, Quiksilver, MTV, Mercedes, and Yahoo! Music. It is worth reading!
