Filed under: stephanie fierman
Can anything be made “cool?” It seems like a worthwhile exercise for a marketer to brainstorm about how her product or service could be tranformed into an “It” item.
While at Time Warner, I got DC Comics involved in a Time Warner Research Council exercise that permitted several businesses to share one subscription to The Cassandra Report (see a sample here). The Report is published 3 times a year by The Intelligence Group as an deep dive into the lives of 14-34 year olds. I would recommend it highly. In addition to lengthy, well researched and documented observations and recommendations, each package comes with a set of product samples: products referred to in the report as being “of the moment” with people in the target age range.
One of these products was a Mimobot. A Mimobot is a USB drive “dressed” as various characters: animals, people… characters from Star Wars or Happy Tree Friends. They are so unbelievably cute, it’s not a surprise to me that the manufacturer, Mimoco, sells a 1G Mimobot for $40, while standard 1G competitors can be found for $10 or less.
Mimoco also transformed a boring commodity product into a hip one by creating a fun and involving viral community online, complete with video, design-your-own, widgets, contents and the like. The dang things are addictive! And fashion sells.
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