magazine cover on a ipad

Spaghetti sauce back when I was a child in the 1970′s  consisted of 2 choices, Ragu or Prego.  All this changed when a product researcher I admire by the name of  Howard Moskowitz* had an industry breakthrough that seems so obvious today to strategic creatives.  While researching Spaghetti sauce for the struggling #2 sauce maker in america “Prego” he had a revelation – the solution to Prego’s problems was not finding the perfect spaghetti sauce,  the solution to improve sales for prego was finding the perfect “Sauces” (plural).  Our world up until Moskowitz’ revelation consisted of totalitarian choices of one spaghetti sauce for everyone.  No chunky or garlic, vegetarian or meaty, no zesty, no plain.  We were only given one choice from Ragu, and one choice from prego – that was the simple life in the 70′s.  Back then product researchers attempted to create one product to please  as many people as possible, yet the answer to increased sales was simply marketing products to multiple types of  ”peoples’.  The answer was multiple products.  Howard created dozens of  very different spaghetti sauces and through taste tests learned that people would usually break up into at least 3 or 4 groups. We can all thank Moskowitz for Chunky, zesty, vegetarian and yes, extra meaty.

Cover desigers 7 marketing creatives  will soon have wonderful new research tools as the ipad brings digital magazines to the masses.   Sure the publication numbers are small at the moment but the new technology will bring a wonderful new ability to art directors.  Like Moskowitz you will now be able to “market taste” your cover designs on the ipad before hitting the printing presses.

Yes, “Taste”.   you see traditional Analog market “tests” required large and time consuming (expensive) samples in order to achieve usable data.  The new digital magazine marketplace will allow directors to create quick market “tastes” of multiple magazine cover designs a week prior to press, resulting in incredibly accurate data  about cover choices from around the globe.  All of this data is compiled relatively inexpensively and can be organized by age, location and gender.  (We will surely one day witness cover design on the ipad change according to different regions of the country, or even possibly based on the reselling website)

Traditional (pre Moskowitz) product, research companies needed to create extensive questionaires about a product and try to magically conjure up useful information from these epic forms.   But there was a design flaw in their questionair’s.   They did not take into account that  human beings can usually be grouped into 3 primary personality types.  Also missing from the data was the fact that people are not always honest about their “feelings” when given only one choice, especially when it comes to taste and design.  See article Blah vs Pleasing.

Milton Fleitas

you can send comments or contact me at

milton@pretenderstrategic.com

*I first came across Howard Moskowitz at a 2nd hand bookstore with a copy of “New Directions for product testing and sensory analysis of foods” one of my prized books in my library and I got it for $1 around 1998.  It caught my eye because of my early work for Taco Bell just out of college in a design role.  part of the priveleges of working for a successful Pepsico division  the late 1980′s was a free lunch! But there was a catch…. you had to eat (3) different versions of your taco, burito or enchirito served to you in a laboratory by men and women in white coats.  I hasten to say this concept of constant research by corporate restaurant labs is probably due to in some part the work of Howard Moskowitz.

1930s – When “Art” was king, Illustrators ruled magazine covers from the 1910′s through 1940s

Technically “pleasing”  is a term often used when describing good  cover art – but what exactly does this mean?  Reaching customers through graphics comprised of copy and images needs to marry these two very different ways of expression.  It is this marriage of words and images (concepts) that requires a technician as well as  an artist to achieve corporate success.   This is why writers have editors and artists have directors.   Sure, it is true that art directors are generally experienced artists and many editors are capable writers -  They are simply professionals who have applied themselves to the technical aspects of the job,   it is this marriage of the “technical” with the “artistic” that Art directors and editors must master.   This is truly a battle which  has often been incorrectly referred to as “Left” brain vs “Right” brain.   Countless books have been written on the subject but there is one classic standard by Keirsey called “Please understand me II”  which breaks down the undeniable 16 base human temperaments.

According to Keirsey what is often refered to as Right Brain simply refers to abstract thinkers and Left Brain refers to those who view their world in more concrete terms.   Lets take two very similar appearing (on the surface) temperaments, one is abstract and the other is concrete.   ENTP’s and ESTP’s respectively are viewed and seen by the world similarly,  both are often highly capable marketing / design or copy professionals.  Research has shown that a  primary difference between these two personalities seems to be ones preference for words versus images (concepts).  the Abstract  marketing individual seems to excell and often prefer visual information versus the Concrete thinking  individuals preference for words (ESTPs’, though concrete in their thinking preferences are highly artistic individuals –  with language you can think of them as “word artists”)  These two temperaments share Extroversion and Perception in their preferences and seem to base their decisions not on their own internal preferences but on what they externally perceive their ” audience” is needing or is in search of .   This externally focused mindset (one for images, the other for words) was possibly best described in the classic book The Marketing Imagination, New, Expanded Edition by Theodore Levitt.   Please be sure to understand, that NO personality has a lock on “The marketing  imagination” All 16 base personalities have an incredible ability to learn and apply the “technical aspects” of the marketing mindset – they are only limited by their personal will.   No where was this more apparent then with Timothy Ferriss, Author and marketing guru, whose sincere honesty in his first mega blockbuster book “The four hour work week” describes his naivete’ with some of the most basic of marketing instincts that come natural to ESTP’s and ENTP’s.  Ferris describes how he could not initially grasp concepts which he learned from his mentors early in his career.  But once he put  these “abstract” concepts to work  and verified their success in the marketplace – he like no other researched, quantified and documented these concepts and achieved unprecedented business success.

1960′s early 70s – Photographers were king. Article information was subdued in small fonts. Each cover followed direction from the photo (PLEASING)

1980′s – Attack of the word monster. Art takes a back seat, even the “corporate” logo is reduced in size. Content editors have been put in charge (BLAH)

1990′s – Design by commitee! every one got their hands on this one. Too much logo, too much photos, & too much copy. Blah,Blah,Blah

Today / 2011 – well branded logo takes a back seat, Both photography and copy are in good proportions. (PLEASING)

“Pleasing”  or “Blah / Boring”  is the subconscious instant reaction one gets when viewing a cover design or  or any marketing piece for the first time – it is not just the professional copy writers or artists who are aware of this, but everyone – every consumer makes these subconscious instant decisions every day.   Achieving this “pleasure”  as oppose to “Blah” or “Boring”  from our one page marketing statement  is surely foremost on the minds of art directors everywhere, and for those whose publications have evolved into word “monsters”  there should be a concerted effort to tame the Beast.  Here’s a wonderful thought experiment, what would happen if once a year a magazine such as Redbook would put their efforts into the “perfect” photo based cover design with only one short ad copy or possibly none at all? How would newstand sales react?  could it be sustained more than once a year?

let me know your thoughts and ideas. you can contact me at

milton@pretenderstrategic.com

Milton Fleitas

Steve Jobs MacWorld #1

Steve Jobs: Technical Marketer “ENTP” Passes

Steve Jobs was the quintessential ENTP Inventor*,  and a role model for that small percentage of the population that see’s the world through the lens of an ENTP temperament.   It has been annoying seeing the media begin a dialog in the short days since his passing comparing Jobs to Edison.  There is no comparison!  Edison was a polar opposite on the (2) primary personality traits that made Steve Jobs a unique inventor, and to my own biased temperament – Uniquely Brilliant.  Steve Jobs’ Extroversion and Perception versus Edisons Introversion and Judgement.   It would be fair to compare Bill Gates to Edison, but when we speak of Jobs we are dealing with a completely different animal.   Steve Jobs viewed his world with an External focus and not the Internal focus of Edison.  While Edison was relentless in his pursuits to solve primarily personal problems, Steve Jobs put his focus on solving problems for the world at large.  While Bill gates was happy with his geeky DOS program that only other rational geeks like myself could ever learn and master,  Steve Jobs had his focus on designing computers and software that the rest of the world could learn and use with ease.  Without the competition with Jobs who was pushing the envelope on making computing a user friendly endeavor smart phones and Pad computers would still be a decade or two from implementation.   How is it that a man who passes at the relatively young age of 56 have completed so much that so many in the media take for granted?   The Apple logo has always represented to me the answer  to that question.   Though the folklore to the logo’s creation is different than what I presume to be true, as an entp I am sure  that jobs chose the “bitten” apple in order to show his personal quest of knowledge represented by  the  forbidden fruit in one of the oldest stories from Judeo Christian literature.

The apple logo represents “The Search and Acquisition of Knowledge”  represented in the story of Adam and Eve in the garden. This fact would have surely been a negative symbology to an overwhelming “Christian” population that Steve  was planning to sell his personal computers to in the early 1980′s. So, in typical entp  fashion  his line all those early years was that he put the “bite in the apple” so that it  did not get confused with a tomato”

ENTP’s are often misunderstood within  corporate institutions, and often can only pursue their quest for knowledge  within their own entrepenurial endeavors.  Steve Jobs was misunderstood by his own company!   (Evident by Jobs ousting from the very company he founded, Apple many years ago) Technical Marketer’s like Jobs are generally not driven by money or power, greed or control – They are simply Pretenders with an ability of naturally putting themselves into the shoes of the other personality types – whether consumers (Marketer) or the myriad of different engineers and designers (Technical)  required to design and build such elegent items asthe Ipad.    This ability that Steve Jobs mastered could only be compared to the man who kept the original “Bill Gates” – Thomas Edison on his toes – Nicola Tesla.   Profits seem to be non-important to men such as Tesla and Jobs,  Quality, Efficiancy and “an ability of seeing the future” is what drove them.  This is the paradox which corporate boards fail to understand and which was eventually rectified in the case of  apple whith their rehire of jobs after dismal profits without him.  Quality,Function and a constant look to the  Future are key to Profits not only today but tomorrow…..

Milton Fleitas

You can email comments to

Milton@

pretenderstrategic.com

*ENTP’s are referred to as (Inventor’s) by Keirsey, yet this is an imperfect description, ENTP’s are best described as “Technical Marketers” because of their Extroversion which allows them to design products for the “External” world.  It is the INTP’s (Architects) and INTJ’s (masterminds) and ENTJ’s and Others that truly get involved in the nuts and bolts of “Invention”.

Steve Jobs Time Magazine Special Issue

Hillary Clinton on cover of new newsweek cover design. New cover design surely will be copied by others.

It looks like their will be good things to come from Newsweek magazine as far as cover art is concerned. Tina Brown (Vanity Fair Editor & TheDailyBeast.com founder) recently made the rounds displaying the new “newsweek’  cover design featuring Hillary Clinton on the March 14, 2011 issue.  Newsweek is truly an american classic, one of the only magazines to successfully compete with Time magazine for over 70 years.  The new design has kept their well branded logo while slightly reducing it in size.   Designers have also made an excellent choice in lowering the logo and requiring photographers to  account for this in their composition.   This little design change  allows for 1 major headline above the brand – thoughtfully printed in a secondary subdued color allowing the brand to stand out.   An important change for a magazine that that still relies on newstand sales.  Though only the cover article title would have been cleener and more elegant, overall it is a wonderful debut.   Lets hope that the same good “technical” design behind the new newsweek cover will also flow into the  new “editorial” design.  Yes! Editorials  and cover art are often craftily designed and are representative of  the political leanings of the director or editor in charge.  Newsweek is to important of an American institution to be used as a political tool by biased editors. Either from the left, as it has been recently or from the right as was evident  during the 50′s.

Milton Fleitas

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contact Milton@pretenderstrategic.com

"A cosmo moment"

Cosmopolitan - 1970s

House Beautiful Magazine is listed on CoverArt.com under American Classics for one simple reason. A continuous 100+ years of effective and artistic cover art design which alongside their editorial and writing choices in keeping this magazine #1 in its genre.  Except for a few brief design hiccups during the 1970′s when just about every magazine was doing its best to mimic a cosmopolitan cover and cram as much information as they could in to their new smaller formats.  House Beautiful formerly known as “The” house beautiful before their own social networking moment maintained some the most impressive and steady cover designs of any American magazine.  Even during the 1930s when someone at HB was trying to art deco his  competition and came up with the following designs that lasted just 12 months.

What a waste of wonderful Art deco images reduced nearly 50% in order to display a large blank solid area.  It is amazing that the thought of putting article information in all this empty space never even occurred to the designers artistic mindset back in the 1930′s – boy have times changed.  Today House Beautifull maintains a modern and wonderful cover design that uses

intricately designed photo shoots combined with changing color themes on a monthly basis, a standard design theme that permeates many publications today.

Rihanna Cover Art for her new single "Cheers"

Do it yourself album press release. In a sign that old fashioned press releases may be a thing of the past, this week Rihanna simply “tweated” an image of her new cover art designed specifically for her single “cheers”. The art and composition is classic in its styling, even the use of a retro late 70′s convertible gives one a feeling of cover design reminiscent of Album Cover Arts Golden era.