“Mathematics is he universal language of the mind, music is the language of the heart.”  - Robert Schumann

A worm in your ear

Last week I spent some time shopping in Jakarta, to understand the competitive environment and category messaging for a brand I am working on. As I wandered through a (relatively modern) supermarket in Jakarta, I noticed my irritation at the shop’s jingle which kept repeating, repeating and repeating as I walked through the aisles. The jingle was short, felt quite childish, but irritatingly catchy (it’s still ringing through my head now – I can’t seem to forget it as much as I would like to). Read more »

We’re only human

Anthropomorphism is a strong tendency for all of us to find forms that appear human-like to exhibit human characteristics more appealing. We tend to attribute such characteristics to animals, non-living objects, material states and abstract concepts (including organisations, spirits and deities, and the term anthropomorphism was coined in the mid 1700s to describe this behaviour. Such behaviour extends to animals, plants, forces of nature (wind, rain, sun) and we all tend to depict these as creatures with human motivations and characteristics. Such behaviour is very common in the arts and storytelling and mythology. Read more »

“Five senses, an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than a minority of them – never become conscious of them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through?” – C.S. Lewis

Marketing to the senses

Our experience of the world, and the brands in it, is always mediated by our senses and our mind. Every communication, interaction, touchpoint and connection must first come to us through one or more sensory channels, and then is subject to interpretation by our brains, mostly based on past experiences and anticipated outcomes. In previous articles, I have written about the five main senses, and their importance in architecture, design and marketing. Read more »