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We’re not gourmet anymore…or are we? A recent article in the New York Times serves as an interesting follow-up to a recent W5 blog post regarding the cancellation of Gourmet magazine. According to the NY Times and publishing company Conde Nast, we haven’t see the last of the lauded foodie mag.
Gourmet’s second chance at survival arrives neatly wrapped in a digital package as an iPad application called “Gourmet Live.” The app will be fully loaded with recycled cooking tips and recipes from Gourmet’s current archive while an occasional sprinkling of new content will be used to spice things up.
Interestingly, the app is not intended to serve as a digital form of the magazine, but as a new way for consumers to engage with the brand. Given Gourmet’s dedicated following and the widespread disappointment with the magazine’s cancellation, repackaging the magazine in the form of an app appears to be a brilliant move. Not only will the app reintroduce a trusted brand in an entirely new way, it will fill the void for dedicated readers who have yet to find a satisfactory substitute. In addition, the app well help the brand reach a younger, tech-savvy audience. The trick will be keeping the content fresh enough to attract new readers and familiar enough to satisfy older fans. With Gourmet’s culinary legendary expertise and reputation, balancing old tastes with new textures should be as easy as cooking “Easy Seafood Paella“.
I gave up reading books that can be found in the business/advertising/marketing section of the bookstore a while back. Most of the books you find in that section should have never been written in the first place: authors rehashing their previous work, self-help for the cubicle crowd, and whatever flavor of behavioral psychology is cool this month. I also posit that the original, interesting books in this section are likely to be rambling, 300 page tomes that would work better as 8 page articles in the New Yorker.
So, with few exceptions, the New York Times Business Bestseller List is dead to me. One of those exceptions is Rework, from the founders of 37signals (and the masterminds behind the best blog in the world, signal vs. noise).
Rework is essentially a collection of a hundred or so brief essays on how they do business. Anyone who has read their blog knows that they are feisty, irreverent, critical, and, in the end, brutally honest and usually right. The essays are no different. From advice on how to nurture office culture, to their thoughts on the futility of meeting and conference calls, they lay it all out there for the reader to do with as they please.
I have a strong suspicion that anyone who read this book and tried to follow their lead word for word would fail – miserably. Taken with a level head and grain of salt, however, the book is filled with provocations that will change the way they go about their life at work.
Here is a brief PDF excerpt from the book. Enjoy.
As a researcher and a cyclist, I was doubly interested in this Slate article about the absence of fixed-gear, or fixie, bicycles in China. (For those of you not familiar with the hipster fixie trend, here’s a quick primer.) While the article is ostensibly about this one product in this one country, it makes a larger point about trends and cultural context.
What is “cool” and “trendy” to one audience can be “weird” and “useless” to another. And this is not just true when comparing Brooklyn and Beijing. In research, subtle differences in demography can have huge effects on the perceptions of a product. Considering the cultural context in which we operate is always key.
Since everyone else seems to be talking about this spot, I figured I’d throw my two cents in. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s simple…Tiger stares into camera. Tiger’s dead father provides the voiceover. Cameras flash. Simple.
Most of the comments I’m seeing are critical, to say the least. Take this New York Times article:
“Did you learn anything?” Earl Woods asks. A valuable question, and one that his son has attempted to answer in his no-questions news conference in February; his brief interviews with ESPN and the Golf Channel last month; and his pre-Masters news conference on Monday.
But the answer to the father’s question appears to be that serial philandering and addiction rehab can be positioned as a commodity — and that you can roll it out in phases leading to the Nike amendment to the 12 steps: a TV commercial.
Personally, I like the spot. It’s an apology, a glimpse into Tiger’s conscience, and a return to the spotlight all rolled into one. When I read the criticism, I have to wonder what people expected. Short of keeping one of their marquee endorsers on the bench, or cutting him loose altogether, this was the only thing Nike could do.
Nike frames him as the fallen hero. Anything else would have been an outrage.
It’s Census time again, that means that all 300 million or so Americans get to fill out a survey. The research geek in me loves it (even when the first two questions on the form are poorly designed enough to confuse me briefly). That being said, the New York Times City Room blog had an interesting post highlighting the trivia that is played if you call the Census Bureau and are put on hold.
Try it out, if you call 301-763-4636 you can hear bits on information such as how many Americans have dogs or cats, how many shelled peanuts we eat each year, a 152 year old patent for pencil erasers, etc.
The Times article has some of the scripts and recordings for those of you who don’t want to call and have to ask to be put on hold (or you an call the line dedicated to playing the messages without prompts or talking to people (301) 763 2222).
Just a quick entry today to highlight an article from Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. It’s essentially a review and some light commentary regarding brands’ websites and how they’ve updated them in response to particular recalls, brand problems, etc. The lesson is to keep updating websites to ensure they reflect the current reality you’re faced with. The most interesting highlight is how the John Edwards ’08 site is “a shrine to a lost fantasy.”
