Team Down with Jargon is growing. And as people recognize the evils of jargon, we get more tools in the fight against blah blah blah.
First, we have the Marketing Contradictionary: a browser extension that highlights and defines the marketing jargon that pops up on web pages. Here it is, going nuts on a Wikipedia entry on buzzwords.
I am a person who is getting married. If you are not a person who is getting married or a person who has gotten married in the past, let me tell you this: weddings are a lot of work.
When you decide to get married and have a wedding, you get your first wedding gift: a to-do list. A to-do list full of things like “book caterer,” “find dress,” and “source doves that represent your pure love.”
In the era of Pinterest, you also have the pressure to personalize every detail of your wedding. Custom invites, custom hashtags, and everything DIY. I caught the DIY fever and decided I was going to make a sign out of live flowers, before I remembered that I have no crafting skills, no time, and a brown thumb.
In this pressure cooker environment (a pressure cooker that’s been bedazzled and monogrammed, of course), I get excited about anything that’s easy but still has a personal touch. Enter this email from Uber and Style Me Pretty—a fine piece of damn good communication. (more…)
A classic communication challenge: marketing something that’s uncool, boring—or just plain ugly. We all remember the classic case study about Gargoyle Automotive* and its rapid, very predictable path to failure.
This creative campaign from the French supermarket Intermarché manages to overcome the ugly and boring hurdles with some serious grace. In order to reduce food waste, Intermarché decided to start buying fruit and veggie rejects—the produce that’s totally delicious and nutritious but doesn’t look so great, so farmers throw it away.
Great idea, but…how to get shoppers to take a chance on the homely eggplants, carrots, and clementines? (more…)
I want to tell you about a pretty genius piece of tech.
When you ride in a New York City cab, you can pay using a screen that looks like this.
That’s not the pretty genius part. It’s these three, simple buttons: (more…)
We’ve all been the “noob” at one point in our lives. Being a new face in an office can be awfully stressful or extremely exciting, and usually both. But while we’re wandering around trying to figure out where the bathroom is, we don’t usually think about the responsibility that comes with being the new guy. (more…)
Jellyvision has known for a while that adding some humanity to technology does great things for engagement, learning, and trust. People like the virtual hosts of our Interactive Conversations so much that they tell us they understand the complicated subjects better than before. ALEX, our virtual benefits counselor, has even received marriage proposals.
Of course, we’re not the only ones trying to make technology more human. A great, smiley example: Google’s self-driving car.
We, as a society, deserve better than this wet floor sign.
Yes, it’s functional. Yes, it’s moderately attention-grabbing. But does it make you smile? Do you feel a visceral reaction in your tummy, an overwhelming sense of impending slippy doom?
We can do better. And now, we have. Behold: (more…)
You’ve probably sat through your share of dull company presentations. Yawn, doodle, drool.
Luckily, most Jellyvision presentations are pretty un-boring—we’re big fans of the GIF and the humorous aside. But even we haven’t had a presentation quite like this before.
Have you ever been handed a brochure or pamphlet at the doctor? You know, you’ve just been diagnosed with swamp foot or hummingbird ear, and the doctor hands you something like this:
Image via FY Springfield
These brochures and handouts tend to be pretty dry and impersonal. Sure, there’s important information in there, but they make you work for it. That’s a problem—we wouldn’t want someone ignoring important care instructions because they were buried in the middle of a dull, dense paragraph…the fourth dull, dense paragraph on the page.
So how can we make these important communications easier and more enjoyable to read, so more people pay attention to them and actually follow them? My vet’s office, Roscoe Village Animal Hospital, has one idea. (more…)
One of the most powerful tools in a damn good communicator’s toolbox is surprise. And surprise can be a whole big production, like Google’s annual April Fools’ jokes, but it can also be a small, unexpected moment. Frame your message in a slightly different way, and ears perk up.
For example: changing one word on a waste bin.
Here’s a pretty typical waste bin setup. Trash, recycling.
And here’s a waste bin that I found at Starbucks: (more…)