Yipao contest in Colombia

These impressive load of Jeep parade are a real tradition in Colombia, especially in the Coffe area (Eje Cafetero), department of Quindio. After ww2, the americans sold massively the Willy Jeep to latinan countries. These jeeps fit well for the difficult landscape of Colombia.

Local farmers used to say "bring me back a Jeep of bananas"... From Jeep to Yip then Yipao and the tradition keeps intact to see these full loads in the chaotic roads of Colombia. It's now totally part of the coffee culture.

Gracias Ceci por el valioso aporte !

Law of complexity with Cadbury

In our complex world, it's useful (and trendy) to go back to simplicity. Fashion, design or trends tend to favour simple and pure systems that are easy to understand and replicate for everybody.

In a total opposite way, I have always been amazed by Rube Goldberg machines. Rube Goldberg (1883- 1970) was a great cartoonist and inventor, creator of complex mechanism designed to complete a very simple task. Just before Eastern, Cadbury launched a contest to promote one of its bestseller, the Creme Egg. Customers and fans addict are asked to deploy the strangest, weirdest and creative way to break the Egg. One of the best home made video is this :

a must see !

This is the official ad from Cadbury (not as cool as the former one, IMHO...)

Wal Mart growth animation

Fascinating animation about the development of Wal-Mart in the US from 1965 (first store in Bentonville to the 3176th in 2007).

Click HERE to see the animation

It spreads like wildfire especially from the 1980's years. What's interesting is that you can see that Wal-Mart has developed his stores through logistics.

First build a warehouse then stores around to maximize transportation and supply chain costs.

Second golden rule, absolute priority to rural places before entering downtown (the legend says that it comes from Sam Walton spouse strongly attached to her rural roots).

5 rules for retailing in recession (HBR)

In the last issue of the Harvard Business Review, you can find an interesting article about the "Five rules for Retailing in a recession" by Ken Favaro, Tim Romberger and David Meer (all working in Consulting Company).

What's new with the big crisis for retailers ?

The authors are determining 5 key rules of conduct in order to strengthen retailer's position in a downturn market:

1) Go where the headroom is

Headroom is defined by the market share you don't have minus the market share you won't get. In short : avoid to multiply the initiatives but rather focus on protecting your most loyal customers as #1 priority.

2) Close the Needs-Offer Gap

This approach favours to expand the average basket spending rather than convincing new customers to come in. Usually you analyse what you sell but seldom have a loser investigation on what you could sell.

3) Go after bad costs

Key point is to establish a link between retailer's costs and each aspect of the offer. Drop dead the classical ABC costing for a customer-benefit costing.

4) Cluster Store

A recession inevitably will lead you to differentiate your stores. Tailoring your offer and concept will help you to stick with your local customer base. Take care of no adding too much complexity in the process that could withdraw the benefits of the clusterisation.

5) Retool Core Process

To be consistent and gain efficiency it's important to change some key process : customer research, merchandise planning, performance management and strategic planning. When a retailer is usually asking for : who is our customer ? should switch to the "why are customers shopping our stores" and "what do they buy from other retailers" questions.

Thank's Chris for the tip !

this is why you're fat dilemma

thisiswhyyourefat is one of these strange and funny web site where anyone can participate and post the most calorific meal one can encounter. In case of diet, a daily visit is highly recommended just to keep away the apetite.

In the same time, Wired magazine got the idea to calculate the Body Mass Index (BMI) -you can calculate yours here- of the Playboy Playmate through the years. They also made a comparison with the evolution of the BMI of the average American women...

The problem ? While Playmates have evolved from 19,4 to 18,2 in forty years, the average American woman from 20 to 29 years old has gone from 22,2 to 26,8 !

The gap between the "ideal" woman (as defined by Playboy magazine) and the reality of the average American women seems to be each time larger and larger !

Behind the new Pepsi logo

Pepsico just released a new logo for his famous soft drink.

Lawrence Yang is a young industrial designer living in San Francisco who has a very personal interpretation of the logo, with a belly button in the middle of the white surface for a stunning result : obese man...

You can buy the tee shirt with the logo parody here.

More interesting is the Design Brief from the Design Agency Arnell Group that can be found here. It's a must read !! You'll see in this "Breathtaking" presentation (that's the title) that the new Pepsi logo is inspired by the golden ratio, the Parthenon, Mona Lisa, the magnetic fields of the earth, etc.

A monument ...