Observation Lab

Crash Course in Creativity

Assignment 2 – 30 Oct. 2012

by Peter M. Carson

CA$H Converters (clever, huh?)

This is a pawn shop and the name and signage say it all. It makes no effort to be slick. It is a purely functional service provider where people can get cash for their junk or pick up something they need cheap.

•The most interesting stuff is in the window.

•The intake desk (store’s most important feature) is the first thing inside the door.

• Small staff. Customers serve themselves. Small, valuable items are locked in cases.

• Lots of cheap impulse items near the tills.

Lead Music

Guitar showroom. Has a boutique atmosphere (reinforced by vintage instruments for sale on the website), but also serves hobbyists and working musicians.

INSIGHT: Store caters to a specific community (guitarists) so in-jokes and self-referential design elements are important for its credibility.* The interior looks and feels like a house converted to a recording studio. Accent color pays homage to legendary Orange™ amplifiers.

*Bonus

Q: What do you call a guitarist who just broke up with his girlfriend?

A: Homeless

*Bonus #2

Q: How does a lead guitarist change a light bulb?

A: He holds it still and the world revolves around him.

Fielmann

Optician and retail eyewear

Photographs courtesy of Fielmann. My phone battery died in the store.

Fielmann is a big eyewear chain in Europe with a lot of competitors, But Fielmann somehow feels more high-end, more technical, more competent, less like a shoe store with spectacles.

They achieve this with the store design and staff. The store is sleek, modern and airy – think Swiss bio-tech firm. The staff all wear white lab coats and have individual desks for consultations.

INSIGHT: The contact lenses I’ve been buying here for almost 4 years are 3x as expensive as from a French internet store I looked up last week!

L’Autre

Jewelry and furnishings

Makes good use of its charming location and big windows. The shop’s golden glow and colorful merchandise attract attention.

I only saw one customer in the store, but others paused while passing by.

What do jewelry and furniture have in common?

• Not necessities. Not commodities. Small markets. Why not double up?

• Same customer for both?

INSIGHT: By identifying furniture/ceiling lamps with jewelry, L’Autre re-categorizes them as art and accessories for the home rather than mere functional tools.

Manor

A chain department store located in Geneva’s Right Bank shopping district near the train station

Manor

It’s possible to enter Manor from three different sides and have different experiences based on that.

From a charming neighborhood square one enters the food department. It’s a large expanse featuring inviting displays of high quality fresh and packaged goods- a big step up from the ubiquitous Migros and Coop chains that rarely stock anything original or appetizing. The department seems to want to separate itself from the rest of the store, with branding that mimics “organic” labeling and plenty of wood. Near the entry is a large display of locally-grown produce (code for high quality, high snob-appeal*).

Upstairs the rest of the store has a completely different vibe. If the food department feels like a village market, the rest of the store feels like a processing plant where consumers are pushed down chutes past generic merchandise and out the other end. It’s too shiny, too tacky and the brand names are too big.

The entrance closest to the train station opens onto a space geared toward tourists: lots of chocolate and memorabilia emblazoned with the Swiss flag/brand mark.

Manor seems to be going after 2 or 3 separate market segments, and probably hoping to benefit from some cross-over. The food shop competes against the chain groceries for customers looking for higher quality, while the clothing departments are more likely to attract Migros shoppers than Manor Food customers.

*This is an observation about marketing techniques, not a value judgment about local produce or locavore philosophy. I personally try to source as much of my food locally as I possibly can.

Manor

GLOBUS department store

In contrast to Manor, Globus is much finer and more high-end throughout. It is located in the banking/financial/luxury district and clearly caters more to that market. While the departments have just as much brand identification, it is not as crass and in-your-face.

In the men’s section, I noticed something that made me laugh. A fellow was there trying on a sort of tweedy jacket. He was sporting a hipster style with full beard, thick frame glasses and slightly mussed hair. He was checking himself in a full-length mirror

The funny thing was, right next to the mirror was a bigger than life-size back-lit promotion featuring a guy who was the spitting image of this customer. If he noticed, he didn’t indicate it in any way.

I imagined the guy not noticing the resemblance, but the image seeping into his subconscious nonetheless. And he’s there thinking, “man, I look like a model in this jacket! I’ve gotta have it!”

OPPORTUNITY: Make the image on the panel adapt to the customer. The salesperson could select an appropriate image when she sees the customer coming. For a more subtle effect, use a slide show. When the customer arrives, select from a list of profiles and the slides subtly shift to those images.

GLOBUS department store

FIN

Thanks for looking