Ever stay awake at night wondering why your product isn’t selling? Could it be the name? Maybe the name is not conveying a positive marketing message to the consumer. It could be 100 different things but a great product name, even if it is misleading, can greatly help you gain market share. Take Vitamin Water, which is owned by Coca Cola. Their product has been a huge success, but why? Do consumers really believe this “water” is good for them? Do they think they are getting enough vitamins that their systems even notice? The beverage actually has just as much sugar as any other flavored drink on the shelf. Because of this, the Center for Science in the Public Interest has filed a lawsuit against Coke for their misleading claims and false advertising. It is all about the name but the first ingredient has to be honesty.

Munchies, munchies, munchies. How does one cure the cravings of the side effects of smoking pot? Quiznos!? At least that is what their recent television ad would make me believe. Could this TV advertising be catering to any rational minded person? If the ad is directed to the stoner, is it a good move by their ad agency or just a big waste of money? At least this blogger agrees with me and attempts to answer some of my questions. Maybe I will see one of you or you at Quiznos one late Friday night!

The public is passionate about the logos of the brands they use. Look at this example from Seattle’s Best Coffee. They recently changed their logo and their customers revolted. I do agree that certain logos should be updated but the ultimate cost can be your customers loyalty. Pepsi has regularly changed its logo over the years while competitor Coke never has. Should you update your company’s logo? Here are some guidelines when updating your company logo.

This debate started earlier this year when Apple released its iPad. The Apple iPad has no support for Flash, following in the iPhone footsteps. Flash is the current standard for moving graphics on the web but it is a resource hog on your system. In devices that rely on battery power for their usefulness, this can quickly become an issue. A war started between Adobe (the makers of Flash) and Apple. Here is a recent quote from Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, “Different pieces of technology kind of go in cycles,” Jobs said. “Flash looks like a technology that had its day, but is waning, and HTML5 looks like the technology that’s really on the ascendancy right now.” Is Steve Jobs right? See what the public thinks.

HTML5 will do most everything that Flash currently does. The problem with HTML5 is that the web is ruled by designers not developers. Designers typically don’t program. HTML5 requires programming to produce the effects that designers can do themselves in Flash. There are many aspects to this debate and they are all just starting. It will be interesting to see how it shakes out.

The way in which people connect to the Internet greatly affects how we design for it. In the old days we used to have to make all the web files as small as humanly possible to increase the load times. Pages that would load slowly would frustrate users. Today, load times are not that big of a concern with the majority of people connecting online with a high speed connection. “Dial-Up Internet Going the Way of Rotary Phones” from less than 5 years ago when the general public was just transitioning from dial-up to broadband. How things have changed. Here is an April 2010 poll from CNET:

Cable modem	58.1%
DSL, man, DSL	27.5%
Fiber	9.2%
Other (explain in the comments section)	2.0%
WiMax	1.4%
Tethering from my phone	1.1%
Dial-up	0.7%