I’ve been really, really suspicious with all the hype about “super-food”, goji-berries, acai, green tea and what not. Well, now I have accidently found a favorite in this mystical and rapidly growing category of groceries. Mangajo Drinks. Mangajo juices are sold in Helsinki at least in SIS. Deli+Café and Moko Market. These delicious, fresh juices caught my eye because of the nice package design. Yes, I was skeptical about the juice itself but liked the package. This is how I behave. I bought it and liked it. Since that, I’ve tried all the variants and even recommended them to some friends. Then, I became more interested in the product itself, the pretty bottle still wasn’t quite enough.

www.mangajo.co.uk

twitter.com/MangajoDrinksCo

www.facebook.com/pages/Mangajo

Not too many “likers” or followers anywhere, website is created probably in 2003 when the company has been founded… The company name is a nice detail: “Mangajo” comes from the global language Esperanto and means “healthy eating”. Otherwise, just product info. One good story needed here.

I bought my first Marimekko dress ca. 10 years ago when Unikko pattern was a massive hit. I still have the dress but will definitely not going to wear it anymore, like, ever. The pattern was systematically ruined with the overuse of it. This Spring, after 10 years, I’ve bought myself couple of new dresses by the ex-Marimekko designer Samu-Jussi Koski.

Look at their websites. Have a look at Marimekko. Have a look at Koski. Mr Koski has managed to create an online presence that is design-ish, stylish and totally convincing. Why does The Design Company of Finland look like a boring insurance company online? Well, maybe that will change soon, let’s all hope so.

The images in this post are from the Marimekko Summer News, a newspaper that was delivered with morning mail this Spring. I like their Summer News a lot. It gave an impressing review of their new collection, convincing enough to make me walk into their store – did some shopping too, surprise surprise.

They all do it, even Dior. What? 

Films, where they show how they make an ad or a film. Well, it could be quite interesting, if there actually, seriously, would be something interesting to see. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s not worth making that making of, if the only reason to do it is that “it just pops out anyway”.

The most disappointing is, when you’re expecting something magnificent and superb, and it just turns out to be a damn making of (and at the same time, they still introduce a separate, official making of). Just give me the real thing, please!

It’s Sunday night and I was preparing some slides for tomorrow’s client meeting. Made me wonder.

When dealing with consumer goods eg. fashion, the goods are for obvious reasons first sold to retailers – in most cases. The best of the best, the whole collection, is shown to the retailers, and they pick the ones that the actual buyer will get to see in the store. Well, I’d like to see the whole collection and get the info where to buy, on each item.

The most annoying case is, that when you get interested, you are instructed to go to “leading department stores”. Why not just telling which ones and where?

It’s a pity that designersremix.com site doesn’t include their whole collection, it’s just certain items and certain colors. Why is that? Even in Helsinki Finland, you’re able to see wider collection, in local stores. And that’s not too many stores, really. Well, my new perfect black spring coat is from Designers Remix and I’m so ridiculously happy about it that wanted to share an image – but there isn’t any available. I like Designers Remix clothing line a lot, but would appreciate to be able to see everything they provide, online. Let me like you more, please!

That’s the unfortunate conclusion that I’ve come to after familiarizing myself with Lanvin.com. As a producer, I wouldn’t pay more than 1500 euros for of the execution they have. That’s more or less the price of a Lanvin handbag. The bags are pretty lovely but the site is quite the opposite.

First impression

Disappointment. What’s with the tiny boxes all of the content is stuffed into? Content management system acquired 10 years ago? After a quick browsing, also the incoherent design, blurry fonts… all in all, an old looking site.

Content

The site consists of following sections: Fashion (Women, Men, Advertising Campaigns, News), Perfumes (Overview, All about Lanvin parfums, More information) ,Latest News (Events, The company, Work for Lanvin), Heritage (Jeanne Lanvin, Key dates, All the perfumes, Previous seasons, Today, Bibliography), Lanvin in the World (Lanvin Paris, Retailers, Subsidiaries). There’s a lot of info – not to mention there is a second navigation on the upper right AND a third navigation on the lower right. Way too much, way too complicated and messy.

Problem

For me, this represents an utter lack of judgement – not just because of the lack of functionality, but because of the lack of idea, experience and emotion. There’s an enormous gap with the quality, creativity and emotion presented in Lanvin’s print advertising and online presence. Another huge challenge is the amount of content in the website… there’s absolutely no core, no primary message, it seems all the info there is has just been thrown there. The challenge is, too many brands still use web as a dumping area of information (= secondary/supportive media), like it would be a place to go when there’s a need for “more info”. Forget about that, most of the people visit your site to get “the info”.

An Opportunity

Two of the latest print ads by Lanvin just give me the creeps. On a good way I mean, especially the one with the red woman (above). The another one, a man with a woman’s arms around him, is somehow even more intensive and sinister. I think these provocative prints are awesome. In the future, I hope to experience that courage and emotion online, too.

Isn’t it the most frustrating situation when you would really like to like something, and they just won’t let you? I have visited the Muji store in the US, know something about their product range and philosophy. The unique thing about the brand is that Muji products are never visibly branded. As they say: “The value of the Muji product is in what it is, not in who it is designed by”. “Mujirushi Ryohin”, as Muji was originally known, means “no brand quality goods”.

Since all those nice, affordable every-day-things aren’t available in Finland where I live, I was happy to check out their webstore.

I went directly to muji.com assuming that it would lead to an online store. Nothing happened: all I got was a blank page. Then through Google I found muji.us, but that site of course serves only the US and Canada. Finally I found my way to muji.eu,  which turned out to be the right destination.

Muji.com

I found out that muji.com actually has content – the site just loads really slowly (from Japan, I guess?). Using a progress bar would be recommended. I’m willing to wait, if it’s somehow communicated, if it’s worth waiting and if there’s something interesting to see.

With or without the progress bar, it still takes awfully long to see the main page. Muji.com is a Flash site with two main “functionalities”: a Play Muji blog widget and Muji Rhythm. I still don’t know what the blog widget is, since I didn’t have the time to just sit and wait (it takes more than one hour to download). If someone manages to check out the widget, please let me know.

Muji Rhythm was a lot faster (but still, slow). I think this one looks like how I would imagine the brand look and feel online. It also reminded me of the successful online campaigns from another cool Japanese brand, Uniqlo.

Local Muji Sites

A significant contributing factor to total messyness is having several websites (muji.eu, muji.com, muji.us, muji.net, muji.es… ) Please use one address that just leads to the right place. I want to go to muji.com, and believe me, most of your other clients want to do that also. Of course a company in global business has country- or continent-specific organizations, logistics, personnel, product range, banking, CRM databases and all that. I just don’t want to know anything about it, I really couldn’t care any less.

Muji Online Stores

The Muji product range, brick-and-mortar stores and physical catalog are all very plain and stylish, as well as the packaging and the overall design concept. What happened when building the online store? The online stores are country/continent–specific and all of them are different. The similarity they have is that they’re plain ugly and illogical. It’s very non-intuitive, forcing you to try out many different things before finding what you’re looking for. The design and the overall look is basically from the 90’s, and did I say it’s ugly?

The anti-climax of the online experience was when I ordered their newsletter. I got a confirmation email (plain text) saying: “Newsletter subscription success” – and nothing else.

Conclusion

I think the worst thing with Muji’s online presence is that the execution of the online store(s) is so bad, it’s diametrically opposite to their stated brand philosophy. From Muji’s 2009-2010 catalog:

“Muji products came into being in the early 1980’s as a result of a new mood, calling for a return to simplicity in daily life. As life gets more complex, the need for simple lifestyle solutions becomes all the more necessary. To find these, look no further than Muji.”

La Perla is Italian, one of the most exclusive and well-known lingerie brands. Their products are lovely and for the most part not-so-affordable. 

The online experience starts well, with gorgeous imagery and a clear what-to-do (choose the country), but after the first click all the problems start. 

Three out of four banners in the main page content area aren’t working. Some of the main navigation links also don’t work. The image under the “Essentials” is totally distorted. And how are the products presented? I’ve visited their stores and I don’t know how or why this experience seems and feels totally different.

In the product images at www.laperla.com all of the lingerie is worn by pale models. The site itself is really boring, dark, has no interaction, no surprises at all. Not one single thing to tell someone about, or a way to do it. As you can’t touch the product, you should be able to feel it in some other way. I would suggest them to ditch whatever content management system they use here, start from scratch and build a true online experience. Not a product catalog that isn’t even working. 

In my experience, online marketing is in some companies often seen as a part of the IT or tech department. They buy the platfrom. Then marketing/advertsing people try to make something out of it which they’re not ashamed of. And that’s one lousy goal.

Quite a fresh way to bring more spirit into advertising. And actually a really nice combo, I thought. But is this it? You can check both prints at www.stellamccartney.com. The Bambi and stuff is nice and you can even change their places.. Since this co-op was for F/W 09.10 I guess this is all I’m going to see.