OurielOhayon

Off to Italy with Alfa Romeo

Here is the reason i am taking a few days off: i am invited by Alfa Romeo to test a new upcoming car called Mito. This is why i posted the teasing the other day. I am not sure why they picked me (along with a few other guys). Probably because i write TechCrunch France which is one of the biggest blogs in Europe and maybe because they are and will use strongly the web and its ressources to push this car smartly to its potential users as you may see from their website.

I any case, this is going to be fun. I will report a few details as i can connect to the internet

Technorati Tags: alfaromeo mito italy

Crocs: I could not resist i bought them

It s just not because every one has them, but Crocs shoes are just so light and so comfortable i had to get them

I spent over the past 10 months to ask myself if i would get those ugliest shoes by crocs

But finally i discovered recently this other model and it is fantastic

What i don’t understand it is that the open shoe is the same price (about 40USD) as the full shoe. Even weirdest the baby size is the same prize as the big one

Meaning that fashion can really fool all of us

ps: btw Crocs has also fantastic other products

Ugly is beautiful and successful

I thought you had to be appealling to be successful. we have been conditionned by the fashion industry to think that way. But apparently this not (always) true and i will prove it here with a few online and offline examples

Some of the ugliest websites are some of the most used/visited. Craiglist, MySpace in France SkyBlogs and Tf1. Check screenshots below. But this could apply to websites that are not specially ugly but that have no real design intention (think Google)

 

In the Offline industry i have been stuck by the success of Crocs, this australian brand of casual shoes. They are SO ugly i can t even begin to see myself with them. But here we go, they grow quite nicely and have international presence in less than 2 years..

 

So why does it work? Because people are much less demanding than what we think on the envelop but really demanding on the inside. They want functionnality first (content, features/ comfort, long lasting, …) and are ready to forget about the nice design. Craiglist is offering the best free network for local classified (for now), Tf1 the best content information, Skyblog/MySpace the basic necessary features to edit a blog and have access to a big community. Crocs offer comfortable and very functionnal casual light shoes (but their website is an absolute beauty and they have also some other less known very nice products).

Conclusions:

• making pretty is not a necessity for success.
• what matters is the meat not the packaging meaning the functional side of a product/service
• but if you can also match the content with a nice packaging then you have a point

technorati tags: marketing success design myspace tf1 skyblog craiglist crocs shoes

GAY PRIDE 2005 IN TEL AVIV

It was today, like any other gay pride in the world, maybe even bigger

   

GURU: THE HYPEST BRAND!

Forget about Diesel. I have been hanging in Italy recently : the new hottest brand there  is now called GURU. You can find it now also in most countries in Europe in selective shops. They have original colourful and quality designs. The original brand was recognizable because of the ICQ-like flower design appearing huge on all their outfit. Off course the prices are also very “fashionable”

I was then interested in visiting their website. What a disappointment! First no indexation in Google. I tried the logical www.guru.it . Found it then BUT the navigation is terrible, so slow, links are not working, hardly readable, the music that you cannot stop will get you crazy after 2 min! You feel they wanted to be original but the technical and navigation choices are catastrophic and give a very bad image of the brand.

Owners of Guru, If you need some advice i will be happy to help!