I received an amazing piece of direct mail yesterday from McDonald’s. Yes, McDonald’s. This piece, written in Chinese, is marketing 2 new chicken sandwiches.

Now, as a Chinese American I get mail and phone solicitations all the time in Chinese. As a direct marketer, I know that my name on a mail file is sorted and tagged as “Chinese”, this despite the fact that I can;t read or speak a word of Chinese.

But what makes this piece strange to me is not that they assumed I spoke Chinese but that they made some assumption that Chinese people like chicken sandwiches. After all, there must be a few other CHinese people who received this printed piece besides me.

In fact, if you look closely, you will notice a few other insights into McDonald’s strategy: People eat chicken for breakfast! Because McDonald’s Southern Style Chicken Biscuit is positioned as an “AM” sandwich. In addition, people apparently only like pickles on their chicken sandwiches. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, McDonald’s feels that sending FREE coupons in the mail to Chinese people will get them to come into the restaurant. I, for one, will use it because I can;t pass up something for FREE.

P.S. One thing McDonald’s should know is most Chinese people prefer dark meat.

When I was in my second year at RISD, I took a class called Visual Systems. In it, we explored how systems that are put into place can allow amazing things to happen visually, when a set of data is applied. For instance: in one of my projects, I established a specific pattern of font variables and assigned styles based on the books, chapters, and verses of the Bible. Full explanation of this project will need to be reserved for a later time.

The point is, it was the existing dataset that determined how the book was set. There is a very interesting article in the New York Times about Steve C. Wang, a mathematician and associate professor of statistics at Swarthmore College.

Wang decided to literally put the face on baseball managerial performance by assigning visual facial features and associating it with the data based on decisions that major league managers have made. What he got is a pretty amazing result (click on thumbnail to see full graphic).

[Via New York Times]

Everyone knows that in creative brainstorms no idea is a bad one and you always need to just get it out of your head to move on to more constructive ideas. But sometimes you see something and you think, “Maybe the agency should have censored themselves.” Then you think, “I can’t believe the client bought it.” This is one of those times. Feast your ears on “Me So Hyundai”

I’m walking down the street in Sausalito, California with my sister, her cute 14 month old daughter and their dog. We were stopped three times by other pedestrians who had to tell us how cute she was. They were talking about the dog.

What can a walk down the street teach you about target audiences? Don’t assume you know your target. I assume cute kids always trumps miniature sized dogs. In Sausalito, that is not the case.

Someone made a huge mistake at the Sharper Image. I wonder who I am talking about. Here’s a hint: it’s the person who thought it would be a good idea to sell high-end meat with Donald Trump’s name on it. I’m talking about the new product offering at The Sharper Image called, Trump Steaks: the cream of the crop of high-quality meats selling in bulk boxes of hundreds of dollars.

Quick! When you think of the Sharper Image what do you think of? Is it a 14 oz tenderloin? Probably not. You probably thought of a neck massager or wireless headphones or a Tempur Pedic bed. The Sharper Image has established themselves as an edgier Brookstones for the last 20 years - sellers of unique gadgets that you never even knew you wanted or needed. For those who purchased these overpriced gadgets, you would know that the items are cheaply constructed and fair (at best) in quality. And even though you can find household items there, the catalog skews way more towards the living room than the kitchen.

There is also the idea of storage. I don’t think I like the idea of a store who has no experience handling any type of food, all of a sudden handle raw meat, let alone raw meat that costs this much.
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