Biomimicmarketing
“Nature is the most successful product of our time.”
Nature is a terrific marketing tool and corporations know this. Somehow the natural reference provides us with a familiar feeling of recognition and trust. We call this phenomenon Bio-mimic-marketing: using images of nature to market a product.
Due to the countless campaigns that promote a one-sided positive image of the natural world, nature itself has become the most successfully marketed product of our time.
Contents
Strategy #1: Use Nature As Aesthetics
The products in the first category have none or only a very weak link with the natural imagery being used: Lacoste is not about crocodiles, Linux is not about penguins, Bacardi is not about bats …
Strategy #2: Use Nature As A Metaphor
The border between the first and the second category is fluid. With the products in the second category, the link is more content oriented. For instance, by calling a sneaker ‘puma’, its makers not only …
Strategy #3: Promote A Natural Feeling
A third category of biomimicmarketing is the group of products that sell themselves by emphasizing they provide the consumer with a ‘natural feeling’. Bra’s so light and soft that if feels as if you are …
Strategy #4: Brand It ‘Eco Friendly’
The products in the fourth category don’t necessarily provide the consumer with a natural feeling. Their biomimicmarketing revolves around the claim to be ‘friendly towards nature’. Typically, the claim is made in comparison with other, …
Strategy #5: Brand It ‘Naturally Made’
The fifth category encapsulates the products that are ‘naturally made’. Arguably, here the natural claim is the most convincing. Think eco-tomatoes, bottled mineral water from a natural wellspring, organic shampoo and biological meat. Contrary to …
Video: Corporations Like Nature®
You love nature and coorporations love you. That's why they make Nature® look very cool.
The biggest marketing Scheme of all: Nature itself
Besides the countless products that reference to nature in order to be liked and bought by consumers, there is another hidden, largely unconscious, yet even bigger marketing mechanism going on. Perhaps even the shrewdest marketeers are not really aware that biomimicmarketed products not only promote themselves, but simultaneously also promote a very one-dimensional romanticized notion of nature. Along with the promotion of products, nature is being promoted as the sensible, harmonic, soothing, authentic, healthy, honest and beautiful force in life. The darker, more negative, side of nature is consistently omitted by the biomimicmarketeers, as you can’t sell products with diseases, death, hurricanes, floods, or other extremely crude, unpredictable and amoral qualities nature has to offer.
Green electricity, Organic Shampoo, Jaguar convertibles, Red Bull, Bio Beef, Camel cigarettes and Puma sneakers. Once you develop an eye for it, it is quite astonishing to see how many products and brands – through their name or logo – refer to ‘Nature’.
— Koert van Mensvoort, Five Strategies of Biomimic Marketing
'Nature' words according to Google
Imagine you were an intelligent alien from outer space that just landed on Earth. Before you can mingle with the earthlings you’d need to learn their language. It seemed like a smart idea to start at Google image search. Just type in a word and you’ll immediately get a collage of images that show you what it means.
Lets start for example with the word ‘dandelion‘. That learns you a lot about the different phases of this flower and how it …
Children's dictionary dumps 'nature' words
To make way for modern tech terms such as BlackBerry, blog, voicemail and broadband, the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary has opted to drop terms pertaining to old nature. No longer can a child check this dictionary and learn more about the blackberry, dandelion, acorn, heron, otter, magpie, sycamore, or willow.
According to Vineeta Gupta, who heads children’s dictionaries at Oxford University Press, changes in the world are responsible for changes in the book. “When you look back at older versions of dictionaries, there were lots of examples of flowers for instance,” she said. “That was because many children lived in semi-rural environments and saw the seasons. Nowadays, the environment has changed.”
The 10,000 words and phrases in the junior dictionary were selected using several criteria, including how often words would …
Nike Butterfly
Ecology – A New Opium for the Masses
Marxist philosopher Slavoj Žižek discusses the ‘naturalization’ of capitalism and how ecology became a new field of capitalist investment. He also argues that the ultimate consequence of recent developments in biogenetics will be the ‘end of nature’ – anyone cares to introduce the good man into nextnature thinking? According to Žižek ecological apartheid will divide our urban society. Capitalism is not in control of nature and due to techno-scientific interventions the essence of the ecological order will be lost.
Written by Slavoj Žižek, Via Lacan.com, via Volume.
Marco Cicala, a Leftist Italian journalist, told me about his recent weird experience: when, in an article, he once used the word “capitalism,” the editor asked him if the use of this term is really necessary – could he not replace it by a synonymous one, like “economy”? What better proof of the total triumph of capitalism than the virtual disappearance of the very term in the last 2 or 3 decades? No one, with the exception of a few allegedly archaic Marxists, refers to capitalism any longer. The term was simply struck from the vocabulary of politicians, trade unionists, writers and journalists – even of social scientists… But what about the upsurge of the anti-globalization movement in the last years? Does it not clearly contradict this diagnostic? No: a close look quickly shows how this movement also succumbs to “the temptation to transform a critique of capitalism itself (centered on economic mechanisms, forms of work organization, and profit extraction) into a critique of ‘imperialism’.” In this way, when one talks about “globalization and its agents,” the enemy is externalized (usually in the …
Steam Horse
Surely, this steam horse illustrates the notion that new media (steam powered carriages in this case) often try to mimic an older medium in order to become accepted more easily. Yet over time, the older medium is superseded and transformed into a cultural relic (horse powered carriages in this case). Other examples of this principle are the electric candle light, electronic mail, and the record collection on your mp3-player.
Wooden bankcard
Silver, gold or platinum creditcards? Expensive metals in credit card design used to have a certain luster in the past, yet today we are all (painfully) aware the mimicked material is totally meaningless – In the end it’s all plastic. So, why not go for something different? Nowadays, many banks provide their customers with the opportunity to design their own bank card. At first I didn’t see the value of uploading a family holiday photo on my bankcard. Only once I realized this was the perfect opportunity to obtain my very own highly stylish and classical wooden bankcard my enthusiasm grew. I have to admit, I am extremely happy with my wooden bankcard. Every time I slide it in the cash vending machine, I feel the magic of transforming wood into money. And here is the good thing: you can have a highly stylish and classical wooden bankcard too. I have made the bankcard wood texture available for you download. Simply upload the file to the bankcard customization website of your bank and you will soon have your very own wooden bankcard and feel the magic of turning wood into money. This artwork is my gift to you (If you like I am even willing to sign your bankcard, although that’s probably not a good idea).
Fake for Real: Redefining Nemo
After having seen Disney’s blockbuster ‘Finding Nemo’, every scuba diver that happens to meets with the original white orange striped clownfish underwater, will unmistakable think ‘Hey, there is Nemo’.
A sweet and innocent example of how …
Banana Juice Box
This Japanese Juice box is camouflaged from modern box designs and tries to convince consumers with its appealing ‘natural’ look. A schoolbook example of biomimicmarketing; marketing a product using images of old nature.
Via. See also …
Medicinal Blueberries
As our scientific knowledge of nutritious food increases, will healthy foods be progressively designed to look like medicines? This blueberry blister packaging created by Chinese designer Daizi Zheng certainly points in that direction.
Although utterly over-designed …
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