To help you avoid any potential problems that could arise

Read More]]> Asking if Brand Labs loves ecommerce is like asking if Jeff Bridges makes awesome movies. The answer is obvious.  (We are still debating on whether or not the Tron remake did the original justice, but we’re also realists. We understand that even awesome things may not be awesome for everything. For example, The Dude will go down in history as one of the great characters in American cinema, while the whiny, sex-phobic math nerd Bridges played in The Mirror Has Two Faces just makes us sad.) That said, we’re well aware ecommerce isn’t 100% ideal for every, single purchase you make.

To help you avoid any potential problems that could arise from copping certain items off the Internet, here are ten purchases you might be better off making in person. You do remember how that works, right?

Pets

The thing about buying certain items from your computer or smart phone is that you’re only getting a snapshot of their reality. In many cases there may be a dent or piece missing from a product. But, with living, breathing creatures, the complications could be much worse. While you might be expecting a cross-breed between Lassie and Air Bud to be dropped off at your door based on the picture and breeder’s bias word, the reality is you could very easily wind up with a rabid mutt, who relentlessly barks at air and only dines on human appendages. And that’s never fun.

Cars

Sure, not every car bought online is going to die upon the initial exit from your drive-way, especially when you’re buying them new. However, internal issues aren’t the only concern. When spending big bucks on anything, wouldn’t you rather see it up close and personal? For automobiles specifically, not only is test-driving unavailable when buying via an eCommerce platform, but what if you’re in the mafia? How are you supposed to evaluate how many bodies can fit into the trunk? Lord knows a virtual assistant can’t answer that.

Wives

This entry comes from experience. Back in ’09, one of our former employees purchased a mail-order bride online and the outcome was far from ideal. After this unnamed gentleman introduced us to Svetlana at our Wednesday bar night, she seemed to be both good-looking (despite the prosthetic leg) and fairly nice (for someone who strictly spoke Ukranian). However, after two weeks of said employee lagging behind at work and eventually quitting, we realized buying a wife from a website was a terrible idea. Turns out, she was selling all his belongings during the days and would only sleep at her “Будинок товариша (friend’s house).” Plus, she was a dude.

Paint

Whether you thought of it or not, paint seems like an obvious choice, as most people need to take a sample of their old or preferred color and match it up against their walls at home. Yet, there are still those stingy folks who have to pinch every penny possible and would potentially skip that precautionary process just to buy online and save money. That’s all fine and dandy, but we’ll just assume their living room will end up looking like this.

Twitter Followers

There’s nothing wrong with being satisfied by the 200 or so followers you have on Twitter. After all, while following others is one-click away, being cool enough to get people to return the favor isn’t the easiest task. That’s why there are certain companies and programs that allow you to actually buy followers. Don’t ask us how they work, but these automated-adders inflate your subscribers substantially depending how much money you pay, making your online moniker appear way cooler than you actually are in-person and significantly dropping your chances of doing anything worthwhile with your life.

Diet Pills

Let’s face it, more than likely, you’re lazy ass shouldn’t be buying weight loss medicine from anywhere. Instead, you should cut out late-night dates with the deep-fryer, pass on more milkshakes and implement an exercise regimen for yourself. Then, even questioning whether or not these poor excuses for a diet will work or not won’t even cross your mind. Plus, haven’t you seen that Saved By The Bell episode where Jesse freaks out after taking them? Bad idea.

Drugs in General

This is a tad more broad than the previous entry. While many drugs will indeed make you sweat and stop eating, the ones we’re referring to here will also make you see mirages in the ocean. So, when you’re dealing with things that affect your brain’s serotonin receptors and overall perception of reality, it’s probably best you do it person. After all, if the seller you’re getting your fix from only has four teeth, you can’t really tell based on an online order form or vague Craigslist post.

Shoes

Forget what your girlfriend says about this one. How many times have you gone into the shoe store and bought the first pair the salesperson brought you? Unless you’re LeBron James and the store happens to be Nike headquarters, the answer is probably not very often. With kicks getting more and more expensive by the day, most buyers typically make sure they’re spending their hard-earned money on something that’s guaranteed to get worn and won’t have to be returned. If you buy shoes from an eCommerce store, the chances of getting a pair that feel like hard-caraved Dutch clogs are that much higher.

Everyday Groceries

Sure, there are a lot of places to buy food online and that’s all well and good if you’re buying bulk pasta or inappropriate Chinese candy. But, if you’re buying the only three things that we tend to keep in the house (milk, bread & age-blackened bananas) you may want to venture out into the real world.  Heck… everyone’s happy to get a 40 pound box of Crisco in the mail, but much less appealing is a 40 pound box of salmonella.  Get out there and squeeze those bananas.

Anvils

We don’t care how many times that Road-Runner has duped you – buying anvils online is not a good idea. Sure, they’re not convenient to find and Acme stores are overpriced, but you’re forgetting one very important specific. The shipping. Do you realize how much it would cost to ship let’s say ten anvils from San Francisco to Detroit? Way more than it would cost to buy a huge slingshot and some dynamite.

In order to demonstrate the Nexus 7′s media-playing abilities, Google chose the new album, Coastlines by

Read More]]> Google is, at this very moment, holding their annual developers’ conference, which would be big enough news, but they also used the opportunity to introduce their new tablet computer, the Nexus 7 and the odd, spherical media hub called the Nexus Q.  Google’s entry into the tablet game has been a long time coming, so tech nerds from across the globe were glued to their livestreaming feeds to catch a glimpse – and they also got a glimpse of something else: Brand Labs’ ability to stay way, waaaaay ahead of the curve.

In order to demonstrate the Nexus 7′s media-playing abilities, Google chose the new album, Coastlines by Detroit band, FAWN.  They even played some of All The Lights, the first track on the album.  Now if the name FAWN sounds familiar to you, it may be because they were featured on Brand Labs’ only foray into musical & scientific self-promotion – the Audiosonic Identiglyph.

The Audiosonic Identiglyph was created as a universal geolocation system that would allow any user armed with a simple phonograph (or “record player”) and a basic, functional knowledge of the Goertzel algorithm and global cartography to be able to locate Brand Labs’ corporate offices with some degree of accuracy.

The Audiosonic Identiglyph featured Hip Parade by FAWN on the B-Side and was released in a star-studded brunch gala at Detroit’s very own Steak Hut.  (If you’re ever in town, we strongly recommend Gus’s homemade hash browns, which are like little greasy slices of starch heaven.)

So, anyway, the point is that Google is totally on Brand Labs’ jock.  There.  We said it.  We had FAWN first.  Your move, Google.  Bring it.

Also, if you want to catch FAWN, you can do so at the CBGB Festival in NYC from July 5-8.  It’ll be worth the effort.  Brand Labs says so… and now so does Google.  What more do you need?

Read More]]> While searching the Internet this morning for important new pictures of baby sloths, we stumbled on the video we’ve posted below.  Before you play it, we’d like to warn you about a few things.  First, it’s eleven minutes long.  Second, you’re going to want to watch all of it.  Finally, unless your heart is a tiny, ice-cold cinder, you’re going to cry.  We’re misting up just thinking about it, but that might be because we’re also listening to Sarah McLachlan, so we’re probably thinking about that frigging animal shelter commercial that always drops like a bomb into the middle of whatever lighthearted romp you’re watching on TV and brings your life to a screeching halt while you scrape together all of your change to donate just so you can make all the big-eyed homeless puppies stop crying in HD all up in your grill.

The video below is the opposite of that.  Enjoy.

Okay… now just pull yourself together now so we can talk about this like the totally composed businesspeople we are.  So, that was deeply charming on a lot of levels – the boundless and inspiring enthusiasm of youth, the near-universal love of The Arcade and the way that something so frivolous can bind us all at such a basic level, the unqualified support of a working class father for his son’s passion project, the pride of accomplishment – there’s a lot of real genuine heart-string-plucking going on here.

… but did you notice how no one gave a crap about Caine’s Arcade until a savvy outsider stepped in and started a social media campaign in support of it?  Did you further notice that Caine’s Arcade also benefited from the Holy Grail of viral luck – an appearance on the front page of reddit?  The Internet basically prevented this from being an incredibly sad or possibly even heart-crushingly tragic story.  Let’s talk about how all of this could have played out after the jump…

For the sake of argument, let’s say that Nirvan Mullick had never walked in to Caine’s Arcade.  Let’s say that because fate and reality are often unkind, not one single adult ever acknowledged Caine and his accomplishments.  Let’s say that no one ever cared about Caine’s Arcade except for Caine.  Then what happens?  One of two things…

The good option is that Caine outgrows his obsession as puberty hits and the allure of The Ladies takes over (as it is likely to).  A dust-covered, roughly-hewn cardboard Dave & Busters is far less attractive to teenage girls than one would like to hope, ultimately leaving Caine with only one option – the dumpster.  Caine’s Arcade dies an unceremonious death at the hands of the local sanitation workers and rots – unmourned – beneath an near-immeasurable mound of other people’s cast off dreams and garbage, as Caine goes out into the world, coated in Axe body spray, in pursuit of something that cannot be suitably simulated with corrugated cardboard and packing tape.  The Arcade becomes a nearly-forgotten family story that people only talk about when they’re trying to remember how cute Caine used to be before the light inside of him died.

That, my friends, is the happier option.

Now, let’s imagine that Caine’s lust for The Ladies never overtook his obsession with his paper arcade.  The light inside of him never dies (despite the fact that we’re still speculating that it goes unnoticed).  Let’s say that he just kept building and building – creating a veritable cardboard Neverland that swallows his father’s auto parts store, making it no longer viable as a retail space.  The store loses its customers, perhaps to more convenient online options (here’s where we start to bring it back around to ecommerce) and the business’s failure drives a permanent wedge between Caine and his father, who had always supported Caine in spite of his own self interest.  They cease speaking to each other completely even though they’re both forced to live together in the carboard-stuffed corpse of the former auto parts store.  Caine’s father dies under a skee-ball machine made entirely of refrigerator boxes and Caine appears in an episode of Hoarders that’s so epically tragic that it anchors A&E’s sweeps week programming and gets higher ratings than American Idol’s results show.

But none of that happened.  The Internet saved Caine and his arcade.  Social media saved him.  Virality saved him.  A kind and talented stranger saved him.  Caine is a very lucky young man.  Here’s the problem: you’re not Caine.

You’re like Caine in a lot of ways.  You’ve built your business from nothing.  You taped it together as best you could and it’s filled with your blood, sweat and tears.  You’re ready to serve your customers with your whole heart and if they take you up on it, you’re going to give them the kind of consumer experience that will make them want to come back again and again.  You’re ready to make them love you.  Now all you need is for Nirvan Mullick to stumble on your business and make a beautiful eleven minute movie about you.  Wait… you also need him to believe in you strongly enough to try to organize a small group of people to patronize your business.  Oh, and you also have to be fortunate enough to capture the imagination of one of the most influential and unforgiving audiences on the Internet: Redditors.  The good news is that it happened to Caine and there has never been a more deserving target of that particular set of unlikely conditions.  The bad news is that you’re going to have to be your own Nirvan Mullick and you’re going to have to do it at the same time that you’re busily taping your business together.

Love what you do.  Be good at it.  Both of those things are truly critical, but without an audience, your business is a pile of passion and paper.  Find a way to engage with the wider world.  Find a way to tell your story.  Let your voice be heard.  Social media provides you with a near-infinite range of opportunities to connect with your target customers and you simply cannot afford to ignore that fact.  Of course there’s Facebook.  Of course there’s Vimeo and YouTube.  Of course there’s reddit.  The question is what are you gonna do about it?  What’s going to make your target care about you when they have access to… well… everything?  Answering that question is a challenge, but it’s going to become more and more critical to your business as the world gets simultaneously wider and smaller.  Don’t expect that jaded world to beat a path to the thing that you love.  Reach out, grab them by the heart and tell them why they should love it too.

It’s important to us that you understand that we are not heartless business robots.  We know that Caine’s Arcade is not about commerce.  It’s about passion.  Its about community.  It’s about shameless innocence reflected in the rediscovered innocence of strangers.  We want some of that.  If you happen to be in East LA, please visit Caine’s Arcade for us.  You can find it right here:

BOOM!  Right back to ecommerce!

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UPDATE: It’s important to our trendspotting ego that you know that even though Caine’s Arcade now has over 100,000 fans on Facebook, When we wrote this article, he had less than 300.  We’re more trendy than approximately 100,000 people.

Google has produced their 2011 Google Zeitgeist report. The report takes Google’s amazing collection of data to show just what people across the globe cared about in 2011. We can only assume that the appearance of Rebecca Black has more to do with people looking forward to Friday (the day) as opposed to actually seeking out her mind-grinding pop hit of the same name.  (We need to believe that in order to retain or faith in humanity.)

We’re crazy about Google and searching in general.  We’re always searching for things.  Ask anyone.  Our friends call us “Google McSearchypants.”  We love search so much that watching this video makes us a

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Google has produced their 2011 Google Zeitgeist report. The report takes Google’s amazing collection of data to show just what people across the globe cared about in 2011. We can only assume that the appearance of Rebecca Black has more to do with people looking forward to Friday (the day) as opposed to actually seeking out her mind-grinding pop hit of the same name.  (We need to believe that in order to retain or faith in humanity.)

We’re crazy about Google and searching in general.  We’re always searching for things.  Ask anyone.  Our friends call us “Google McSearchypants.”  We love search so much that watching this video makes us a little verklempt.  (Google it.)

Here’s wishing you (and everyone) a healthy, happy and search-worthy 2012!

Behold the very cool and possibly kinda rare Google Analytics Android Collectible Mini Figure!   Dane brought this little treasure back from his trip (along with a proper boost in his already formidable interweb skills). 

Read More]]> As we mentioned a while back, our VP, Dane Downer, just visited the Google Campus for an invitation-only Google Analytics Summit.  Of course, he was there for very thinky/business-related reasons.  After all, going to the Google Campus to learn about analytics is like going to the Jersey shore to learn how to be an orange douchebag.  It’s nerd Mecca.  Of course, it wouldn’t be a complete nerd Mecca without toys – specifically, exclusive designer toys.

Behold the very cool and possibly kinda rare Google Analytics Android Collectible Mini Figure!   Dane brought this little treasure back from his trip (along with a proper boost in his already formidable interweb skills).  We subsequently destroyed any value it may have had by opening it so we could properly document it just for you.

We’re still die-hard iPhone users over here (mostly) but you must never look a gift toy in the mouth.

UPDATED: It turns out that Dead Zebra, the company that designed this figure for Google, is owned by Andrew Bell, who was in The 3D Art Book with our very own Kevin Skinner… and the circle of nerdiness is once again complete.

Enjoy the mini-gallery after the jump…

Tiburcio has a fantastic way to celebrate sales on his ecommerce site: with the light-up eyes and smoking ears of Mario’s nemesis:

“I wanted something nice to have at the office that tell us every time someone make a purchase on our game. Every time we make a buck Wario rings the bell and flash his greedy green eyes. If we made a lot then Wario shoot smoke from his ears!”

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