We have all had a bad experience trying to assemble that new flat-packed piece of furniture we just purchased. The directions show the pieces effortlessly flying together, but it isn’t even clear which side of board H is which or how exactly to hold part A247 close enough to part Q72 so screw #27 can engage wing nut #AAA2.
To be stumped by instructions at some point has almost become an essential part of the human experience, and stories about frustrating, badly presented installation or setup instructions are now ubiquitous. We had some fun bringing a few of those stories here, just to put it into perspective for you in the hopes that you save your building materials customers from this sort of frustration.
Story 1: Barbie’s House of Horrors
(This really is the install instruction sheet)
You would think that in the age of 140 character limits, something would carry over to the world of instruction manuals. Au contraire, the manuals remain as bad as they ever have been; case in point the Barbie Dream House. You can find no shortage of horror stories on google of parents struggling to get this pink mansion built. The reason? The instructions feature vague, over-packed and unlabeled picture portions for one. Secondly, the text is reduced to an illegible state due to the amount squeezed on a page. These features go hand-in-hand to make Barbie’s home the last thing on a parent’s Christmas shopping list.
Story 2: The Domestic Disturbance
Illustrator and cartoonist Ed Harrington has created a funny collection of IKEA-style assembly instructions that show how to make iconic movie monsters.
In 2013, the Huffington Post ran an interesting story. A concerned neighbor living in Stromstad, Sweden called the police to report loud “banging” and “crying” coming from the house next door. When authorities arrived, they discovered that the banging emanated from the attempts of a couple to figure out instructions for and assemble a piece of IKEA furniture. Meanwhile, the crying was their baby who had just had enough of the noise.
Story 3: The Dresser of Broken Dreams
One thing many sets of instructions do is leave important notes out. Take the example that the commenter “deedee914” on this post. She was working to build a new dresser according to the instructions that came from IKEA, but they left out the fact that the dresser tends to fall over easily, leading to a broken hand for deedee914. The website did mention this little tidbit of information, but you would hope you would not have to go searching for that kind of information.
Don’t Make the Same Mistake for Your Building Materials Installation Instructions
So, as building product and building materials marketers, we are not selling furniture or barbie houses, the stakes are far higher for us. Poorly presented installation instructions will result in more than frustration and lost sales. If our products are not installed correctly, buildings will fail and lawsuits will follow.
I hope you enjoyed these fun stories and I hope you find beauty today, even when it’s not pretty.
Regards,
-JY
About the Author :
Jason Yana has 2 decades of experience in architectural technology, 3d graphics and construction marketing. This unique combination provides highly-effective visual representations of building products that fuel marketing and support efforts.
His award-winning body of work informs, inspires and educates building product customers.
The traditional methodology for inventing, designing, and selling a new product is dead. There is something to be learned from the silicon-valley inspired crowdsourcing put on by sites like kickstarter or indiegogo. Essentially what is happening here is people are selling products before they are even built.
The Old-School Way of Inventing New Products
Traditionally, you dream up a new widget which solves a problem. It might be a stronger and lighter cladding or a new labor-saving metal stud which installs in less time. Regardless of what it is, the next step is to sketch it, design it, manufacture it, test it and then ultimately market and sell it. It is not until you have spent a fortune in time and money that you find out if it will be a success or a failure.
The Modern Way of Inventing New Products
The online-tech world has a different way now, a leaner and smarter way. You design the product, focusing not on how it will actually work, but on the problem it will solve and what it will mean to the customer. You make a great video, throw it up on kickstarter and if the idea resonates with people, they will put money in up-front to get your widget. If enough people do this, you meet your goal and you now have the money to actually make the thing.
I’m not suggesting that building products should be created this way, but maybe there is a lesson to be learned here.
[convertkit]
Have a Virtual Version of Your Invention Made First
What if you took your latest and greatest idea and created a video which used photorealistic 3d animation to demonstrate what the product is, how it works and why someone should use it in a 3 minute video? That is exactly what a few forward-thinking bpm’s have been doing for years.
You then pass that video up and down your organization, or to an industry partner or investor. If everyone agrees on the potential of the widget, you then use the video to put the idea in front of your potential customers and then gauge their interest.
If they show a high enough level of interest, then you go ahead and manufacture the widget without the risk of it being a complete failure in the market.
You Will Improve Your Invention Before Building It
An unintended consequence of this methodology has often been the refinement of the product design at a far earlier stage. Typically, when someone hands me a new product design, I will make my 3d model of it, but I will also model it in-context so we can show how it is installed, where it is installed and why. In that process, if there is an inherent design flaw in the product, we will find it far before the thing is mass produced, or even before it exists in the physical world at all.
For Example
For example, when you watch this video below, think about how this could have been created long before this product was ever actually manufactured (it wasn’t – but I thought it would make for good food for thought). Consider the possible implications of that in the way your organization invents new products.
Regards and I hope you find beauty today, even when it does not yet exist.
-JY
About the Author :
Jason Yana has 2 decades of experience in architectural technology, 3d graphics and construction marketing. This unique combination provides highly-effective visual representations of building products that fuel marketing and support efforts.
His award-winning body of work informs, inspires and educates building product customers.
During my time getting my architecture degree in college, I realized pretty quickly that not many people saw things quite the same way. I have always wanted to see and understand how every little connector, part and component go together and was excited to see that many great architects of the past and present felt the same. While most were interested in the final product of architecture – the outward appearance of the finished project – I was equally interested in all the things you never see once a building is completed. All the materials, products, connectors, etc. are as beautiful to me as any stainless steel appliance, granite countertop or other decorative design element.
Architects tend to have 2 streams of consciousness running simultaneously
This is the way most of the architects you will encounter look at the world. They look at everything, they see everything and they tend to maintain two tracks of consciousness :
The way the world is
The way the world could be
It is like there is a sub-title track at the bottom of their movie, constantly trying to bridge the gap between what is, and what could be.
Help them bridge the gap
Visually, this means show them how you product makes the world better. Demonstrate your love for your products by making them look beautiful. Explain how your product keeps that wall from deteriorating (thus becoming ugly) by helping water drain out. Share the root passion of how and why your product makes the world a more beautiful place.
Regards and I hope you find beauty today, even when it is not pretty.
-JY
About the Author :
Jason Yana has 2 decades of experience in architectural technology, 3d graphics and construction marketing. This unique combination provides highly-effective visual representations of building products that fuel marketing and support efforts.
His award-winning body of work informs, inspires and educates building product customers.
With the multitude of information being blasted at marketing managers for building product companies, it is easy to get overwhelmed. We tend to get sucked into doing things the way we have always done them, creating glossy printed brochures or coming up with the latest hashtag to drive web traffic.
When this happens, it is helpful to step back and get inside the head of your target customers, put yourself in their shoes and have a new look at your building product brand from the outside in. A helpful way to do this is to have a look at the research that is out there, and see what other marketing managers are thinking.
In a recent study “From Creativity to Content” was a survey of 177 senior marketers in North America. The results strongly show that visual assets are all increasing in importance. This is especially important to us, most of which are creating marketing efforts directed towards Architects, who are decidedly visual people.
Sometimes it is easy to forget the simple things, using dramatic visuals to tell the story of a brand is really the quickest way to communicate with another human being. A large percentage of our brains are dedicated to visual processing, and the first impression your brand makes is critical.
Regards and I hope you find beauty today, even when it is not pretty.
-JY
About the Author :
Jason Yana has 2 decades of experience in architectural technology, 3d graphics and construction marketing. This unique combination provides highly-effective visual representations of building products that fuel marketing and support efforts.
His award-winning body of work informs, inspires and educates building product customers.
and if you can source your own life from its presence.” – Oriah
Since LinkedIn decided to remind me, and everyone else, that I have been drawing, animating and demonstrating building products for more than 18 years, I have been thinking about how I got here.
I’ve always seen things differently than most. I don’t just want to know how things work, I need to know. When I was a kid, it was only a matter of time before I stole my dad’s tools and dismantled the new toy, game or device within reach.
The ripple effect of parental consequences of this was two-fold. Firstly, I destroyed a lot of things in our house trying to take them apart – conveying a lack of respect for my belongings. Secondly, I failed to return the screwdrivers to their proper location, showing a similar lack of concern about my father’s tools.
I have always found beauty in functional objects. If you remove or change one little aspect of a part, it either doesn’t work anymore or it’s not as efficient as it could be. I eventually did learn how to put things back together without ruining them, and actually developed an ability to fix things along the way.
The greater thing that I learned from this wanton lack of appreciation for my things was an affinity for design, no matter how mundane. What I would learn later, and build my own business on, is the fact that just simply knowing how things work is useless unless you can pass that information on to others in a dynamic and exciting way.
Regards and I hope you find beauty today, even when it is not pretty.
-JY
About the Author :
Jason Yana has 2 decades of experience in architectural technology, 3d graphics and construction marketing. This unique combination provides highly-effective visual representations of building products that fuel marketing and support efforts.
His award-winning body of work informs, inspires and educates building product customers.
Have you ever been on a family vacation and had to deal with this daunting decision?
The buffet
versus
ordering from the menu?
It feels like a life-changing decision at the time, doesn’t it?
The buffet is great because there is a wide variety of options available, but the cost is higher and you have to talk yourself into the entire package as a whole. Buffets can be really good the first couple of visits, but visiting the same buffet every single day gets old.
If you order off the menu, you know exactly what you are going to get and you aren’t going to have to deal with the inconveniences.
There are many amazingly talented big marketing firms who specialize in building product marketing, but not every company wants to dive into the whole buffet. Perhaps it is for economic reasons, or other organizational reasons. Whatever the reason, there is clearly a much larger commitment involved with retaining a marketing firm for a long period of time.
There is a definite trend developing in companies of all sizes choosing to order their marketing services off the menu, a la carte. Marketing managers for building product firms need to fill their contact list with consultants and specialized service providers who can perform contract based services.
These services include
Cad Detailing
BIM component development
Product photography
Graphic Design and Publishing
Web Development
Content Development
Marketing Video Creation
Marketing strategy consulting
3d renderings of products
3d animations of product installation
spec-writing and consulting
copy-writing and content creation
social media and search engine optimization
My firm provides some of these services and my contact list is full of people who provide all of the services above.
Sometimes it is just nice to know that you are not alone, and to realize that there is an entire menu of marketing services which you can obtain, a la carte, without having to eat from the same buffet every single day.
