As consumers, we are programmed to intuitively select the products and brands we need based on what looks familiar (e.g., the easiest decision to make). And as marketers, “the goal is to make consumers repeat their purchases by matching the value proposition to their needs.” Consumers don’t want to spend the mental energy when shopping (online or in-store for that matter), so why make them?

The solution for brands lies within understanding the habits of their consumers, and evolving or improving upon them based on what their brains are programmed to be looking for. And unless consumers are absolutely screaming for a change, and the return is solid for your business, then making a dramatic change is no bueno.

Brands like Coke, Tropicana, GAP, and many more have undergone redesigns in some capacity over the years. Consumers didn’t demand it. They weren’t educated on the change, nor provided a real rationale. The result was backlash, and even a decline in sales, which pushed the brands to quickly go back to the original. A lot of time and money lost. However, sometimes it pays off (only if the demand is there), but often times it doesn’t.

There are more examples and insights we could share, but we simply don’t have the time, nor blog post space to do so. That said, we want to leave you with this very simple message: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And if you decide to fix it, make sure you do it in a way that doesn’t disrupt the habits of your consumers.

Over the past few years there have been countless messaging apps that enable users to reach out to friends over new mediums in fun and useful ways. Facebook Messenger and Snapchat are the most successful, but they aren’t even relatively fun compared to this new app.

Traces is an app where you send messages that can only be retrieved by your friends when they get to a specific location. So, when you are sending a message you pick a place where the receiver has to go within a time limit that you set in order to open it. It’s like a scavenger hunt, but with messages. Traces lets you share messages, videos, and even songs. The only downside is that the app is currently only available in the UK where it is in beta – but they are planning on bringing it to the US soon, so for now we just have to hang in there.

What Sparks our Fire: A fun new way to message our friends

Where would you place a Trace?

Buying a new mattress? While it may not be something that you have to take care of regularly, it sure is a hassle when the time does come. Retailers carry a large amount of slightly different mattress, which you can go and sit on for about 10 minutes at a time to try and then you pick one that you will sleep on for a few years. Not to mention the difficulty of getting it delivered and brought into your house or apartment to the bedroom.

Casper is a new startup based in New York City that sells just one mattress in five different sizes. What makes Casper special is the convenience factors that they easily provide. First off your mattress comes with in five days anywhere in the US – and same day delivery in New York City – packaged up the size of a mini fridge. And once you set that bed up, you have up to 100 days to try out the mattress, and if you’re not satisfied you can send it back for a full refund.

The reviews of the product also point out that the bed is exceptionally comfortable – which is highlighted by the fact that Casper did over $1 Million in sales in just their first month.

What Sparks our Fire: Innovators making turning a rigorous process into something hassle-free

What other industries need someone to step up and make it hassle-free?

Just last week we shared a post on a new portable phone charger that can charge your device quickly and easily. The Ultra-X is a great look into where we are today with charging. Meredith Perry and her company, uBeam, are looking past today and into the future of charing technology.

uBeam will allow you to charge any device completely wirelessly – no plug, no pad, just a receiver attached to your laptop or phone. The device is capable of transforming electricity into sound waves, that are then distributed and turned back into electricity by the receiver. The only catch, the technology is not capable of charging through walls. But, the ease and accessibility of being able to fully interact with a laptop or phone while in the same room as the wireless charging station is a huge improvement. No more holding your head down towards the outlet in order to be able to talk on a dying phone. uBeam announced today their prototype is fully functionally and plans to be ready to hit the market in 2016.

What Sparks our Fire: An entrepreneur pushing the limits of wireless technology.

Do you think uBeam is the future of charging devices?

Brands are aware that they must continually evolve in order to stay relevant in a society filled with noise. Gillette is an example of one brand that has already withstood the test of time. They make a testament to that in their new advertisement for their first ever men’s body razor.

The video takes an evolutionary approach to depict the different hairstyles of men over the last 100 years. The spot is a great nod to how Gillette has managed to handle the ever-changing landscape of product development and advertising.

Radioshack on the other hand is an example of a company that hasn’t managed to keep up with the world today, and is currently on the brink of failure. The dominance of e-commerce and competition from internet-based companies such as Amazon chip away at the profits of those companies that can’t keep up. Gillette has managed to do quite the opposite. And no matter how strange it seems that men want to shave more than just their faces, they embrace it.

What Sparks our Fire: The success of a brand that continually faces the changing times and excels at it.

What other brands can you think of that manage to withhold the challenges of change?

This week Google hosted their developers conference, Google I/O where the tech giant announced a variety of updates to their Android operating system. But, seemingly the coolest thing that Google did announce came as a gift to all attendees at the end of the conference – cardboard.

Being that this is Google we are talking about, the Cardboard device is much more than what you would image from a piece a cardboard. Instead it is a full on virtual reality headset, similar to the Oculus Rift, except made of cardboard.

All users need to do is assemble one of these devices, which is not that difficult, place their phone into it and then they can enter an entirely virtual world. Currently there are only a few apps available in cardboard since it was just launched this week. But, we can only image where this will go as a very simple and easy entry into the world of virtual reality.

This is clearly a sign of things to come though in technology. It is time for us as advertisers to start imaging how we can get our foot in the door of virtual reality and really ride the wave of this new technology.

What Sparks our Fire: How Google is able to take the simplest of materials, and make it an amazing piece of technology.

What uses can you imagine for Google Cardboard?

“Tell me a story.”

“There’s an app for that.”

It’s been said that storytelling is a lost art. The oral tradition of telling a story vocally, injecting the emotion and creativity of the teller, has not been the preeminent form of information transfer since the invention of the Gutenberg Printing Press and the literacy that came along with it. However, the oldest form of information transfer has been integrated with the newest, enter an app that brings the stories of thousands to your fingertips.

The Moth is an organization that collects and collates recordings of real people telling their own stories in their own words. The organization has been doing this since 1997, when it was founded by poet and novelist George Dawes Green, who wanted to recreate in New York the feeling of sultry summer evenings on his native St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, where he and a small circle of friends would gather to spin spellbinding tales on his friend Wanda’s porch. The movement grew, and has brought more than 3,000 live stories to over 100,000 audience members.

This October, The Moth has launched its own app, effectively bringing the common threads of thousands of stories to your iOS or Android device.  Previously only available by podcast, The Moth app focuses on the listening experience, allowing you to save your favorite stories, share them, or download them.

What Sparks our Fire: We are inspired by the unique stories that people are willing to share with others.

Will you download this app and share your personal narratives?

What can you remember about yesterday? How about Monday, last week? What about June 23rd? March 17th? Odds are, you can’t remember something about every single day over the past year. The slow moments, the quiet days, they are all overshadowed by larger events and get lost in the shuffle of routine.

Cesar Kuriyama sought to fix that by recording one-second clips of each day for a year, starting on his 30th birthday and ending on his 31st. What resulted was a 6 minute long, watchable documentation of every day throughout that year. There are moments ranging from the beautiful to the mundane, from the sad to the heartwarming. It’s an incredible slice of life, and Kuriyama designed an app that will allow others to create their own second-a-day videos.

In an app called 1 Second Everyday, Kuriyama hopes to share with others the experience that so profoundly affected his own life. It influenced him to make the most out of each day, to live in the moment and to do something worth documenting.

He also mentions how, instead of dealing with the common smartphone problem of recording but not experiencing, he has found that capturing one second “helped me hone in on my old tendencies to over capture a moment or event. Like many, I used to take too many photos and videos … Now I record less and enjoy the moment more.”

The app is currently available on Android and iOS 7.

What sparked our fire: How technology enables us to easily create our own personal narratives, in video format.

What would your first one second video be?

Getting there…

You walk around with an undeniable thirst to dream big.