1. Intro
Every time I meet someone in a business situation, I ask them:
“What do you have to say about marc jacobs daisy rollerball?”
The answer is usually “nothing.”
But if you ask them for their phone number, or for their email address and forward them a copy of this column, they start talking about marc jacobs daisy rollerball.
It is a pretty good example of the power of one simple question. In this case, asking “What do you have to say about marc jacobs daisy rollerball?” means “you don’t have anything to talk about with me. So let’s talk about something else.” All my life I have been thinking that the art of persuasion is not to tell people what they want but to get them to see things in new ways. And it is only when we get people thinking differently that we can convince them to say yes to offers and take risks and make changes… The key feature of marc jacobs daisy rollerball is its simplicity; it is always being used by more than two people at once and it has never been described in any other way than it has always been described in the specific way that it was marketed.
2. History of Marc Jacobs
Marc Jacobs’s first big success was a trademark dispute with Versace, which had been using the name “Marc by Marc Jacobs” for their brand of clothing. The dispute is sometimes called the “Marc by Marc Jacobs lawsuit”. After this initial success, Marc Jacobs started selling his own line of clothing and accessories at department stores in New York and Los Angeles.
It was not until today that he became a household name, when he was appointed creative director of Louis Vuitton (which already owned the rights to “Marc by Marc Jacobs”) in 2007. His designs were featured in ads for Louis Vuitton’s bags and he gained prominence as an expert on fashion trends.
Eventually, the owner of Louis Vuitton decided that his ads were too successful and he asked him to stop them. He stopped selling his own clothing and started producing bags for LV (which subsequently changed its name to LVMH).
In 2011, Marc Jacobs launched his first fragrance, Rose Parfumé — a mixture of rosewood oil and ambergris extracted from dead or dying animals — which has since been re-named to its current version “Marc by Marc Jacobs Fragrance”.
Jacobs also owns brands like Walla Walla Wajah Wajah (the third most expensive perfume in the world after Chanel No 5 and Dior No 5), Marchesa (fashion label) and Fendi (luxury accessories). Even more brands will be added soon: they include Balenciaga, Missoni, Oscar de la Renta, Loewe and Roberto Cavalli among others. And it doesn’t end there yet! The secret is how many brands you can license before you start worrying about your brand equity…
3. Marc Jacobs Daisy Rollerball
Marc Jacobs has one of the most iconic products in the world and it is indubitably deserved. It has way more good points than bad points. It makes a great pen, no doubt. But, it also has some downsides (that are not necessarily bad).
On the positive side there are some really nice and relaxing moments that you can get from the Rollerball (and other Jacobs products too). The brand’s iconic imagery is almost always at play here (in a way that you would never see with other brands) – and other people think they’re gorgeous too.
On the negative side, there are a few things that marc jacobs daisy rollerball do badly:
• It is not very well made: though it is undoubtedly worth every penny, you will always be better off buying a bottle or other purchase than paying $500 to have it customized for you by someone who took their sweet time to create it on commission.
• It just feels cheap compared to most pens on the market: even though I don’t have any hard evidence for this statement, I am pretty sure that if I had bought this for myself 10 years ago (before I started using high-end pens) I would have been much more impressed with it than now. And that might be because I would know what a good pen looks like and how to use it – but now there isn’t really anything that stands out about marc jacobs daisy rollerball as a high-end product (unless you count its price tag).
• The color palette is not so good: while nothing can beat black or white ink on its own, sometimes designers want something else as well – such as brown or blue or purple – which marc jacobs daisy rollerball doesn’t quite have in the right mix. This shouldn’t be an issue with just one palette; but for an iconic brand like marc jacobs daisy rollerball (which selling over 50 million units globally in just 5 years) this color palette problem should be major enough to warrant some serious attention from the marketing department…
But even though these issues aren’t so terrible compared to the ones we mentioned above, they tend to make up most of what people think of when they think “marc jacobs daisy rollerball”. And here may come into play another characteristic of this iconic performance object
4. Marc Jacobs Daisy Rollerball Packaging
MarC Jacobs is a brand that I’ve been following for almost two decades. Like many brands, it has developed its own identity over time through careful management of the use of multiple design languages, from fluid and fluid layering to creating iconic packaging.
In the case of Marc Jacobs, the brand itself has evolved through a long period of experimentation. In 1997 when first launching the marc jacobs daisy rollerball (then called marc jacobs daisy ball), small black and white illustrations in a series of paper-thin packages evoked a playful, playful kind of fun. More recently, in 2010 with the introduction of the scarves, design took on an even deeper meaning. Now branded “scarves” instead of “ball,” they challenge you to think about what you are wearing and who you are wearing it with — more so than all other types of items combined.
The scarves were also in part an opportunity to indulge in branding as well as packaging design — Marc Jacobs was at this very time starting to build what would later become his eponymous fashion label with his business partner Karl Lagerfeld (who had come up with the whole idea). The scarves became an encapsulation of everything Marc Jacobs stood for: elegant and luxurious but still playful and fun at times; smart and elegant but always signifying something else at once; without being too ostentatious or taking away from other aspects of the brand; using bright colors that didn’t scream “fashion” but were sophisticated enough to stand apart from them.
As I was talking to John Levenstein about this post on Medium two weeks ago (he is a very experienced designer working for Marc Jacobs), he pointed out that these products were not only well-made but also very classic yet modern designs because they combine different elements into one unique package; they make people think both about what they are wearing and who they are wearing it with. They certainly make people think differently about what they buy when compared to other products out there. And he was right! This post is my attempt to add some more depth by showing how Marc Jacobs has used style over time as an opportunity to talk both directly and indirectly about a host of different things:
• Who we are as brands
• What we stand for
• How we communicate these things
• How we present ourselves in our product designs
For me personally, this was
5. Marc Jacobs Daisy Rollerball Pricing and Availability
Marc Jacobs Daisy Rollerball is a very well-manufactured, beautifully designed ballpoint pen. It was introduced in 2004 and it is still one of the most popular products on the market. The daisy design evokes an image of springtime, which is fitting for a product that celebrates spring’s rebirth from winter. It has been around for a long time but it recently came back into the spotlight as one of the few products with a brand identity that can be associated with its creator, Marc Jacobs.
The story is, like any good product launch: you need to find your audience and get them onboard early (which ultimately will lead to higher sales and profitability) before they start to tire of what they already have and move on to something else (which will lead them down the road to total bankruptcy). To get there, you have to have a great value proposition that catches their attention quickly and then wow them with features that show off what they are getting for their money – ideally through an elegant design that allows their eyes to be drawn effortlessly from point A to point B.
Marc Jacobs Daisy Rollerball Pricing
The pricing structure used on Marc Jacobs Daisy Rollerball was designed by its designer: Marc Jacobs. He had several small teams working on different aspects of the packaging design, but he had one team working exclusively on pricing – which in turn led him to open up discussions about price points and how he wants people to think about his product. His specific goal was simple: “I want people think about my product as if it were a luxury item; I don’t want people thinking about my product as if it were cheap… My goal was not just ‘to be affordable’ but affordable enough so that people would think about buying luxury items when they saw my product” (Marc Jacobs Daisies: The Story Behind Our Professional Design Magazine).
Marc Jacobs Daisies Pricing
So what happens when we take this approach? We need a great value proposition – or rather we need an alternative value proposition since there isn’t one right now (remember Mark Cuban said this same thing). We need price points and we need our customers/users understand why they are getting much more than they originally thought out at their initial price point. If we take Marc Jacobs Daisies pricing as our main example, here are some things it adds up to:
1) You get more than you originally thought you would buy for your money ($7 vs $
6. Summary
In February I wrote about the marc jacobs daisy rollerball, a beautifully designed and ultra-compact pen that attempts to marry the two things that make writing with a ballpoint (writing) and fountain pen (writing smoothly) so much fun:
The marc jacobs daisy rollerball is a dual-ended writing/fountain pen made of white metal. When you put your fingers on the cap, it fits like a ballpoint pen but when you pull your fingers back it will write like the fountain pen. The cap and barrel are different colors, so you can easily tell which mode your hand is in. Continue reading →