Design Museum/Harrods

Last Tuesday we all went to the Design Museum in central London.  It wasn't what I expected it to be at all.  It was much bigger than the Museum of Brands and had more of a modern feel to it.  There were many products and items from modern day that were featured, such as shoes, cars, and paralympics wheelchairs.  I found all of it very interesting.  However, there were a few displays that stood out to me more than the others.

The "new age" lights that were upstairs in the Digital Crystal area were different from any lighting I have ever seen before.  When I first saw them I walked by them because I figured they were just normal lights.  However, when you look closer you can tell that they are somehow different.  These lights are made with LEDs and are designed this way on purpose.  They are meant to create a more elegant and soft lighting source.  It even looked like the lights inside were almost moving/vibrating if you looked closely, which I thought was pretty cool.  I think when the designer first thought of these they wanted to have an alternate lighting source for a time when you don't necessarily want harsh lights in your face, such as at night or before waking up in the morning.  They also probably wanted to cut down on the costs of non-LED lighting and came up with a solution.  I thought this display was very creative.

The other display I really liked was the man with the "thought bubbles" made out of the Swarovski crystals.  I did not know what it was at first until I read the description about it, but just thought it was very insteresting to market and design crystals in this way.

After the Design Museum, Brooke, Jess, and I decided to go to Harrods.  I had never been there before and was overwhelmed by everything I saw inside.  I actually learned a lot about marketing here.  Everywhere we went there were ads and people trying to sell you an expensive designer item, whether it was perfume or clothing.  One of the things that I noticed was that the Lady GaGa perfume was the main focus in the Perfume Room.  They had a central location and even had buff guys with no shirts on standing around offering the perfume samples.  This is meant to better attract women to their display since there is a half naked man holding the bottle.  None of the other perfume brands had men handing out samples with no shirt on.  The Lady GaGa brand must have paid more to have the better location and advertising within Harrods, much like cough medicines pay for better shelf locations within a store.  I just thought that all of this was very interesting since it applied to what we have been learning in marketing so far.