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the evolution of dish

by annab, August 27, 2010


josh handy our senior industrial designer at method blogs for the popular package design website called “the dieline”. josh looks like moby and writes like david foster wallace. read on to better understand dishsoap: branding at its most weird by josh handy.


"the old dish

 

over the years, consumers have been trained by ubiquitous advertising to believe that cleaning is a chore; a boring dirty business that needs to be completed as quickly as possible. product development efforts in the dish soap category have largely eschewed the actual task and have instead focused on adding “benefits” like softening your hands, saving baby animals, or reversing the aging process. brand strategies seem to involve everything but the proverbial kitchen sink. by assuming that people would rather be doing anything but the dishes, marketers have transformed the category into a cluster of contextually irrelevant “meta-claims”. as such, the products in the category have languished. this is branding at its most weird and self-involved. many dish soap brands seem to have lost faith in their core proposition – to clean dishes. it is these types of dull categories that are ripe for re-examination and re-staging.

 

the new dish


at method, we think this category has gotten off-track and in our attempt to get this product right, we are launching our fourth foray into the dish soap category. dish soap is a pillar of the company, but we have never been satisfied with our ability to balance the needs of our business, customers and consumers.


many packaging designers will remember our iconic bottom dispensing “bowling pin” dish soap designed by Karim Rashid in 2001. the high cost and quirky nature of the design pushed us into a much more conventional execution several years later. this one we nicknamed the “butler” and it played very close to the category. this ultimately was the reason for its downfall. ‘not special enough!” was the protest from retailers and consumers alike. the decision was made to redesign again in an attempt to hit a sweet spot of price, form and function in the category. our next dish soap had to be iconic and “counter-worthy”, yet conform to the category norms in terms of format. the “leaf” bottle was the result.  while it looked beautiful, it quickly was likened to a “slippery fish” by people who picked up the bottle with wet hands. this simple miss allowed us to the see how blind we had become to the real challenge in the category: to serve the dish washer in search of a universally superior experience.  


the realization that people do their dishes in different ways is a key consumer insight that has been downplayed by the category and we largely overlooked. forgetting what we “knew” about doing dishes, we went back to basics. through direct observation, we discovered that there were three main modes of dishwashing: the “fill up the sink with soapy water” mode; the “dose the soap directly on the sponge” mode; and the “pour the soap directly on the dishes” mode. none of the products on the market served all three approaches and that’s the insight we used to inspire our latest design, the “dish pump”.  by simply putting the dish washing experience at the center of the proposition, and designing the soap and the package to actually help in the task, we have a product that does a great job of actually helping the dish washer. ionly wish it hadn’t taken four tries to get there!”
 

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summer comes but once a year

by annab, August 27, 2010

 

 

san francisco isn’t known for it’s warm summers, so when we do get a day of heat our office breaks out the shorts, sundresses and sunglasses. we’ll remember our 4-day heat wave this week as we pile on our jackets for another cold summer day.


“the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in san Francisco.”- mark twain

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salmonella prevention tips

by annab, August 26, 2010

salmonella

 (mugshot of salmonella)

 

 

there’s been a lot of talk in the news lately about salmonella. while we can’t do anything to help with the egg recall, we thought this was a good opportunity to talk about what you can do to control the spread of germs that can make you sick in the home.


here are some tips on how to disinfect your kitchen and help prevent salmonella transmission.

 

     1.    always wash your hands after using the bathroom + before and after handling

             food. use hot soapy water for 20 seconds or more to effectively clean them.


      2.    always wash plates and utensils thoroughly with hot water and soap before

             you prepare any food.  

      3.    correctly use your method antibacterial kitchen cleaners on food

             preparation surfaces:

 

               - to clean the surface: just spray and wipe.

 

               - to sanitize the surface: wet the surface with the spray. leave on for 30

              seconds. allow to air dry. sanitizing the surface does kill salmonella.

 

               - to disinfect the surface: wet the surface with the spray or wipes. leave for 10

              minutes. allow to air dry. disinfecting the surface also kills salmonella.

 

                 - the difference between sanitizing and disinfecting is that disinfecting kills a

               a higher percentage of germs than sanitizing.


      4.    prevent cross contamination. once a utensil/ plate has been used with raw

             meat, do not use it again without thoroughly washing it.

      5.    be aware of keeping food the correct temperature to prevent bacterial growth.

             a great resource for understanding how cold or hot to keep food is the

            USDA site.

for more on our antibacterial line, check out the faq’s here.


for more information on the salmonella outbreak, read more on the CDC or FDA.for more information on salmonella, learn more here.


hopefully this has helped clarify how to better protect your home.

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un-food-fight

by annab, August 25, 2010


just like teenagers can have crushes on their teachers, adults can have crushes on companies. it’s what is known as a “brand crush.” it happens when you adore everything about a company from their product, to their newsletter, to their facebook posts.


i officially have a brand crush on a local San Francisco company called Betabrand. ever since they hand delivered a pair of their USA pants straight to our office just in time for my boyfriend and me to crash the winter Olympics in Vancouver they have secured me as a fan.

 

last year betabrand (previously named cordarounds) had a food fight. random, right? i heard they were doing a sequel and knew this was the perfect opportunity to help them clean up a bit. check out our un-food-fight.


for extra credit, can you guess all the foods used in the un-food-fight? we'll randomly choose one correct respondent to receive a method laundry detergent 50 load bottle. but hurry you only have until August 27th by midnight PST! hint there are 17!

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take that, germs

by rachel, August 23, 2010

here at method, we’re on a mission to inspire happy, healthy homes. we’re also out to put the hurt on germs. and with some big seasons right around the corner (back to school, holidays, flu), this seems like a pretty good time to get a head start on fighting dirt and germs. please welcome method antibac -- our first line of EPA-registered botanical antibacterial cleaning products, including:

 

- method antibacterial kitchen cleaner, 28oz

- method antibacterial bathroom cleaner, 28oz

- method all purpose cleaning and disinfecting wipes, 35-count canister


we’ve partnered with the good folks at CleanWell™, makers of the thyme-based disinfecting technology, to bring you a patented antibacterial, antiviral and antimicrobial formula that kills 99.9% of household bacteria like E.coli, salmonella enterica, influenza A and H1N1 virus on hard, non-porous surfaces. 

 

our antibac bathroom spray is formulated especially to target soap scum and hard water stains while our kitchen cleaner is designed to cut through grease and grime.  both of these products are effective at killing 99.9% of household germs on hard, non-porous surfaces throughout any room in the home.  in bright colored bottles and nature-inspired scents of lemon verbena and spearmint, kicking germs to the curb with our new antibacterial cleaners will look and smell as good as it feels.

 

antibac is a new line for us and in the past, we’ve been pretty vocal about our decision not to develop disinfecting cleaners because we hadn’t found a technology that met our strict ingredient standards and principals. but we recognize that some people prefer to use antibacterial cleaners for surfaces like toilets and sinks and we’re excited to add botanical disinfecting cleaners to our home cleaning product family. antibac is now on U.S. store shelves at Target and other retailers across the country. they will be available soon on methodhome.com as well.

we’d love to hear what you think and answer any questions you might have.

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mango tree

by annab, July 30, 2010

 


i walked into the kitchen the other day to find these pictures and note pinned to our bulletin board. pretty cool.

 

what have you reused our containers for?

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heroes vs. villains

by annab, June 28, 2010

 


it’s that magical time of year again, when method’s small UK and Chicago team all come to the San Francisco office for our annual meeting/ prom. this is my second most favorite method tradition (first being our march madness annual ping pong tournament).


the tradition of a method prom started 5 years ago. we found we needed a way of bringing all our offices together (keep in mind this is still only 100 employees total) once a year to discuss businessy stuff and we figured as long as we were all together we might as well celebrate a little too. we didn’t want to throw some stuffy work gathering at a nice restaurant with passed hors d’oeurves. we wanted a PARTY complete with costumes, photo booth, and dj held at our local dive bar.


so here is a glimpse of our company meeting + prom 2010. the theme this year was heroes vs. villains. we wore capes during the day of meetings at the San Francisco Ferry Building and changed into our own creations for prom at night.


 

 

 


extra credit if you can name any the characters photographed.

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usa! usa!

by annab, June 23, 2010

 

 





our office gets in on the worldcup fun for an early morning (7:00am) game.usa! usa!

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nyc gets laundry smart

by rachel, May 4, 2010



exciting news! we’re teaming up with Goodwill Industries to offer new yorkers an easy way to spring clean their closets for a good cause with our ‘wash smart, give smart’ clothing donation truck in nyc from may 13 – 15. we don't have any pictures yet, but there will be a mobile laundry room housed in a glass truck that will appear at specific locations, allowing people to drop off new and gently worn clothing. we’ll take care of washing all items before delivering them to several Goodwill locations in new york to be resold.

 

thursday, may 13
10 AM – 6 PM
soho-- broadway between houston + prince

friday, may 14
10 AM – 6 PM
union square
 
saturday, may 15
11 AM – 7 PM
herald square -- 35th st. between 6th + broadway


passers-by are encouraged to spontaneously donate an item of clothing off their bodies, and the first 200 people who donate items each day will receive a free 25-load bottle of method laundry detergent. there will also be a photo station, samples, games and prizes, plus a few special guest appearances.
 
this is part of a bigger ‘laundry smarts’ movement we’re launching to  encourage people to re-think and improve the way they do laundry. stay tuned, more to come!

 

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vote daisy – show your flower power!

by annab, April 26, 2010

 

a certain manufacturer of bleach sent us a friendly note claiming that our use of any yellow daisy imagery is an infringement of their trademark. considering mother nature designed the daisy, not said bleach maker, we have a hunch she would object.

so should a corporation own the daisy? show your flower power at votedaisy.com and vote the fate of our little yellow friend.

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