Tumi and the case of the talking suitcase
By
Yesterday, I puzzled a few readers.
Let me be more clear (and less alarming). The best way to do this is to talk by example.
Let’s begin with the Tumi bag I bought in Seattle last week.
What I want is a stream of messages from this piece of luggage. It can come in the tweet stream on my iPhone. Or it can print out in the handle of the bag itself. We are assuming the bag is equipped with wireless capability and GPS.
I like the idea of learning on the taxi to the airport that my Tumi bag is, in truth, a little afraid of flying. I like the idea of learning that when in Seattle last week it really liked that carpet in the elevator (pictured here). My Tumi could have an entire, entirely poetic, vocabulary for hotel surfaces. I like the idea that it is noticing things I don’t.
I love the idea of the hearing my bag murmur (by way of twitter) that the man at the check-in desk wasn’t really very polite. Or, more dramatically, that he has only 5 days to live. (The idea of a piece of luggage claiming mystical knowledge of the future is especially charming. Perhaps that’s just me.) I like the idea of luggage that’s a little bad tempered, put upon, inclined to grumble, quick to take offense.
I am not asking for a full time writer standing by. There are only so many hotels in Seattle. When GPS signals that I am staying at the Sorrento, I would be easy enough to determine where the bag is and what it is "seeing." When I am in any moving vehicle on the road, chances are it’s a cab. In other words, it wouldn’t be very hard to feed locational cues into a machine based grammar which could then generate messages so situationally sensitive they have the hum of veracity.
The larger issue is straight forward. We already charge inanimate objects with meanings. We do this routinely through the branding process. The question is are there other kinds of meanings that could be brought into play. They would be more companionable message, more customized and customizable, and, more to the marketing point, they would make Tumi a brand with whom I have a deeper bond. There is no brand loyalty like this loyalty.
How about this as an anthropological indicator. I don’t name my luggage at the moment. (In fact, I don’t think I name anything that’s inanimate.) But if my Tumi luggage were expressive in this way, I pretty certain I would give it a name. Maybe this is what we should be shooting for. Naming. If and when the consumer names the product, that’s when we know something remarkable has been accomplished in the way of meaning manufacture. We have so animated the product that consumers no long see goods as inanimate.
Less alarming. No?
13 Comments
February 2nd, 2010 at 1:46 pm
I get what you’re saying completely. Products can take on whatever meaning we need/want them to in our lives. As a very nomadic sort, I use brands as anchor points in my life – for example, I would only ever use Tide (or Ariel in the UK/Ireland) as these have been with me wherever I have been. In a sense, some brands are a substitute ‘family home’ for me…
February 2nd, 2010 at 5:56 pm
You still in Seattle? I am the artist/cultural officer in residence at the Sorrento – love to grab a drink if you are still in town.
http://www.onepot.org
http://www.nightnightnight.com
http://www.songsforeatinganddrinking.com
February 2nd, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Anthropomorphic projection… how can we achieve that if a product can’t communicate with us in the way your Tumi does? Is it enough to place human like features on a product (a representative face maybe) or do we need to go further and build personality into products.
Not a wholey new idea however… Ask a New Beetle driver when their car ‘told’ them its name!
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:52 am
So an extension to this idea <> where the bag isn’t just handed down, but can tell you what it’s been up to. Could make second-hand stuff much more desirable than new….
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:53 am
Was trying to post this link to Howies Hand Me Down Bag…
http://hmd.howies.co.uk/story.html#idea
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:35 am
I love Jon’s concept of the Tumi bag that records it’s story somehow. This would be particularly good for items that are with you during special events in a person’s life. Their watch, their ring, their wallet, the things that you always have on you.
However, I’m not sure a strong desire to have a talking bag is sane. I’m just saying.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:41 am
I’m reminded of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, where a recurring character is the Luggage, a magical trunk that follows its owner anywhere, and somehow expresses opinions – Pratchett uses cute language to describe, for instance, the Luggage staring disapprovingly despite not having eyes.
I also like the idea of cryptic messages coming from my environment that I can interpret as I want or need to. The power of fortune cookies (or horoscopes or Tarot readings) is that we imbue them with meaning based on our current circumstances. If such messages were coming from objects in my environment in a non-overwhelming way, that would make the world more mystical and alive with meaning.
February 3rd, 2010 at 5:48 pm
The re-enchantment of the world of objects is one of the last consequences of technology many would have predicted. But, in fact, the life of the object is now an object of interest in itself. Just in time for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland!
PS – The only “object” I’ve named recently is my car’s GPS. I call her “Gypsy.” I love her and I think she has a crush on me, too.
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:24 pm
I must reluctantly note that, as is true for Tom G., my wife and I refer to our GPS by name, Zelda – which has an appropriate Gypsy connotation. There is something deeply mysterious about a device that: knows where you are before you do (”..prepare to turn left on Main Street”), corrects your silly mistakes (”make the next legal ‘U’ turn”), can see into the future (”.. congestion ahead in 6.2 miles on Route 287.”) and provides all that advice with a consistently calm and steady voice. I don’t think Zelda has a crush on me as I will take “short cuts” of which she is apparently unaware, only to have her repeatedly insist on correcting me.
As for a “Talking Tumi” I do like the idea of getting additional insight from another’s perspective, but wonder if what Grant is describing about his wish for his Tumi’s communication is actually like Proust’s line in Remembrance of Things Past about his grandmother – which goes something like “..her words were now no more than a reflection of my own thoughts about her” I wish I could find the exact reference.
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:45 pm
I was once riding around in a car, joy riding actually, and we decided to ignore the GPS lady. I don’t think her name was Gypsy or Zelda but I could be wrong. Anyhow, we decided to go off the route we had logged. Gypsy-Zelda kept correcting us…and correcting us until there was a long pause. And I swear to God you could hear sobbing.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:00 pm
From a company perspective, wouldn’t companies prefer people to refer to these objects as “my Tumi” “my Apple” or “my Baileys” … instead of giving the object another persona, non-brand name?
Because one might forget who provided such as lovely companion, and then it’s less easy to tell others where they too can find a similar companion.
That said, you are right that the idea of objects which connect with us is a key code for marketeers connecting with people wanting, desiring, buying things that they are willing to bring close to them, things they want to be surround by — dare I say, be intimate.
Is it creating intimacy the key, not just a name?
February 4th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
I think you’ve just invented the notion of the insecure product – an object that is so unsure of it’s own innate worth and ability to perform it’s function that it needs to remind you how cute and likable it is too. Surely the higher the value of the product, the less you’d want this kind of invasive and inauthentic babble emanating from your stuff? (OK, you can guess I’m not a big Twitter user…)
Sure we want to make a connection with our objects, but we want it to be our own connections, and the objects to be vessels ready to be filled with our own histories. Sure we want it’s heritage to be part of that connection, but heritage is a canvas of values upon which we paint our own story. Even when buying a second hand object, it’s what you don’t know about it that’s just as thrilling as what you do – the burn mark here, the enigmatic monogram there, that allow you to project your own story onto it and make it your own.
The idea of an object being desperate to be liked seems to me to be entirely at odds with idea of expediting an emotional connection to an object. That certainly the case with people, which, if we’re talking anthropomorphosising objects, seems to be an appropriate analogy.
Maybe what we should be thinking about is how an object might be designed to absorb its shared history with its owner, perhaps to be decoded someday by a future owner, who fills in the gaps with a narrative that’s relevant to his or her own life?
February 4th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
@Martin-
British designers Dunne and Raby have a conceptual project called Technological Dreams from 2007 which includes a robot that is needy and depends on its owner, not in a desperation to be liked, but to develop a bond and even a form of control of the owner. http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk/content/projects/10/0
Also, I very much enjoyed ‘heritage is a canvas of values upon which we paint our own story.’ Well said.