Aesthetics of Toilet Bowl Cleaners and Hair Styles

There was this interesting interview with Virginia Postrel, the author of a new book on how aesthetics applies to business called The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness in Tom Peter’s latest newsletter.

The interview addresses how things we think of as serving only a functional purpose – like toilet bowl cleaners – are now becoming more aesthetically pleasing. Designers are actually creating nice looking models that people are willing to pay extra for to display in their bathrooms… though how impressed your family and friends will be with your sleek new toilet bowl cleaner remains to be seen. So, the article delves into the motivations of why anyone would even pay $12 vs. the $4 for a plain one. She continues by describing a quote from Hillary Clinton about her hair style and people’s reaction to her constantly changing it.

What that means is that whatever we choose to do aesthetically, including the choice to ignore aesthetics, will be interpreted by others as a way of saying something about who we are. You prefer to have people think you are who you think you are and not something else. If you’re talking about an individual, it’s how they wear their hair, how they dress. I talk about Hillary Clinton’s hair and the way people interpreted it, and the jokes she’s made about it. She’s quoted as saying, “The most important thing I’ve learned is to pay attention to your hair because everybody else will.”

Here was a woman who hadn’t paid attention to her hair and how people might interpret it, and suddenly there she was in the public eye. She didn’t have her own personal style. Whether people liked her or disliked her, they read into her changing hair styles meanings that might have been there or might not have been there. Because she hadn’t defined her own aesthetic, she wasn’t controlling the discussion. The same thing is true for business. If you’re running a restaurant, how you design the atmosphere will say something to your customers about who you expect them to be, about who you are. If you don’t do anything, if you just keep the building the way it was when you inherited it, or you put together a hodge-podge, whatever’s convenient, that will say something else.

The same thing is true with any materials you might design-brochures or trade show booths or anything like that. People will make interpretations about identity based on those things. And given that we have many, many choices and a lot more access to aesthetic elements than we might have had in the past, it’s less likely in any given case that there will be a safe default, something that will go completely unnoticed.

I think that’s a good example of why a clear, consistent look, feel, and message is key to a great marketing campaign. You can read the entire article on Tom Peter’s website.

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