When we’re taking a breaks from the salt mines of naming, we often cruise the latest posts on Vimeo - an international repository of short clips by animators and videographers ( http://vimeo.com/ ).

The interesting thing about Vimeo is that much of the best visual imagination springs from places our clients never consider for creative sourcing.

If you’re in tv production, Vimeo is already in your bookmarks file.  As a marketer, it may not be.

If you’re charged with promoting cars or electronics on tv or internet, have a look at Pipe Plant, ( http://vimeo.com/29841219 ), a 3-minute clip by Russian videographer Sasha Aleksandrov that could radically alter how you see what your viewers see.

To a marketer, it is obvious that color choices in socially visible products mirror consumer mood.

Design teams and consumer researchers labor mightily to nail the hues chosen for apparel, furniture, socially-purposed alcoholic beverages like vodka and whiskey, and (the big kahuna of social symbolism) vehicles.

To do this, they look backward (what happened last year, long term trends); sideways (what’s going on now that could affect what we want to project in identity-defining purchases); and forward (via the social sciences, including politics and economics).

They hire independent color labs and the consulting arms of makers of dyes, paints and pigments.

At NameLab, we were debating the significance of the fact that the 77% of automobiles delivered in 2010 were painted in “colorless colors”, which we noticed in an article in the excellent Wheels blog of the New York Times (Global Car Colors):

1. 1. Silver – 25 percent
2. 2. Black – 23 percent
3. 3. White – 16 percent
4. 4. Gray – 13 percent
5. Blue – 9 percent
6. Red – 8 percent
7. Brown/Beige – 4 percent
8. Green – 1 percent
9. Yellow/Gold – 1 percent

10.  Others – less than 1 percent

Does this mean that you should reconsider that proposed orange-and-blue beverage label?

We don’t know. But you have to admit it’s an interesting question.

In addition to monitoring design, development, packaging, testing, pricing, promotion and distribution, the Product Manager has a role that we rarely think about – defending the product from debasement at the hands of the bean counters.

We thought about it recently when one of us bought two new Toyota RAV4s to replace two aging Honda CR-Vs.  We don’t mean to pick on Toyota here.  Their product system is typical of auto manufacturers – but these cars are the real life example we have.

With tens of millions of owners, Toyota is a hugely valuable brand name in the fundamental sense of brand function; the brand you last bought is the default choice for the next purchase.  Considering the profit involved in a car sale, Toyota brand equity must be worth tens of billions of dollars.

Like a can of peas, a car is a physical object.  Your most recent experience of the actual object affects your perception of the brand more than all the commercials you’ve seen from the beginning of time.

When some bean counter proposes saving a few tenths of a cent by reducing the average number of peas per can from 156 to 148, the can-of-peas product manager defends the integrity of his product by pointing out the value of its brand equity.  Whether he wins or loses, he’s there to fight for his product.

Toyota is famously focused on squeezing every last cent out of component cost and every last minute out of assembly time to maximize profit.  If some purchasing guy can save a nickel on a flimsier aux input jack, there’s no RAV4 product manager to argue with him.  The cheap jack goes into the car and the purchaser (us in this case) has to jiggle his iPod cable to achieve a decent connection every time he gets into the car.

If some industrial engineer proposes to cut a few cents in materials or labor on attaching a heat shield to the exhaust manifold, there’s no product manager to object, so some of the heat shields rattle like one of ours does.  Sure the dealer will fix it (the service manager knows just where the problem lies), but it’s a nuisance for the buyer and a blemish on the brand.

If a purchasing guy can save a buck on battery, alternator or ignition electronics at a small cost in reliability, there’s no product manager to pound the table and ask: “Are you nuts?  The core of we’re selling is reliable transportation!” Thus the battery of one of our two new Toyotas slowly goes flat over a couple of weeks of typical use (the service manager recommends that we be sure to drive it every day).

Ours are small but annoying flaws. You’ve read a continuing stream of news stories about more dangerous failures and subsequent recalls. It’s sad for marketing professionals like us to watch a once-great brand like that be debased.

Next time you pass a product manager in the hall, smile and wave.  If you think about it, he or she protects your brand and your livelihood from the fate of Toyota.

Condos being built In North American cities today average about 600 square feet.  In some places, the average new-build unit is closer 500 square feet.  Few industry analysts expect this trend to reverse in the foreseeable future.

What’s going on (and how does it affect marketers)?

Young couples are crowding into cities. The young are mobile, and suburban housing tracts have become unattractive dead zones.  Competition for urban digs has raised the price of a square foot of condo.  But it’s more than price.  They simply don’t need the space.

Bookshelves? Magazine racks?  Replaced by an e-book reader.

CD/DVD storage?  Digital files live in a laptop, pad, smart phone, or “the cloud”.

Television?  That flat screen is just a moving picture on the wall. With network tv circling the drain of irrelevance and cable tv looking as tired as wired phone service ten years ago, the tv set as a dedicated appliance will probably disappear altogether.

Clothes?  With the demise of specialized office attire, closets can be smaller.

Foodstuffs? Cooking from scratch has been zapped by microwaves and take-home meals, so food storage and kitchen appliance needs shrink.

Downstairs from that 600 square foot condo you’ll find a garage with one parking space for every two or three or four units.  This dramatic reversal of the traditional one-space-per unit standard marks the confluence of zoning strategies to diminish urban traffic congestion; reduced utility of personal vehicles in cities where businesses don’t provide parking; and a perception among young people that a owning a car is ecologically immoral and fiscally irrational.   Public transport and internet-mediated car-share services will do just fine, thank you.

It’s obvious why residential downsizing matters.  With less room for “stuff”, it’ll be harder to sell stuff.

Clearly a boon to the planet, but maybe not so good for annual bonuses.

We all learned in kindergarten that “it’s good to share”.

Converging ecological, economic and social motives underlie “collaborative consumption” – a term Rachel Botsman coined in What’s Mine Is Yours for a new trend with seismic implications for marketers of many goods and some services.

Consumers of all ages are using the internet to share cars (whipcar.com); sports gear and power tools (snapgoods.com); dressy clothes (swishing.com); parking spaces (parkatmyhouse.com) and even a place to crash for a few days (couchsurfing.com).

In the 1/31/11 issue of The New Yorker Patricia Marx’s The Borrowers describes a mixture of bricks-and-mortar and internet businesses offering short-term use and/or passing-on of everything from designer handbags to children’s toys.

Because in most cases the sharer is paid a fee by the user, business gurus write all of this off as a way to turn your inventory possessions into pocket money. As Bill Clinton put it, “it’s the economy, stupid!”

But to us it looks like more than that.

Consumer sharing has the flavor of a rejection of the reckless consumption of the past 3 decades.  Not only do sharers feel smart for renting a weekend’s camping gear for $20 rather than buying same for $200 – or earning $20 tax-free bucks out of that tent, pack and sleeping bag in the garage – they feel good about conserving the planet’s resources their transactions.

Consumer sharing also has the scent of an emerging social media category.  Making a friend online is easier when you have something in common.  Being willing to share, posting offers online, and the experiences you have in sharing are fodder for online socialization.

Craigslist.com is the father of reuse and sharing (maybe ebay.com is the grandfather); its booming progeny may well change the dynamics of manufacturing and marketing.