By John Ahlman, Vice President, Xerox Global Experiential Marketing

Isn’t it true, that quite often the simplest things are the most elegant. Think the Barcelona chair designed by Mies van der Rohe, the Nike logo or the user experience on any Apple device. They’re instantly recognizable and memorable.

Yet, it’s really, really very difficult to manufacture products or ideas to be popular. Ever try to “make” something go viral? Good luck. It’s virtually impossible to predict what will actually catch fire with consumers.

Yesterday, we woke up to the sad news that Yankee great Yogi Berra passed away at the age of 90. Yogi was a beloved figure. He won 10 World Series for the NY Yankees and a Hall of Famer. He was a baseball legend, yet he’ll probably be remembered more for his folksy sayings including: “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” “You can observe a lot just by watching.” And “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

Yogi-isms found their way into American culture and the media. He was exploited in advertisements from everything from Puss ’n Boots cat food, Miller Lite beer, but perhaps most famously, Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink. Asked if Yoo-Hoo was hyphenated, he is said to have replied, “No, ma’am, it isn’t even carbonated.” His quotes were all accidental—they were never meant to exist beyond the next day’s sports page. Yet they were genius, sticky and elegant.

By John Ahlman, Vice President, Xerox Global Experiential Marketing

If you’re marketing a major metropolitan area like New York or Los Angeles, what would you want it to be associated with? You’d want to promote the energy of the nightlife, the haute couture of Fifth Avenue and Beverly Hills, or the excitement of seeing attractions such as the statue of Liberty or the Hollywood sign.

But what if your city conjured up thoughts of really crippling traffic gridlock?

Is there anything worse than being stuck in traffic? Few feelings are more frustrating than those moments in your car when you’re in bumper-to-bumper traffic, you can’t find a parking spot or every traffic light you encounter (or so it seems) is red.

And typically, the bigger the city, the bigger the problem. Drivers in the ten most-congested cities in the United States sit around 42 hours in traffic jams every year, wasting more than $121 billion in time and fuel while doing so.1

There’s no disputing that jams reduce the quality of life for everyone. And with 85 percent of the developed world predicted to be living in cities by 2050,2 the problem isn’t going away.

At Xerox, we love flow. Our solutions are helping cities all over the world re-engineer their transportation systems and traffic flows, and get people and goods where they need to be, quicker and with less hassle. We help authorities around the world deliver policy objectives and meet business goals. And we do it from our research centers to the delivery and execution of data analytics; from electronic tolling system to back-office platforms; and from proof of concept to parking meter operations.

There’s nothing our engineers love more than solving a tough congestion problem. We’ve even written an eBook about it.

Read Make it flow: Seven ways cities are fighting congestion and learn how cities all over the world are coming up with ingenious ways to tackle the causes of congestion, clear the clog and re-instate flow.