This post below is from a colleauge at Brandimage, Michael Colton with whom I have spent many hours discussing why it is, people buy the things we design.
BRAND BLOODLINES
Understanding Variance in the Endowment of Visual Brand Equity
To most, shopping the aisles of a grocery store might seem like a rather humdrum experience—carried out in haste in order to restock the fridge and the pantry. There are an odd few, like myself, who go to the store, not to shop, but to observe behavior. No. Not of people—the behavior of the products on the shelf. It’s a Supermarket Serengeti and I a brand-thropologist. It’s a lush habitat of overlapping ecosystems each populated with brands, like species, trying to survive and perpetuate themselves into the future. Their survival depends on cunning awareness and agility in attempts to differentiate, manage brand assets and respond to competitive threats. These brand species mark their territories (as a warning to in-category predators), elaborately posture their assets to attract a mate (you, the consumer!) and even protect their fledgling sub-brands (to insure their survival into the future).
When surprisingly new product line extensions hit the shelf, it’s an indicator that its future looks bright. Perhaps the brand was truly ready to parent—resourceful enough to endow its equity towards nurturing and protecting its spitting image. Visually, the parent brand bestows favor and influence upon its fledgling product lines. To be successful, the parent brand should appear to be proudly continuing its responsiveness to consumer demands and its relevance in a rapidly changing world, while the offspring sub-brand gains the immediate time-honored, hard-earned credibility of the parent.
Simply cashing in parent brand equity in the form of an endorsement is ill advised. The supermarket is just too dangerous a place for such low-level parental care. There are too many predatory competitors and parasitic retailer brands waiting for the opportunity to prey upon the innocent and optimistic brainchild of R&D. There are certainly financial efficiencies to slotting sub-brands into endorsement-based brand architecture. However, what marketers may be forgetting is that growing a brand by introducing products line extensions is as much about defending the entirety of the portfolio and its distribution of equities as it is about making the consumer aware that there is something new from a source they know and trust.
Some growth strategies may require a stronger demonstration of parental guardianship. For example, brands intent on rapid line-expansion usually require a wholesale reevaluation of parent brand meaning and a complete rethinking of brand architecture.
Incidentally, a high level of visual consistency within a portfolio is dramatically on the rise. It’s a defensive response and an effective tactic for warding of retailer brand encroachment. The hope is that store brands will be less likely to get away with such blatant mimicry. In turn retail brands will appear to be conspicuous deliverers of cost of entry quality and manipulative intent.
There is now further evidence that threatening encroachments bring about higher levels of visual consistency. Enter the House of Brands—throwing its weight around by knitting together multiple brands within a common look. Could it be that they are now on the offensive, testing retail brands and their willingness to ante up to a higher level of value add? If so, those who rest their laurels on the endorsement strategy should take heed—this defensive posture (higher levels of visual consistency) may define the conditions for success in the Supermarket Serengeti for some time to come.
Despite the best efforts of the design community to the contrary, design is still struggling to influence companies in meaningful ways. The fault lies mostly within the design profession itself, which is unable to supply leadership equal to the current demand.
Instead, brands that want to lead by design are being increasingly influenced by all sorts of persuasive leaders, many from outside of design including, unfortunately, management consultants. Nothing wrong with management consultants, of course, except when they begin to advise management about design. It's kind of like getting financial advice from your doctor. Smart person, just out of his/her depth. Even so, company management tends to listen closely to these folks.
In order to leverage the same level of influence with decision makers, it is wise for designers to choose their battles carefully. Designers would do well to focus on a few things they do well, such as creating design that endures and devising repeatable process models for developing product offerings. Companies desperately need to develop good habits around how and why they develop products and brands. These habits can sustain a designer's or a company's vision, just as great ideas will sustain themselves for a long, long time.
Every year thousands of ideas are hatched and thousands of products are introduced. As I discussed in a previous post, few will endure. Of those that do, how many will survive a decade or, better yet, multiple decades? There are several distinguished companies who make products that do. One great example is Lamy, the German pen company. Lamy is an independent, family-owned enterprise, which was established in 1930. The Lamy brand has existed since 1952. It still sells pens originally designed in the '60s and '70s. Lots of pens. With an annual production of over 6 million writing instruments a year, Lamy today is not only a market leader but also a design brand with global reach and respect.
When I see this amazing leverage of technology and design, I have to ask myself: why doesn't the same model work for cell phones, music players, refrigerators, cars, TVs, etc.? Why is there the constant need to replace them?
The truth is that design thinking, combined with sustainable ideas and sustainability for that matter, will create enduring business successes.
But even great "sustainability" lessons are sometimes forgotten over time and forcibly relearned through competition. Take, for example, last decade's magnificently inefficient and tremendously successful introduction of the super-sized SUV class of automobiles. It was as if an oil crisis and near competitive take-over of the car business had never before happened. Look where we are now.
Let's face it, the idea that you can make products from the last ones, or develop business models that establish re-use as a vehicle for profit are pretty fantastic ideas. Combine this with a little sophisticated work around design languages and vector strategies for creating innovation pipelines, shake and stir, and you have a pretty potent design cocktail. It's the kind of thinking that may stick around for a while and establish some serious influence over time. This is how a design-driven brand like Herman Miller, a furniture company with equal amounts of design and sustainability in its soul, will survive a down economy with its brand intact.
Like-minded retailers Whole Foods and Trader Joe's leverage creative retail thinking with sustainable ideas to great success. So does brand giant SC Johnson, a CPG company (consumer packaged goods), and it has for a very long time.
With stiff competition forcing the need for short term gains, sustainable thinking and enduring process models might be a hard sell, but sell hard we must. The methods companies employ in developing products are in many ways even more important than the executions. Future design-thinking that excludes longevity as a priority is flawed. Non-sustainable, ephemeral business successes will fade. Designers can increase their impact and influence by creating not just timeless designs, but also the systems and models that allow the repeat of multiple new products, developed in responsible and efficient ways. Management should listen closely to designers who lead in this area.
Mark Dziersk is the VP Design at Brandimage-Desgrippes & Laga, one of the world's largest design and branding firms. At brandimage, Dziersk has worked on projects for clients ranging from Dove to Banana Republic to a pop-up store for Henri Bendel. Dziersk joined brandimage in 2007, after 13 years at the Chicago product design firm Herbst Lazar Bell, where he and his teams won dozens of awards for products as diverse as the Motorola NFL Coaches' Headset, to the first-ever single use camera for Kodak. Dziersk, himself, holds over 100 patents.
Dziersk gives back to his larger professional community as well, having served on the board of the Industrial Designers Society of America and as president of the Society in 1998. He also acted as executive editor of IDSA's premier publication, Innovation, introducing new design elements and recruiting authors from outside the design field. Mark's course, "Essentials of Industrial Design," in Northwestern University's Master of Product Development program, helps left-brained types get comfy with their inner tattooed design side.
A decade ago the ability to generate ideas for businesses was a terrific and unique offering, and often a good business. Many companies and consultants were conducting workshops aimed at coming up with ideas, hundreds of ideas, and getting paid handsomely to do it. Today, it seems most of the businesses I deal with have more than enough ideas, it's determining the right ones to invest time and energy into that is the trick.
In the hallways of Northwestern University, where I teach product design, a common and often-quoted statistic is that eight out of ten new product introductions fail. Of the two that make it through the first year, eight out of ten of those fail in year two. What a dismal success rate. In order to make sure your new product introduction is not one of the "never had a chance" crowd, try some of these strategies:
1. Don't have a casual relationship with the truth. Or, said another way, how a brand works and what is inside, had better line up with what the outside promises. Brands that over promise and oversell, be it through styling or labeling, will meet a certain, swift death in today's hypercompetitive market. They will be ratted out on the Internet by legions of anonymous, enabled, pitchfork-wielding consumers ready to unmask snake oil wherever it's detected. If you don't want to end up in the innovation death pile, make sure what you're selling lives up to the hype. If it doesn't, rather than pushing it at people, you'd be better off reconsidering whether you should do it at all.
2. Side effects can kill repurchase. An enchanting basil-scented cleaning product that smells as wonderful as the picture suggests, turns into a ultimately disappointing consumer experience when it leaves a streaky film in sunlight. Or how about this: Take a popular kids' drink, concentrate it, put it into a squeeze bottle, squeeze it into a glass of water and POW! Instant drink. Great idea, right? Until you realize that the package you've just created, in the hands of a middle schooler, is a squirt gun filled with permanent clothes staining ammunition that is stickier than flypaper. If the first moment of truth is purchase, and the second is use, it's really the third moment, when someone comes back to buy it again--or not--that makes or breaks the business.
3. If the emperor has no clothes, say so. "Right, JB!,we are on it, great idea!" Or, as Monty Python would say, "Splunge." Have the courage to stand up to nutty ideas no matter where they originate. As long as the quality of the idea is your motivation, what formerly might have gotten you fired, could make you a new product hero today. Find ways to get around company politics, skewer sacred cows, and re-invent tired protocols, and your solutions will have a better chance of connecting. If consumer behavior and purchase habits have changed dramatically, then by logic, the same old, same old will not work to develop new, killer solutions to problems.
4. Knock yourself off before someone else does. When the program is near completion, and the rollout is planned, gather all the unused concepts off the floor, especially the ones that were too "far out," and start three new initiatives for trying to outdo your product before it even debuts. By knocking yourself off before others do, you may learn some important things about the product you are about to introduce. At a minimum, this strategy will allow you to develop a thicket of patents to interfere with future would- be lampreys. Then double down by staging these "knock yourself offs" as future pipeline ideas, or as I like to call them, "Vectored" solutions. You will eventually have created a continuous innovation stream.
5. Go fast even if you don't need to. It sounds counter-intuitive, but in the right situation it can be a wildly successful technique. I had a client who never did any insight work or research. Office products. We must have made ninety of them one summer alone. The company was very successful. The client would identify a need via observation and common sense deduction, and then work the answer until it was right at breathtaking speed. (It was Gladwell's "Blink" thesis in action.) We made many hundreds of product prototypes, and threw them out there until some connected. A handful of hits more than compensated for the more abundant misses. There was joy and uninhibited creativity in the process and the work felt fresh.
6. Facebook is the new focus group. If you are working on ideas, instead of keeping them secret, put them out there for response. At minimum, use the Internet and chat rooms and social networks--or even a forum like this--to test them. Sharing content is part of a new attitude around understanding user experience. If there is a "reveal" issue, you can cloak it. Use the flip of the Web anonymity issue highlighted in point one. Find out what the tribe or community of people who are invested and aligned around the issue honestly think and you will have an early understanding if your product is headed for success...or pointed toward the dreaded failure bin.
Mark Dziersk is the VP Design at Brandimage-Desgrippes & Laga, one of the world's largest design and branding firms. At brandimage, Dziersk has worked on projects for clients ranging from Dove to Banana Republic to a pop-up store for Henri Bendel. Dziersk joined brandimage in 2007, after 13 years at the Chicago product design firm Herbst Lazar Bell, where he and his teams won dozens of awards for products as diverse as the Motorola NFL Coaches' Headset, to the first-ever single use camera for Kodak. Dziersk, himself, holds over 100 patents.
Dziersk gives back to his larger professional community as well, having served on the board of the Industrial Designers Society of America and as president of the Society in 1998. He also acted as executive editor of IDSA's premier publication, Innovation, introducing new design elements and recruiting authors from outside the design field. Mark's course, "Essentials of Industrial Design," in Northwestern University's Master of Product Development program, helps left-brained types get comfy with their inner tattooed design side.
What if something you thought you knew to be true, turned out to be exactly the opposite? What if an approach you imagined was working for you was actually working against you?
Imagine if it were true, for example, that almost nobody buys a product or service anymore simply because they need it, or because its price is the right price? That, even in an economic downturn, they have to want it as much as need it before they buy? It's a difficult concept to grasp because, at the end of the day, it's not about rational thought. That notion is a wake-up call for products and brands who have built their businesses on pure reason.
Ask Gerald Zaltman, a Harvard scholar who suggests in his seminal book How Customers Think that only 5% of consumer purchasing behavior is based on rational thought processes, suggesting that 95% is due to subconscious motivation. I know it's a hard statistic to swallow, but consider this: what if he's only even half right?
The truth is, most corporations spend 95% of their time obsessing about the five percent. How big should we make the logo? What messages are we missing? What is the brand saying? Let's add (pick one, or several): "New!" "Improved!" "Step right up!" "Bargains galore!" (The classic parody of this approach, of course, is the YouTube video of what iPod packaging would look like if Microsoft had designed it.)
Rational purchasing behavior isn't the only widely-held marketing myth. What about that old chestnut "sex sells?" According to neuroscience expert Martin Lindstrom, the only thing sex sells well, is well...sex. In fact, it actually gets in the way of consumers remembering what the product or brand is all about.
In addition, Lindstrom suggests that too much messaging on a product's packaging can actually prevent a sale. Logos and words can engage the rational mind, causing people to actually think harder about making a purchase. It's a counter-intuitive notion, but then think about the effectiveness of the quiet logos on a bottle of POM Wonderful pomegranate juice, or a Method product, or the entire Apple product line up.
In 1957, the average grocery store had 4000 sku's (units) on its shelves. Today it's 47,000. A typical hypermarket has more than 167,000. There are now simply too many products on shelves, they tend to overpromise, and people are fed up. Especially in these tough times, people want simplicity and authenticity. That's the exact thing most great designs provide naturally, and the distinction that helps brands earn a place in consumers' hearts.
Recent studies have suggested that, even in times of economic downturn, people continue buying really differentiated products, products that make them feel good. Some of these are authentic "heritage" brands, those you remember from when you were a kid (think of the recent commercials for Post Shredded Wheat, the cereal that put the "no" in innovation or Dove soap). They are reliable; they convey indulgence but only as the result of real quality. Some are value brands shaded by an umbrella of trust. Sometimes people will spend a lot of money for one exceptional thing that really makes their life better and they know it will last for a while. They can't really explain why...they just will.
Mark Dziersk is the VP Design at Brandimage-Desgrippes & Laga, one of the world's largest design and branding firms. At brandimage, Dziersk has worked on projects for clients ranging from Dove to Banana Republic to a pop-up store for Henri Bendel. Dziersk joined brandimage in 2007, after 13 years at the Chicago product design firm Herbst Lazar Bell, where he and his teams won dozens of awards for products as diverse as the Motorola NFL Coaches' Headset, to the first-ever single use camera for Kodak. Dziersk, himself, holds over 100 patents.
Dziersk gives back to his larger professional community as well, having served on the board of the Industrial Designers Society of America and as president of the Society in 1998. He also acted as executive editor of IDSA's premier publication, Innovation, introducing new design elements and recruiting authors from outside the design field. Mark's course, "Essentials of Industrial Design," in Northwestern University's Master of Product Development program, helps left-brained types get comfy with their inner tattooed design side.
The topic of design has generated a lot of buzz lately--so much, in fact, that some suggest that the renewed interest in all things creative is a passing fad. Not exactly. If we let history be our guide, we'll see that there's a cycle at work here, and in my view we are presently half way through it. Let's call it the Design Cycle. Case in point: JC Penney. Not many people remember that not so long ago, a design job at this now undistinguished department store was a coveted position for a designer. JC Penney had its own design staff and was promoting design. Sure, it was '70s design, but design none the less. JC Penney was today's Target.
There's no doubt that we are in a tough economy, but while the current recession may be more severe than some earlier ones it, too, is part of a cycle. Since 1854 there have been 33 periods of economic contraction and expansion. That's 33 tough economies of various duration, and there are sure to be more. The same is true of the current interest in design. Design cycles in a robust way, with what appears to be about a 20-year sweet spot. JC Penney's rise and fall in the design world really boils down to survival of the fittest in the marketplace.
Let's take a look at design's boom-and-bust cycle:
Late 1920s to mid-1940s:
In the late '20s early '30s, with the move to an industrial age from an agricultural age, design rose to prominence with celebrated architects and designers such as Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, and the formation of the Bauhaus. Then the Depression hit and design stayed in a slump until the end of World War II.
1960s to 1970s:
The mid-century to the early seventies brought another revival of interest. Herman Miller embraced Charles Eames, Braun was the era's Apple-equivalent, and JC Penney was the retail world's Target. Then, things such as finance and distribution became more important. Enter Wal-Mart, exit design.
Late 1990s to today:
Fast forward to the late '90s, with a new surge of interest in design, and here we are now, 10 years in. It is great to be able to name all kinds of wonderful design successes of the last ten years: the Kindle, Pom Wonderful, and the Mini, among them...and anticipate those of the next ten. Brands and companies that really want to get on board should invest now because 2018 just isn't that far away.
A quick peek under the kimono of the companies where design has always been great offers an additional perspective. At Bang & Olufsen and Sony, design not only defines the brand, but is built into the fabric of a company as a core business strategy. These firms are organizations with long term staying power when it comes to creativity and innovation, and design will always be a critical element to their success and longevity.
As the next ten years play out, the next new thing will surely appear. My money's on social networking and Internet retailing diminishing the relevance of design for some. When it comes to investing in design, whether you're in it for either the short or long term, now is the moment, because I think I see the top of the hill.
Mark Dziersk is the VP Design at Brandimage-Desgrippes & Laga, one of the world's largest design and branding firms. At brandimage, Dziersk has worked on projects for clients ranging from Dove to Banana Republic to a pop-up store for Henri Bendel. Dziersk joined brandimage in 2007, after 13 years at the Chicago product design firm Herbst Lazar Bell, where he and his teams won dozens of awards for products as diverse as the Motorola NFL Coaches' Headset, to the first-ever single use camera for Kodak. Dziersk, himself, holds over 100 patents.
Dziersk gives back to his larger professional community as well, having served on the board of the Industrial Designers Society of America and as president of the Society in 1998. He also acted as executive editor of IDSA's premier publication, Innovation, introducing new design elements and recruiting authors from outside the design field. Mark's course, "Essentials of Industrial Design," in Northwestern University’s Master of Product Development program, helps left-brained types get comfy with their inner tattooed design side.
Design thinking is currently an "It" concept, the topic of countless books and blogs and conference panels. While it can mean a lot of different things to different people, for me, design thinking is a methodology, a tool, a killer app, and a problem-solving protocol to be used on virtually any problem. It can be equally effective in designing a new product or creating a new brand, to envisioning a new approach to health care or to reinventing city management. Mayor Daley in Chicago, where I live, is a pretty effective design thinker. That's right, Mayor Daley.
Design thinking isn't the sole province of the insular world of design and designers. Every year, I learn this lesson over again in the class I teach in "Design and Design Thinking" at Northwestern University. The mostly left-brain, linear thinking, engineering professionals in the class never fail to blow me away with how quickly and effectively they ladder up on the idea.
Today we are facing many tough problems in business, in our communities, and in our society as a whole. This pliable and effective methodology is truly part of the answer. Consequently, it has migrated into the mainstream. It can be a great boon to problem solving, but it's not without its pitfalls.
Get Clarity about Equity
Brand equity used to belong to the Madmen of Madison Avenue. But advertising is broken now. It simply doesn't work like it used to, and won't ever again. Advertisers used to tell people what they want. Now customers, enabled by the Internet and social networks, are telling companies what they want. The truth of the consumer experience is in the doing and that is where the equity lies. Don't listen to anyone telling you what the brand equity "should" be if it doesn't start with the consumer.
Designers are the Storytellers
Authenticity in the consumer experience results in a story, not the other way round. A story has emotion, narrative, and memories built into it. I tell stories in every presentation, every chance I can. In a world bloated with messages, a story is sometimes the only thing people will remember. When I mention James Dyson, they remember how discouraging he found it to see how vacuum cleaners work, how many prototypes it took to get the one he was designing right, how elated he was at figuring out the answer! Now Target can't keep Dyson cleaners on the shelf at $400 per; his competitors struggle at $99. The product performs; the story makes it memorable.
The Ergonomics of Understanding
Design thinking starts with empathy and perception around what people actually need and do, as opposed to what they say they want. This, in turn, mandates new processes for evaluation and new metrics for measurement. It may even require the courage to make decisions that run counter to metrics. That's the decision Herman Miller designers faced when focus groups told them that people thought the first Aeron chair would be a failure.
Good Design is Good Business
Rumor has it that Dutch Boy saw something in the neighborhood of a 300% lift after re-inventing its paint can to have a twist-off lid. 300% How many companies would be thrilled with a 7% increase in sales?
Design Thinking Starts at the Very Beginning
Design has always had a place in the product development process, but too often it's been in the middle, used as a way to improve a product's aesthetics, or at the end, when it's used to create attractive packaging, or a sizzling presentation for the client. But those design add-ons can't ensure success. Before setting off on any mission, design thinking protocol asks us to step back for a moment and begin by challenging the problem to be solved in the first place. Is this the right way to frame this problem? Does the world need another one of these gadgets? The answers to those questions potentially save a lot of wasted effort and ensure a better result.
Designers Need to Be Orchestra Conductors
Design thinkers need to be able to mobilize cross functional teams. That requires a skill set that includes effective leadership, the ability to inspire, respect of other competencies, and equal measures of charm and manic control. It's not the usual stuff you get in design school, but it should be.
Keep Design Assassins in the Crosshairs
"We did that here once. I t didn't work." "We tried that three years ago. Customers hated it." "That's not the way we do things here." How many times have you been in a meeting and heard comments like those? Or, worse, been the one making them? Keep it up and you to can become a Designosaur. Design thinkers figure out ways to overcome resistance to new ideas.
Use Your Head Before Your Hands
Design thinkers look past a project to the next project, to the next step in the strategy. They look sideways to the tangents that are affected by the result, and longer term to the investment required as a result of solving the problem currently in front of the team. No problem is solved in isolation--either from the past, or from the future.
Be a Good Shepherd
Most design thinkers agree that the goal for any project should be the best result for the smallest investment, and the biggest effect for the least amount of effort and the least amount of resources. Efficiency, in short, is at the core of every truly wonderful design or system.
Obsessive Compulsives Welcome Here
I remember once attending a meeting where I pointed out an obvious deficiency in design and was told that it would take too much time and effort to fix it, that the investment of capital and energy would not be worth the return. While it was, perhaps, true at the time, the incident raised concerns about the organization's culture and attitudes that led to that moment. "Good enough" is no longer good enough. There's now too much competition from a flattened world that's getting better at answering true consumer and societal needs. Maniacal attention to detail, obsessive attention to brand equity, and a laser-like focus on superlative results are all key parts of the formula for success in the future.
Mark Dziersk is the VP Design at Brandimage-Desgrippes & Laga, one of the world's largest design and branding firms. At Brandimage, Dziersk has worked on projects for clients ranging from Dove to Banana Republic to a pop-up store for Henri Bendel. Dziersk joined Brandimage in 2007, after 13 years at the Chicago product design firm Herbst Lazar Bell, where he and his teams won dozens of awards for products as diverse as the Motorola NFL Coaches' Headset, to the first-ever single use camera for Kodak. Dziersk, himself, holds over 100 patents.
Dziersk gives back to his larger professional community as well, having served on the board of the Industrial Designers Society of America and as president of the Society in 1998. He also acted as executive editor of IDSA's premier publication, Innovation, introducing new design elements and recruiting authors from outside the design field. Mark's course, "Essentials of Industrial Design," in Northwestern University’s Master of Product Development program, helps left-brained types get comfy with their inner tattooed design side.
Recently, to prepare for a talk at Northwestern University’s - Master of Product Development (MPD) lectures series, I put together a title list of ten top things design thinkers will need to embrace in serious ways in the coming few years. Many thanks to my colleague Julie Anixter for her help.
While in no order of priority they are all imperatives to avoid what I call becoming a Designasaur.
A Designasaur is a company or person that thinks and acts like it’s still 1985. Consumers have changed dramatically, approaches need to be re-evaluated and Design thinking is the center of much of what is and will be effective about these new strategies.
So here’s the list of ten;
1.Clarity about Equity
2.Designers are your Storytellers
3.Ergonomics of Understanding
4.Good Design is Good Business
5.Early and Often
6.Orchestra Leader
7.007 for Design Assassins
8.Head before Hands
9.Good Shepherd
10.Single Mindedness
I will use this list as a framework and blog one or two of these titles, in this order, over the next few months. In the meanwhile if you would rather, you can see the talk here;
Recently, I was researching an article and found out that CNN and MTV were both launched during the double dip recessions of the early eighties. Also the 1974 recession led to the creation of discount brokerage Charles Schwab. So I bounced this off a colleague Julie Anixter, and she cam up with five other proof points of how advantage can be seized regardless, because or in spite of downward trends, by delivering what people want.
1. President Obama did not want to give up his Blackberry. So the NSA built him one. A very special one. Blackberry could never buy this PR..."Valued conservatively in the tens of millions."
2. Due to heavy customer demand, Kindle is (still) sold out. Amazon tells us to ORDER KINDLE NOW to reserve your place in line. Meanwhile, 7555 people have invested their time writing reviews.
3. Our friend Mandy Aftel, the leading natural perfumer, had a brisk Holiday season at www.aftelier.com, with her from-botanicals-only fragrances, her one of kind solid perfumes and scented teas.
4. Ted 2010 overflowed. Chris Andersen humbly declares "Registration for membership of TED for the coming year, including the TED2010 conference in Long Beach, has been open for a week and, shockingly, we're nearly full. Applications received after the weekend will probably have to go on our waitlist."
5. And in possibly the greatest business news to descend upon the scrapping heap of our recession, Apple posts record results:
“Amid a deepening recession and an intensifying controversy over the health of its chief executive, Apple reported strong first-quarter profits on Wednesday that surprised analysts and handily beat Wall Street’s expectations. The Apple flagship on Fifth Avenue in New York was bustling on Christmas Eve. Apple sold iPods and laptops briskly in the quarter, just as the recession was crushing many other retailers. Apple said robust sales of iPods and laptops buoyed the company amid a terrible holiday shopping season that hurt nearly all other technology and consumer electronics firms." ( by the way, the IPod was introduced I the middle of the Dot.Com bust of early 2000)
What does it mean? Big, small, niche-y, jumbo. Desire lives, and drives with fervor the transactions that keep the economy afloat.
In a down economy the natural instinct is to draw inward. Cut spending, slash budgets pull back initiatives and horde cash and resources. The problem with that approach is that a down economy may in fact be the best time to win by being creative. That means investing in creativity when the competition isn't. When it comes to leveraging an investment in innovation and "Design Thinking" it requires an investment in not only capital but risk as well. To succeed by design in a down market not only will require the opposite of withdrawal but ad some risk thrown in for good measure.
Experience suggests that all three elements are required to appear in abundance. When the formula is adhered to it almost never fails. Withdraw risk and reward opportunities are diminished. Without a creative approach risk is simple ill- advised. Too little of each creativity and risk and the return may not be worth the effort.
Companies who slash investments in their Innovation efforts may find the damage to their long term interests far outweigh the short term money savings. After all the playing field in almost every industry is global now and the competition may not be withdrawing at all, in fact they may be investing.
Every year there is a Conference held in California. The Technology, Entertainment and Design, or TED Conference. This year's TED Conference sold out early. Perhaps the world's most expensive Design gathering, which also expanded it's capacity by changing venues, sold out in record time.
Companies that are succeeding by leveraging design adhere to the counter intuitive notion that to innovate quickly we need to think long term. A long view is what allows capital to be aligned, efficiencies to occur and leadership to orchestrate efforts of diverse teams on diverse assignments.
The failure of some recent business institutions dependent on tried and true methods is in many ways because they benefited the few. Design is a truly populist endeavor. Everyone benefits from the answers to problems created and made in ways that change the world around us meaningfully. Failure of old ways actually clears the path for creative thinking and new models.
For example, companies are placing a new priority on achieving design solutions that reflect well on the earth and their business practices. Advantages in sustainability will create game changing opportunities. Every company that source reduces material and shrinks footprints etc...will on the one hand achieve some success in sustainable practice. On the other hand these positives may be hard to discern on shelf or in use, in fact in some cases may actually make it harder to sell or use, opening the door for truly creative re-inventions of existing paradigms. New use models, new sharing and return models etc…game changers instead of incremental improvement.
When things aren't going well sure, the first reaction generally is to take fewer chances not more.
"Bold moves in bad times can pay-off big...a recession creates winners and losers just like a boom". (Wharton Professor Mauro Guillen)
Everyone will cut back on travel and freeze hiring; design is still going to be the differentiating factor after, but also during a recession. If sales as are harder to come by then the buying propositions presented need to be more compelling and design is the best way to do that.
The job ahead is made additionally difficult by the kind of cultural hurdles that must be cleared to leverage creativity and design thinking to best advantage. Most businesses are set up with protocols, firewalls and policies designed to minimize risk. Sure it Ok for Google to allow their logo to be manipulated but that will never work for us.
That kind of thinking won't cut it in an economy down for the moment but with creativity differentiation and innovation at the core of its success or failure in the future.
A while back I went to a lecture by Enzo Mari, the extraordinary Italian designer. It was a terrific talk. When asked to name the best American designers of the last one hundred years he named, Edison, Buckminster Fuller, Eames. While not necessarily classic “designers”, these people were known for solving problems and using “Design thinking” to do it. That is what has sustained their reputations and our admiration over all this time. I thought Edison was the most interesting choice, and Mari made the point, "some of you may not think of him as a designer". But a true Design Thinker he certainly was. I believe because Edison knew that success was in the method as much as the idea.
Another thing that Mari did, a method he used, he gave the entire lecture using only a blackboard and a piece of chalk as visual aid.He never showed us any of the great objects or furniture he designed only the quality of his thinking. Using a piece of chalk to create sometimes-rudimentary diagrams and flowcharts of his ideas. It reminded me of DaVinci who invented the contact lens and the helicopter on paper centuries before technology made it possible to get there. The journey is as important as the destination. The lecture needless to say, was captivating.
I've always thought of design being more important when thought of as a verb. Recently working with a colleague on the topic of raising design “Quality” on a program, that is to say, the quality of the ideas some teams were generating, we decided one approach would be to institutionalize the protocol of “early and often”. Rough sketches, scribbles, word pictures before committing to the idea. This got me to thinking how relatively easy it is for everyone who wishes to be able to participate in design thinking and on design teams, to in fact participate. The point down the road where a “trained designer is called upon to execute is just that, “down the road. The “big tent” means using non threatening methods to invite more participation. After all 5 minds working on a problem for an hour will almost always yield a better answer than one person working for 5 hours.
Every year thousands of ideas are hatched and thousands of products are introduced. As I discussed in a previous post, few will endure. Of those that do, how many will survive a decade or, better yet, multiple decades? There are several distinguished companies who make products that do. One great example is 
3. If the emperor has no clothes, say so. "Right, JB!,we are on it, great idea!" Or, as Monty Python would say, "
In addition, 
In 1957, the average grocery store had 4000 sku's (units) on its shelves. Today it's 47,000. A typical hypermarket has more than 167,000. There are now simply too many products on shelves, they tend to overpromise, and people are fed up. Especially in these tough times, people want simplicity and authenticity. That's the exact thing most great designs provide naturally, and the distinction that helps brands earn a place in consumers' hearts.
The topic of design has generated a lot of buzz lately--so much, in fact, that some suggest that the renewed interest in all things creative is a passing fad. Not exactly. If we let history be our guide, we'll see that there's a cycle at work here, and in my view we are presently half way through it. Let's call it the Design Cycle. Case in point: JC Penney. Not many people remember that not so long ago, a design job at this now undistinguished department store was a coveted position for a designer. JC Penney had its own design staff and was promoting design. Sure, it was '70s design, but design none the less. JC Penney was today's Target.
A quick peek under the kimono of the companies where design has always been great offers an additional perspective. At Bang & Olufsen and Sony, design not only defines the brand, but is built into the fabric of a company as a core business strategy. These firms are organizations with long term staying power when it comes to creativity and innovation, and design will always be a critical element to their success and longevity.
Designers are the Storytellers
Good Design is Good Business
