Archive for January, 2009
The Designful Company: Another thought provoking book by Marty Neumeier
The Designful Company is the latest installation in an intriguing series of books by Marty Neumeier, who has also authored The Brand Gap, and ZAG.
I think it is quite appropriate that I write this blog entry on the heels of today’s historic Presidential Inauguration. After reading Marty Neumeier’s latest book, I will think of Obama as the Designer in Chief….even if he did not use the word “design” in his inaugural address. 
Each of Marty Neumeier’s books is described as a whiteboard overview, and in fact, the books are not your typical business book or design compendium. Mr. Neumeier (and I will refer to him as Marty, from here on) proposes big ideas in simple words that leave you wanting for more. I find that his books raise more questions than they provide answers…and it is my experience that they stimulate great professional dialogue and a fair share of stimulating thinking.
In The Brand Gap, Marty tackled the gap that exists between business strategy and creative execution…or, as he eloquently puts it, “how to bridge the gap between logic and magic”. In ZAG, he discussed the need for radical differentiation, advocating the advantages of zagging when everyone is zigging.
The premise of The Designful Company is that in order to gain control of a company’s future we need to embrace the practice of design. Of course, in Marty’s language “design” is a very powerful transformational tool that does a lot more than just “styling”. Instead, Marty’s design is about process and people and ideas driven by a desire to improve “performance” not aesthetics.
Within our business, I’ve always insisted that “design” has little or nothing to do with “art”. I believe that design is about creating purposeful change for the better…and I think that for design to be effective one must have a clear set of goals. In his book, Marty argues that the ultimate goal of a sustainable business is long term profit….and design is the starting point for a chain reaction that goes something like this: Design drives innovation; innovation powers brand development; brand builds loyalty; and loyalty results in profits.
Of course, I don’t agree with everything that Marty proposes…but there’s plenty in the book that I found to be intriguing and inspiring. For example, I loved the way that Marty re-invents the idea of aesthetics, and catapults it to an entirely new level that goes well beyond making things pretty. Marty’s chart titled the “Aesthetics of Management” completely redefines the meaning of aesthetic principles in terms of business issues…and I will definitely be using this in future meetings and presentations (and, obsequiously credit the author). In this chart “Contrast” deals with “How do we differentiate ourselves?”. “Depth” defines “How can we succeed at many levels”. And, “Focus” refers to “What should we NOT do?”.
Halfway through the book, Marty suggests that there are 16 “levers for change”…and that these “levers” hold the key to designing a new future for business. Apparently, you don’t have to use all of them…and they need not be applied in any particular order. I found that some are more helpful than others…but I guess that this is exactly the point: Marty is inviting us to pick and choose which to use and which not to use…and therefore become the designers he invites us all to be.
In summary I really recommend this book, however, I found Marty Neumeier to be a little misleading when he described his book as a “quick read”. That may very well be, but The Designful Company is far from light reading. It is a thought provoking, idea changing, extremely powerful book that will greatly influence the way I think about how design can change my company, the companies of my clients, and the world as a whole.
I’d love to hear what any of you think about this book.
Alfredo Muccino
Chief Creative Officer
Liquid Agency
The Innovation Funnel
The Innovation Funnel
by Marty Neumeier, author of The Designful Company
The biggest hurdle to innovation is the corporate longing for certainty about costs, market size, revenues, profits, and other quantities, all of which can’t be known when an idea is new. Ironically, there seems to be no hurdle to investing in dying businesses, decaying strategies, and shrinking markets, all of which can be seen without a crystal ball. It seems we prefer the devil we know.
The best way to get around the devil—and all his advocates—is to allow the company to crank up its confidence stage by stage. Luckily, there’s already a workable model for this process: stage-gate investing. It was pioneered by oil entrepreneurs who lacked certainty about which wells would produce black gold and which would fizzle. It was further developed by venture capitalists who lacked certainty about how trends, markets, and people would combine to produce profits.
There are four funding stages in this process:
With stage-gate investing, an idea is vetted stage by stage using a kind of natural selection, so that big bets are only made after the idea has been largely de-risked.
Stage-gate investing works best when you have a portfolio of innovations in the pipeline. The vetting process then acts a filtration system that separates the great ideas from those that are underpowered, short-sighted, unstrategic, or off-brand. It creates an innovation funnel that lets you vet new concepts step by step, reducing the fear of failure at each step.
Here’s a simple tool that will help you and your team remove the risk from risky projects.
5 commentsBusiness Resolutions
Business Resolutions
by Marty Neumeier, author of The Designful Company
If you’re just hoping to “get through” this year’s financial crisis, you may be missing the bigger picture. The financial crisis is merely the final score of a game we’ve been playing for over a century—it’s called Free-market Capitalism. The game is officially over, and a new game is beginning.
What’s the new game? There’s no name for it yet, but we’ve been describing the rules in our books and blasts for more than five years. It’s a game that rewards radical differentiation, that requires creative collaboration, and that results in nonstop innovation. Winners will be those who can think and act in new ways to create sustainable value for broad groups of people.
Here are ten New Year’s resolutions, linked to our previous Steal This Idea e-mail blasts.
Business Resolutions for 2009
Brand Thinking
Thinking Is Free
by Marty Neumeier, author of The Designful Company
The stock market is spiraling downwards. Large institutions are looking for handouts. Corporations are cutting head counts. Budgets are slashed to the bone. Time to huddle in the basement?
Not if you want to thrive in the next economy.
If your strategy for surviving the recession is to hunker down and try harder, you don’t have a strategy. You have a bomb shelter. And a bomb shelter won’t save you from the fundamental changes shaking the business world—namely, unprecedented speed and overwhelming choice. When customers have nearly unlimited options and competitors play a perpetual game of leapfrog, the only real barrier to competition is brand strategy.
Brand strategy is really just a way of thinking about business. And since thinking is virtually free, it requires little in the way of special funding. Here are four questions to help you work through the recession, along with a simple chart to start the conversation among your team.
1. What makes you different?
The active ingredient in any brand is differentiation. If it’s not different, it’s not strategic. What can you do to increase your difference? How can you make your difference more meaningful and compelling?
2. How well are you focused?
Without focus, customers will have a hard time seeing your difference. What makes you the “only” in your category? Which of your offerings best support your difference? Which should be cut to make your focus stronger? What new offerings could be added as you pick up momentum?
3. What trend are you riding?
Tomorrow’s economy will create new trends. What wave are you riding? Is it a wave that’s still forming, or one that’s already crashed on the shore? Is it possible to ride more than one trend at a time? What new trends are barely visible yet inevitable?
4. Are you communicating clearly?
Good strategy paired with poor messaging is no better than poor strategy. What messages are your various constituents hearing from you? Do all your brand stories add up to one big story? Is your big story clear enough and bold enough to earn a place in their minds?
If you can respond to these four questions in a compelling manner, you’ll not only survive the recession, but be in a stronger market position when the dust settles. All it takes is the right kind of thinking.
No commentsB2B Branding
B2B Branding
by Marty Neumeier, author of The Designful Company
These days it’s easy to explain branding—just cite Apple or BMW and people get it. But what about companies that don’t sell sexy consumer products—what does good branding look like to them?
Skeptics abound when it comes to the usefulness of brand in B2B and service industries. To help make the case we’ve put together a tool to explain the critical differences between companies when it comes to branding—from the most visible (B2Cs selling products) to the most elusive (B2Bs selling services).
The tool is a chart divided into four quadrants, one for each company type. Regardless of where your company lands, you’ll need to grapple with the answer to these questions: Who do your customers trust, and should your principal branding efforts be visible or invisible?
Let’s start with trust.
The importance of trust in branding is laid out in Marty Neumeier’s first book, The Brand Gap. He explains that the degree to which a customer trusts a product (or company making that product) determines if she buys it or a competitor’s offering. The same principle is true if a company sells services—but here it’s the people offering that service who must earn the customer’s trust.
For example: If I want someone to help me invest money, Charles Schwab might be a good choice. From what I’ve seen and heard, they seem like an investment brokerage that could help me make good decisions. But in order for me to choose them (and not their competitor), I must trust the individuals who will be advising me, not just the company.
Will advertising be the best use of my marketing budget? Not if you’re a B2B. Let’s look at the power of invisible branding.
B2B companies in particular have been slow to join the rest of the business world in appreciating the untapped value of brand. Why? Because branding efforts that are most effective for B2Bs are invisible. Execs don’t see the importance because, well, they can’t see them.
Invisible branding includes items like the CEO’s vision, employee training, pricing strategy, customer relationships, and sales force communications. This list could go on for days and every item—let me be clear—every item is part of a company’s brand.
You can read more in the previous article, Invisible Branding.
Now that you can illustrate the critical differences companies must consider in branding, download the tool and the next time a manager poo-poos branding at your B2B firm, explain the difference between their perception of what branding is, and the reality of why you wouldn’t survive without your customers’ trust and your CEO’s vision.
No commentsIn-house Design, Pt 2
The Power of In-house, part 2: Thought Leadership
by Marty Neumeier, author of ZAG
Most corporations generate a steady stream of designed artifacts—products, print communications, websites, advertising, manuals, financial reports, signage, retail environments, packaging, trade show exhibits—the “posters and toasters” of 20th-century commerce. When you add the growing list of emerging opportunities—customer experience, service planning, decision design, strategy mapping, and culture development—you begin to appreciate the need for strong design management.
In part 1 of “The Power of In-house,” our advice was to re-imagine the internal design department as an independent studio, fostering skills that rival those of external firms. Yet as valuable as design skills can be, the in-house team can make an even higher contribution—that of thought leadership.
In an age of nonstop innovation, winning companies will be those that establish a broad-based culture of innovation. How? By absorbing more about design thinking, aesthetic principles, communication theory, and brand strategy. While the role of the design manager is necessary to win the innovation game, the role of design coach will soon become crucial.
What if the internal design department could jumpstart design thinking in your company by running educational programs on innovation, branding, and the creative process? What if the department’s “clients” better understood the use of design as a business tool?
Here’s a slide that shows some of the courses, classes, and workshops that could help establish a culture of innovation in your company. Share it with your team and see if you start some thoughtful conversations about the role of internal design.
No commentsIn-house Design, Pt 1
The Power of In-house, part 1: Unleashing Design
by Marty Neumeier, author of ZAG
As the drumbeat of innovation grows louder, corporate leaders are feeling the need for stronger internal design. But before a company can even think about building an in-house design capability, it will need to address the problem that has plagued in-house designers since the days of the cave painters. This can be reduced to seven letters: R—E—S—P—E—C—T. As soon as the department is established, its value starts to depreciate. Within months the new group is inundated with low-level tasks and excluded from high-level conversations.
What’s the cure for vanishing value? To reimagine the internal design department as an independent studio. Since respect comes from a combination of performance and proactivity, mimicking a successful design studio can trigger the same level of respect usually reserved for external firms.
How? Instead of expecting work to come in automatically, the internal team can adopt a more Darwinistic model by acquiring skills that rival those of external firms. It can develop its own engagement processes, seek interesting problems to solve, and make “pitches” to internal “clients.” Like an external firm, it can prove its competence through performance metrics and design competitions. It can even institute a charge-back system to attach a dollar value to the work it does.
Here’s a slide to share with your colleagues:
Brand Collaboration
Brand Collaboration
by Marty Neumeier, author of The Designful Company
Brands don’t develop in isolation; they result from the interaction of thousands of people over a long period of time. Branding requires not only the work of executives and marketing people who manage the brand, but an ever-changing roster of strategy consultants, design firms, advertising agencies, research companies, PR firms, industrial designers, environmental designers, and so on. It also requires the valuable contributions of employees, suppliers, distributors, partners, stockholders, and customers—an entire branding community.
Many of today’s brands are too large and too complex to be managed by one person or one department. They require teams of specialists, sharing ideas and coordinating the efforts across a creative network. Brand managers and communication firms are responding to this new challenge in a number of interesting ways.
Today there are three basic models for managing brand collaboration: 1) outsourcing the brand to a one-stop shop, 2) outsourcing it to a brand agency, and 3) stewarding the brand internally with an integrated branding team. All three models are forward-thinking responses to the problem, because they recognize brand as a network activity.
he advantages of a ONE-STOP SHOP model are the ability to unify a message across media, and ease of management for the client. The drawbacks are that the various disciplines are not usually the best of breed, and, in effect, the company cedes stewardship of the brand to the one-stop shop.
The advantages of a BRAND AGENCY model are the ability to unify a message across media, and the freedom to work with best-of-breed specialists. A drawback is that stewardship of the brand still resides more with the brand agency than with the client company.
The INTEGRATED BRANDING TEAM sees branding as a continuous network activity that needs to be controlled from within the company. In this model, best-of-breed specialist firms are selected to work alongside internal marketing people on a virtual “superteam,” which is then “coached” by the company’s design manager. The advantages of this model are the ability to unify a message across media, the freedom to work with best-of-breed specialists, plus internal stewardship. This last benefit is important, because it means that brand knowledge can accrue to the company, instead of vanishing through a revolving door with the last firm to work on it. A drawback of an integrated marketing team is that it requires a strong internal team to run it.
Of course, while these three types of collaboratives seem tidy in print, they’re messier in practice. Companies are mixing and matching aspects of all three models as they grope their way to a new collaborative paradigm. Get ahead of the curve and use these slides to help plan your brand collaboration so that all stakeholders are working in concert to achieve the same goals and effect change.
No commentsThe 6 Naming Styles
The 6 naming styles
by Marty Neumeier, author of The Designful Company
What kind of name will work hardest for you? Should the name literally describe the offering, or should it suggest a benefit? Is it better to imply an idea, or to invoke a brand’s history?
Getting the answer to these questions will help you choose the right name. But before you can do that, you have to know your options.
The 6 naming styles add context so you can see the full landscape of choices. You can use this tool throughout the naming process: analyze the competition, organize your list, or develop more names in a style you hadn’t considered.
Below are the six styles—learn them and you’ll be on your way to winning the naming game.
DESCRIPTIVE
These names literally describe a brand’s offering. Consider a descriptive name when developing a suite of offerings under one larger brand or company name.
SUGGESTIVE
A name is suggestive if it implies a market position (or positioning attribute). This direction allows for more evocative or emotional opportunities.
METAPHORICAL
A metaphor is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects. In naming, it’s a great way to imbue a car brand, for example, with the attributes of an animal.
NEOLOGICAL
Why not create a new word? Another approach is putting together morphemes—the smallest unit of language that carries meaning.
HISTORICAL
If a brand has equity in its heritage, use it. Consider the name of the founder, or the first product ever launched. This method often has great “legs” and allows for meaning to be unpacked for years.
ARBITRARY
These names have almost nothing to do with the brand’s position in the market, nevertheless, people will make meaning of it by connecting your name with what you do. Arbitrary names are among the most legally defensible.
Brand Positioning
Brand Positioning
by Marty Neumeier, author of The Designful Company
Companies need positioning because customers have choices—and if you don’t stand out, you lose. Positioning is what differentiates a brand in the customer’s mind. To win the positioning game answer this simple question: What makes you the “only”?
The problem is, answering such a simple question isn’t that easy. One way to approach it is to think about why your brand matters. At Neutron, we take our clients through a series of steps to discover what makes them the only, which is nothing less than a journey to the core of their business. Remember, you can’t advertise your way to onliness—you have to start with it.
Use this simple slide in your next strategy meeting to get the conversation going about what makes you the only. You’ll be surprised how quickly you start talking about the things that really matter.
This isn’t the only way to find a powerful position in the market, but no matter how you get there, if you can’t say why your brand is both different and compelling in a few words, don’t fix your statement… fix your company.
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