Archive for the 'Brand Management' Category
Marty Neumeier at Brand ManageCamp 2010.
Brand ManageCamp 2010 is an intensive two-day conference that features the most engaging and dynamic speakers in branding. This year, Marty Neumeier, Director of Transformation at Liquid Agency has been selected along with twelve peers to speak at this renowned event in Las Vegas, September 21-22.
Created by experienced branders over eight years ago, the Brand ManageCamp marketing conference has become a place to generate new ideas today’s brands need in order to survive. Industry mavericks, best-selling authors, world-renowned experts – these leaders in innovative brand thinking will cover a wide variety of topics to help broaden perspectives, generate fresh, actionable ideas, and become a stronger marketer and a more dynamic leader. Some topics will include: Determine where to spend your precious marketing dollars, Drive innovation and creativity through a discipline of inspiration, Get big results by thinking and acting small, and much more.
“Industry professionals attend this conference because they want fresh inspirations on how to take their brand to the next level,” said Marty Neumeier. “I’m both honored and excited to be able to share what I’ve learned at an event like this.”
Marty will be speaking on Wednesday, September 22 about “How to build a culture of nonstop innovation” from his latest book, The Designful Company. In an era of fast-moving markets and leap-frogging innovators, companies can no longer merely “unlock” wealth. Today they have to actively “create” wealth, or end up in the fossil layers of business history. As a result, brand-builders have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play a key role in the next management revolution.
Find out more about Brand ManageCamp 2010 here.
No commentsLiquid launches the Hitachi LifeStudio brand.
Hitachi hires Liquid to develop launch campaign for new brand.
Hitachi LifeStudio is a new brand of hard drive products that takes simple storage and backup to a whole other level. When Hitachi started looking for an agency to help them launch the new brand, they selected Liquid because of our experience with technology brands and retail. Working on the LifeStudio launch has been fun because the products are truly unique. LifeStudio is much more than an ordinary drive – the products include software designed to help users manage their “digital mess” through an innovative interface that enables people to find, organize, and share photos, movies, music and files like never before. This is a total breakthrough for this category…as no other drive offers this type of user experience.
From messaging to merchandising, we delivered a complete launch campaign.
Liquid worked closely with the Hitachi marketing team to collaboratively develop all of the materials needed for the launch. We started by crafting a new messaging platform, then we developed product videos and marketing collateral, and lastly we designed a modular merchandising solution that includes inline, end caps, and stand alone kiosks for retailers nationwide. We worked with Rapid Displays to quickly execute prototypes, work out details and to build the units that would end up in the retail stores.
LifeStudio is truly an amazing series of products.
Hitachi has practically re-invented the category, and built tons of innovations into the LifeStudio series of products. As is typical with most new products, there are a few areas for improvement, as pointed out by Walter Mossberg in his recent review on the Wall Street Journal: “I can recommend the LifeStudio drives for local and online backup, if Hitachi follows through and fixes the “read-only” bug I encountered…” According to Hitachi the company is addressing all of the issues and it is committed to delivering a great user experience. LifeStudio has also been reviewed by CNET, and CoolestGadgets, among others.
Want to get one of your own?
The new line of products are currently available at Office Max, Fry’s Electronics, Micro Center, and can also be purchased online at Amazon, BestBuy, and Newegg.
Knowing. Making. Doing.
As I said in my book The Designful Company, if you want to innovate, you have to design. Yet design is a foreign language to most business managers. This is because the principles of traditional business management principles evolved to serve the needs of the industrial age. They rely on a mechanical two-step process for making decisions: knowing and doing. You “know” something—from a past experience, a case study, or a best practice—and then you “do” something.
The problem with this process is that what you “know” is limited to either “what is” or “what was,” while innovation is all about “what could be.” It’s impossible to know what could be without the process of design. To generate new ideas, the design process inserts a middle step: making.
Through the act of prototyping—using sketches, models, maps, mockups, simulations—the “making” step puts options on the table that weren’t there before. It pushes back on what we think we know, and also changes what we’re likely to do. It shifts the emphasis from “deciding” the future to “designing” the future. In a business climate that requires perpetual innovation, industrial-age thinking is useful, but woefully inadequate. We also need design thinking.Here’s a simple pair of slides you can throw into your presentations when you build a case for a more innovative culture. Download slides.
12 commentsCan Neuromarketing Improve Campbell’s Soup?
By Marty Neumeier
In today’s Wall Street Journal (February 17, 2010), reporter Ilan Brat describes how Campbell’s is employing “neuromarketing” techniques to peel back the mysteries of label design. Using biometric tools such as eye-tracking, videotaping, and special vests that capture skin-moisture levels, heart rates, breathing patterns, and posture, researchers were able to compare the emotional responses of various consumers to the existing package line.
Among other things, they found that the Campbell’s logo, positioned against a red background on every package, made the varieties look so much alike that customers’ eyes glazed over when they scanned the offerings. They also found that the standard photo of a spoon lifting the soup from the bowl provoked zero emotional response. Finally, they heard from customers that the soup didn’t look warm enough.
The design response? Add color-coded bands at the top of each package to break the monotony; move the logo to the bottom; ditch the spoon; and add steam to the photo. Totally logical. Totally beautiful. Totally defensible. And totally inadequate. People don’t buy soup for the steam.
A 2005 analysis by Campbell’s showed that the usual techniques for testing advertising did little or nothing to improve sales, largely because they were asking people what they thought. Neuromarketing techniques, by contrast, are designed to measure what people feel. While this gets the company closer to understanding the actual drivers of shelf appeal, there’s only the tiniest of problems: it ignores the real reason people buy Campbell’s.
People buy Campbell’s not because of the steam but because they feel comfortable in the Campbell’s “tribe.” They simply believe that Campbell’s is the “right” product for them. And no amount of package tweaking will move the needle on that belief.
So what can Campbell’s do to improve sales? Improve the reasons to believe. Refocus the brand from the vision on out, then let the package designers express that vision with the skills they already have. When you find yourself using biometrics to test the emotional value of steam, you’ve already lost.
6 commentsSteal This Idea: Culture Quiz
Culture Quiz
By Marty Neumeier, author of The Designful Company
Transformation is in the air. Business leaders across industries are recognizing that “old school” management isn’t up to the task of nonstop innovation. As a result, companies that were once run from the top down are steadily shifting to a more networked style of management in which employees and customers play a greater role in driving innovation. Networked cultures tend to be more creative, more agile, and better able to anticipate the needs of customers.
How do you create a culture of innovation? By recognizing one simple fact: If you want to innovate, you’ve got to design. Design and design thinking are the tools that create new products, new services, new business models, new markets, and new industries. The best way to leverage innovation—as outlined in my latest book—is to build a “designful company”. (Buy the book.)
To find out where you are on the culture curve, take this simple test: Share a total of 10 points across each of the 10 pairs below. For example, if your company is more siloed than collaborative, you might score it 6 and 4. When you’ve finished, add up the two columns to measure your progress. If your totals come out to 60 and 40, for example, you could say that you’re 40% along the path to an innovative culture.
The Design Thinking Lecture Series
Talking and Thinking about Design Thinking.
On Wednesday night I attended an event at the Thomson Reuters center in NY featuring Roger Martin, the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto; Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO; and Will Setliff, VP of Strategy, Insights and Innovation at Target. The three panelists were joined by Bruce Nussbaum, from BusinessWeek – who helped moderate the conversation, often making it more interesting through humor and memorable anecdotes.
The conversation centered around the topic of “Design Thinking” - which is also the subject of a new book by Roger Martin, titled “The Design of Business”, and also another book by Tim Brown titled “Change by Design”. I have not yet read the books, but look forward to doing so, and I will share my thoughts about them. For those not familiar with the term, design thinking are the words used to describe a process that balances the exploration of new ideas with current knowledge to drive innovation and generate value for companies.
Here are a few insights from the panel discussion.
Today’s business practices are too “scientific”.
Some of the discussion hovered around the notion that today’s business models are “too scientific”, according to Mr. Martin, who suggested that the need to “prove in advance” the success of an idea makes it practically impossible to innovate. Companies that are driven by analytical thinking strive to create predictable results based on past experience and rigorous quantitative analysis. These companies typically fail to support the kind of innovation that – by definition – introduces whole new ways of solving existing challenges. Design thinking is advocated as the practice enabling business to strike a balance between analytical thinking and innovation – which, the panelists argued, is essential to create a sustainable competitive advantage
Design thinking has many challenges to overcome.
According to the panelists, design thinking is already embraced by innovative companies (like Apple, Google, Target, Toyota, etc.) however these companies are the outliers in corporate America. Part of this is due to the fact that design thinking is not what is taught at most universities, and the tens of thousands of MBAs that enter the business sector annually are trained to use analytical thinking and scrutinize data to arrive at decisions….ultimately killing ideas that could make a big difference if they were explored further before being dismissed because they are “unproven”. Mr. Martin reminded the audience that if Steve Jobs had run Apple as an analytical company, such innovations as the iPod and iPhone would have never seen the light of day.
The current business climate is another challenge – as many companies will choose to “re-trench” instead of “re-think” - and according to the panelists this creates opportunities for those companies willing to apply design thinking to explore new, innovative processes, products, markets, distribution channels, etc.,
We need to question the question.
One of the most interesting topics of the evening was posed by Tim Brown, who suggested that not enough emphasis is placed on the question that initiates the design process. Being a designer, Tim has been trained to start with a “brief” - a document that outlines the objectives, audiences, requirements, etc. Designers are often handed the brief as a way to begin the design exploration. Tim not only suggested that designers should write the brief instead of the client, but should question the intent and need that necessitated the brief to begin with….he referred to it as the need to “question the question”. These comments made me think about the fact that we are in fact trained to strive for the answer…and perhaps generating more questions will lead to more interesting ideas.
Where does design thinking start?
Mr. Nussbaum asked “where and how do we start incorporating design thinking into a business?”. Will Setliff of Target said that it is important to find what he called the “locus” or central place where to start incorporating design thinking into a company. He said that it is important to change processes and not just products and services. Target of course, is a company that has become synonymous with design and innovation – and this is true not just in terms of the products they sell or how they operate their stores, but how they run their business. One example that Will shared with the audience is that at Target they take new hires and immediately put them through a process designed to reinvigorate their sense of creativity and set aside some of the stuff they learned in business school. This indoctrination into design thinking can be very impactful and invigorating for many of the business people – who, according to the panelists – often will resist going back to the old analytical approaches. Personally, I think that change must be championed at the top – and I am willing to bet that most organizations that embrace design thinking are led by CEOs who are visionary, independent thinkers who cherish innovation and who constantly challenge the status quo.
What does this mean for agencies like ours?
Creative agencies are typically started by designers – people who are trained to solve problems using a process that includes defining the problem, exploring a variety of different solutions, prototyping, testing, and adjusting to ensure that the final result solves the problem in an innovative manner. However, most agencies have not been very innovative in designing their own businesses. Most agencies have become victims of the pressures placed upon them by corporate America and as a result they don’t “question the question” - to borrow Tim Brown’s terminology – and they churn out advertising that is uninspired (both in terms of the creative or the media that is being used), branding programs that are developed in silos (packaging teams don’t talk to digital teams) and use processes that seem a bit antiquated (brand platforms that assume the company owns the brand in a world when consumers shape brands more than ever). It is time for agencies to re-think their business models. I feel that Liquid is in this category…however, we are painfully aware of it, and are hard at work, changing what we do and how we do it. That is one of the reasons for the merger with Neutron, and one of the benefits of having Marty Neumeier on our executive team. He’s constantly challenging us to think ahead of the curve and focus on innovative solutions.
Thanks for the inspiration to make some changes.
I left the conference rejuvenated and inspired. I would like to thank Roger Martin, Tim Brown, Will Setliff and Bruce Nussbaum for delivering an engaging and stimulating discussion. I also would like to thank Sandra Blevins of the Brand Collaborative for inviting me to attend. I returned to my hotel room with my head buzzing with ideas, anxious to work on the transformation that will help us deliver better work for our clients and create a better firm for all that work at Liquid. As I’ve said before….expect big changes.
Liquid Agency CCO writes about the London brand.
Alfredo Muccino writes about what the London brand means.
Below is an article written by Alfredo Muccino for CorpComms Magazine - the only monthly magazine targeted at the in-house communicator. The magazine offers advice and informative articles on a range of topical subjects, such as social and digital media, internal communications, sponsorship and CSR. Based in London and published by Hardy Media, the publication is edited by Helen Dunne, who contacted Liquid to get our thoughts on the London brand, since Boris Johnson, London’s mayor recently announced that he wanted to re-brand the city.
Having just returned from the British capital, Alfredo Muccino, Liquid’s Chief Creative Officer wrote a short article which appeared in the latest issue of the magazine.
Here’s the article. If you have any comments, we’d love to hear them.
London: The intersection of old and new.
“Some destination brands are easier to define than others. Las Vegas is defined by What happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas, and the brand promise is very clear. Vegas is a place where you’re invited to be wild. Everyone who goes there knows what to expect, and they immediately belong to the tribe. And, of course, Las Vegas delivers. In Vegas you are transported into a surreal landscape of make-believe palaces and landmarks, adult entertainment, gambling, bars and dancing girls. The value proposition is clear and anchored in truth.
So how can we define the brand for a city like London? What sets London apart from other cities? Why should I choose to visit London instead of Paris? What does London deliver? Is it the Royal family and Buckingham Palace? Is it the sense of tradition and propriety? Is it the punk movement that today feels rather traditional? Is it the pub culture, the warm beer and fish and chips? I think that these are outdated stereotypes, and in my opinion London delivers a very different experience today. The brand should capitalize on that.
Today, London is a vibrant multi-cultured centre where the modern provides a great contrast to tradition. You see this in the people, the architecture, the music, the food and the fashion. I find London to be sophisticated and energetic, filled with people who are creative, interesting, highly educated and extremely cosmopolitan. The city is not just a destination for business people but for visitors who seek a dynamic, entertaining and inspiring experience. In my opinion the London brand should leverage the idea of modernity challenging the past. It is in this contrast that lie the refreshing ideas that make London exciting and memorable. London is the cross roads of old and new…past and future…tradition and rebellion. This is something worth experiencing and something that London delivers with plenty of charm.
1 commentRebranding… Let’s hope it’s more than cosmetic
Is it just me or is 2009 going to be the Year of the Rebrand? From political parties to Pepsi, from banks to bailout programs - every day companies, countries and entire industries are trying to transform themselves. Some rebranding efforts, like those coming from beverage giant PepsiCo seem purely cosmetic with not much changed besides the exterior package.
More interesting to watch will be those coming from the troubled financial industry where Wall Street and Main Street banks must rebuild trust in their brands while simultaneously grappling with how to integrate acquisitions or spin off once powerful brands. These financial industry rebrands will be challenging which makes them fun to watch. Here are a few rebrand moves that brand marketers will find interesting.
Bank of America deals with the Bull
Over the years, Bank America has abandoned dozens of acquired institutions brand names opting to bring them into the B of A fold. Now the bank is breaking with tradition as it combines operations with its latest $24 billion dollar purchase - Merrill Lynch. This time, both the Merrill Lynch name and iconic bull logo will survive.
Here’s how they plan to manage the two brands:Bank of America Merrill Lynch will be the name of the new corporate and investor bank. It will fly under the Bank of America flag identity. Merrill Lynch Wealth Management will be the combined firms’ financial advisory, brokerage business – this group will retain the iconic bull logo.I’ll be curious to see how this dual brand strategy plays out over time - provided B of A gets through its latest public relations disaster. AIG subsidiary runs away from homeAIG Financial Advisors, a subsidiary of bailout poster child AIG is changing its name in an effort to distance itself from its continually troubled parent. But rebranding itself as SagePoint Financial – seems a bit hard to swallow. I have a hard time associating wisdom and knowledge to anything ever connected with AIG. Perhaps this rebrand should be put on pause – allowing the company to rethink how it should move forward – keeping in mind that a brand is not what you say it is – it’s what customers say it is. They’ve got a difficult and maybe impossible task ahead – but this rebrand went too far.Watch for more posts coming on the financial industry’s rebranding efforts - I’ve got to think this is only the beginning.
2 commentsCocaCola’s new look is truly refreshing.
In my last posting I discussed the new Pepsi brand design, and it seems appropriate to follow that dialog with some thoughts about Coca-Cola’s recent brand revamp. As it may have been apparent, I am not a big fan of Pepsi’s latest branding efforts. In my opinion, the new logo is not much of an improvement over the old one, and the packaging seems rather generic and sterile. On the other hand, I am truly impressed with what Coca-Cola just did.
Interestingly, if one looks at the new can by itself, the change is hardly apparent. Yet, when you place the previous can next to the new one, the design modifications one starts to notice are quite nice. Gone are all the little extra design elements, such as the touch of yellow, the multiple layers of swooshes, and the bubble patterns.
The designers have stripped away everything that was not essential and exercised a great deal of restraint in the new design. The typography that identifies the product as “CLASSIC” has been modernized and it is now all in lower case. This simple gesture seems to have an informality that is admirably on brand with the personality I expect of Coca-Cola. It is friendlier and more approachable. In my opinion, the fact that the design refresh is, at first glance, almost unnoticeable is also refreshing. I think this is a very respectful way to treat a classic icon. Yet the changes – once noticed – are definite improvements.
I’m also a fan of the Coca-Cola Zero packaging. The red Coca-Cola logo on the solid black background has an edge to it, yet it seems like a natural extension of the brand. And I love the aluminum bottles. They remind me of the way I felt when I first saw the redesign of the VW beetle by Jay Mays – a modern interpretation of a classic that re-invents the vehicle while making it feel like a natural evolution of the original.
The item that caught my eye and made me look further into the re-design was the ubiquitous white paper cup from fast food restaurants, but this time it featured the red silhouette of the Coca-Cola bottle. One of our designers walked into our office sipping from the cup, and I just loved the way that the straw looked like it was coming from the bottle. This design is fun yet really smart. The simple graphics imbue the paper cup with a sense of nostalgia and playfulness that are perfectly aligned with the brand. Also, I love the design of the delivery trucks. I have not seen these on the streets yet, and can’t wait to see the reaction that people will have when they first see them. I like the fact that the visual is an allegory to the purpose of the truck - which is to deliver Coca-Cola products…and the oversize bottle seems to say “this brand is bigger than life” - and, given that Coca-Cola is considered the most valuable brand in the world, it makes sense. Once again, the design is playful and impactful…yet it is completely appropriate.
It’s nice to see a brand like Coca-Cola exercise the design discipline it did with its latest branding efforts. This work is honest, clean, fresh – and it has lots of personality - and I hope that more brands are inspired by it.
Please feel free to comment!
Alfredo Muccino
Chief Creative Officer
Liquid Agency | Brand Marketing
Mergers and Acquisitions: A Brand Perspective
A group from Liquid just returned from attending the Silicon Valley Brand Forum held on October 16, 2007 at Microsoft in Mountain View. The theme discussed by a group of experienced panelists was “Navigating Your Brand Through Mergers and Acquisitions” - a theme that is very appropriate in Silicon Valley, given the number of companies that are growing using M&A strategies. The panelists included Russ Meyer, the Chief Strategy Officer for Landor; Patrick Moran, the Sr. Director of Marketing at WebEx (now part of Cisco); and Jim Rose, The VP of Brand and Global Marketing at Symantec. The moderator was Ron May, the brand guru at UPEK, a leader in fingerprint biometrics whose experience with Mattel, Synopsys, Tandem and Logitech added a great deal of color to the conversation. The event was presented by the Kevin Heney, the founder of the Silicon Valley Brand Forum, a man whose commitment to the practice of branding is exemplary.
The panelists described the M&A process in terms of several distinct phases:
1. Courtship
2. Acquisition
3. Integration
4. Denial (Sometimes)
For the benefit of the company’s long term success, each of these phases can benefit from a brand perspective. Much of the discussion in the first half centered around the considerations behind which name is kept and which is not – and the answer depends on many factors. The panelists urged the audience to consider whether the acquisition was driven by a desire for the acquired company’s products, people, customers…or whether it was simply a way to stop a competitor from buying the company and become more of a competitive threat. Russ Meyer from Landor advocated doing research that helps identify the strengths and weaknesses of each name from the viewpoint of the audiences (customers and other stakeholders). In the words of the Patrick Moran who is still in the midst of the Cisco WebEx acquisition, “It’s all about the business strategyâ€. A statement that was reinforced by Jim Rose from Symantec who added “Brand needs to enable business strategyâ€.
For more information, visit the www.svbrandforum.com – and make a point of trying to attend the next event. They are definitely worthwhile!
1 comment
