First Edited February 2005

Designing your clients brand A discussion of your clients business.

Prepared by Damien Newman, The Lab. Distributed by mdn press. 2005

Designing Your Clients Brand A Discussion of Your Clients Business.

P2

Introduction the working session.

This paper came about from recently organizing a working session (sort of workshop but not so formal) with a client. At the time, the client wanted to start up an organization that would both attract the best talent to work for the company, as well as produce the best products and services possible. For the client, it was important to look like, sound like and behave like the company he aspired to be. After all, all large corporations today were once small companies with big aspirations. This paper was something I forwarded to the client beforehand to help inspire thought and discussion through our working session. The topics and questions posed in this paper are about the fundamental reasons a business exists and are directed at the key decision maker for an organization, helping the individual articulate the answers and discussion points in a way that can be used for making design decisions. In an ideal world, the client organization would already think, act and speak like this, but more often than not the client is busy doing its business. In the real world the marketing departments of organizations tend to own topics like this, often insufciently translating them for designers to work from and thus end up with large areas of inconsistencies in the way a company behaves. So it become the designers responsibility to help the client organization to engage in discussions like these, at all levels and helping them to recongure their thinking to include design and brand decisions on all those levels. This is only a brief selection of information that Ive used when engaging clients over the years, though Ive referenced some of my sources and I encourage you to adapt these texts for your own discussions with your clients/rms because anything you can do to streamline the process for visualizing and realizing the way a company behaves is helping your clients company do better business.

The aim is to make this as painless as possible. To keep it in a discussion form, and to learn as much as possible about what you think about the topics discussed, as well as your train of thought on things you might not yet have considered. So being uncertain, indecisive or even contrary is ne at this point - it is really part of the process. This session is about listening to what you say, to help facilitate your brainstorms and to capture your ideas to be able to apply them to the work we do in further brand, business and product strategy. There are four parts to the discussion: 1. Vision. We want to help you describe and work through the fundamentals of a vision for your company and ideas. Enabling you to articulate this to other people, develop new strategies from and to help begin shape the brand behaviour that is unique to your company. 2. The Design Process. As always, we try to bring it back to this. How can we take that vision and build brand into form and function. We will discuss some of your thoughts around some of the parts of this. 3. Brands. What are brands? What are brands you like - and why. Whatever we havent yet covered we will follow up here with questions about brand personality, associations and aspirations. 4. Summarize. Usually theres not enough time. If we have ve or ten minutes wed like to try to pick out the four or ve key points made during the session, including whatever you might have discovered or felt valuable.

Prepared by Damien Newman, The Lab. Distributed by mdn press. 2005

Designing Your Clients Brand A Discussion of Your Clients Business.

P3

Vision articulating a vision.

Collins and Porras discovered in their research for Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies1 that certain companies outperformed the general stock market by a large factor (12) since 1925. A well-conceived vision consists of two parts: 1. Core Ideology 2. Envisioned Future

4. You do not have to have liable or humanistic core values - though many do. 5. The key is not what core values an organization has - but that it has any at all. 6. Have no more than 3-5. These values dont change and are the companys essential tenets. 7 Do not confuse core values with operating practices, . business strategies or internal activities.

Some Questions:

1. What core values do you personally bring to your work? (Regardless if or whether they were rewarded) 2. What would you tell your children are the core values that you hold at work and that you hope they would hold when they become working adults? 3. Could you continue to live these core values without working? 4. Can you envisage them being as valid for you 100 years from now as they are today?

Notes: 1. Core values are largely independent of the current environment, competitive requirements or management styles. 2. There are no right or wrong set of core values. 3. Customer service is not needed as a core value (SONY, Disney, Wal-Mart, or HP dont). These would be operations or a business strategy.

5. Would you want to hold those core values, even if at some time they became a competitive disadvantage? 6. If you were to start a new organization tomorrow in a new line of work, what core values would you build into the new organization regardless of industry? -- You must note the difference between enduring values and business strategies.

1. Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by James C. Collins, Jerry I. Porras Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers; 1st edition (January 15, 1997) ISBN: 0887307396 Apparently Jeff Bezos favourite book. Prepared by Damien Newman, The Lab. Distributed by mdn press. 2005

Designing Your Clients Brand A Discussion of Your Clients Business.

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Vision the core purpose.

Core Purpose. This is the reason the organization exists - again, not to be confused with strategies or business activities. It is possible to achieve a goal or complete a strategy, however, you cannot full a purpose. It is meant to be unobtainable to be able to effectively guide or inspire the company for many years. Make sure purpose statements are not descriptive. For example: Fannie Mae - To strengthen the social fabric by continually democratizing home ownership

This whole ideology is to guide, inspire and not to differentiate. Two companies can have the same values and purpose. Also - a company can have a very strong core ideology without a formal statement. Nike for a long time never had a formal statement but was able to live their values and core purpose so effectively that it was never an issue. Often core ideology is mistaken with core competence and should not be a strategic concept which denes your companys capabilities. Like SONY has a core competence of miniaturization - but it is not its core ideology.

Five Whys? Start with the descriptive statement like - we make controlled communication products and then ask why ve times and answer. You will slowly get to a fundamental purpose of the organization. Why is it important? Why do people need... etc. Another way to test the core purpose: 1. Suppose you could sell the company to a buyer who would pay a more than fair price for it. Suppose that the proposed buyer would guarantee stable employment for all employees, at the same scale, but with no guarantee that those jobs would be in the same industry. Suppose the buyer decided to kill the company, brand, etc Would you sell? Why not? 2. What continues to motivate you to continue working?

Prepared by Damien Newman, The Lab. Distributed by mdn press. 2005

Designing Your Clients Brand A Discussion of Your Clients Business.

P5

Vision your envisioned future.

Strategic Vision the characteristics.

Vision-level BHAG. Big-Hairy-Audacious-Goal. This has to be a bold, mount Everest of a goal. Something that is 50-70% probability of success but believable anyway. It does not have to be hairy. Vivid description. Paint a picture in words. Making the BHAG tangible. For example:

Methods to formulate a strong strategic vision: 1. Strategic Brainstorming Sessions. 2. Scenario Planning. 3. Futurecasting Sessions. That said, there is no substitute for getting a small, tight group of very smart people and locking them up in a room until theyve come up with something worthwhile. (no idea who said this... Sorry.) Characteristics/methods of testing a strategic vision.

FORD said: I will build a motor car for the great multitude... It will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure... When Im through everyone will be able to afford one...

The Genetics Factor. In order to create a vision of the future, they must begin with historical context - they should end up strikingly familiar - based on the people, the history of the company and the organizations inherent talents. Futurecasting Forecasting + insight + imagination. * What is the future of your customers world? * Where is the industry headed? * What possible environmental forces will force your organization to transform itself? * What gaps exist in the technology, in the market, in the competitive set, in your competitors world views? In order for a vision to have legs it needs to have a desirable, sensible, and provocative picture of the future - 1 year out, 2 years, ten or fty. Does it promise a world in which people (employees and customers) want to be part of?

Prepared by Damien Newman, The Lab. Distributed by mdn press. 2005

Designing Your Clients Brand A Discussion of Your Clients Business.

P6

Strategic Vision the characteristics.

Inside a Brand the layers of your brand.

The Aspiration Factor. Peoples performances rise to the highest expectations you place upon them - or, better yet, the highest expectations you enable them to place upon themselves. The strategic vision needs to have an air of aspiration - something that will require striving to attain. Audacity. The study by Porras and Collins (1994) showed that dozens of iconic companies of the 20th century were built on the BHAG. The strategic vision should not just be hard to achieve but also audacious - a hard but worthy of striving for vision. Social and Economic Value. Visions must produce value - economic, monetary and/or social. For people to buy in, they must see the vision as a means to create something worthwhile. Like prots, a better process, an ability to solve a massive problem etc. Will your vision intrinsically drive new value for you or revenue? Action-inducing. Great visions inspire self-induced action. Something that provokes individuals to take it upon themselves to deliver on the vision.

Before the next section of this document, it is necessary to explain where this core brand stuff ts in to the overall picture of a companys brand.

Visual Language Personality Value Proposition Core Brand Elements

Figure: Layers of a brand.

So in a very simplied explanation - to suit our purposes here - this illustration shows the several layers of a brand and how it all sits on top of the core brand elements. The Visual layer or communication layer is what is expressed to the customer or marketplace. The Personality of the company drives this, which has to come from the inherent Value Proposition of the company or its products. All of this sits upon the simple reason why the company is in business. What does the organization do, repeatedly and better than its competitors, for its customers over time. This is a very simplied illustration, and it fails to show the thousands of decisions and actions that take place within business and how they all need to be made as consistently as possible.

Prepared by Damien Newman, The Lab. Distributed by mdn press. 2005

Designing Your Clients Brand A Discussion of Your Clients Business.

P7

The Design Process building your brand.

The Design Process from a great height.

We, as designers, always want to ensure that not only do we build a unique, successful and useful product but that we also build experience and behaviour into the product that elevates it beyond that of any possible competition. This opportunity isnt just about inventing a solution to a customers problem, but is also how to implement that in a better, faster and more successfully than anyone else could. Inventing the future in real-time. How can you predict the future (Alan Kay, the best way to predict the future is to invent it) and plan for it over 5 months or ve years? Base it on what you can control: 1. Company assets. Which are uniquely tied to the company and cannot be easily replicated by others. 2. Control of how these assets are used to create value. For instance: intellectual property, international position, and using the internet to full orders or to take transactions.

Strategy is the process of maximizing return from the value-creation process. Vision is the vehicle of valuecreation. It shifts control from an unpredictable future based on assumptions about external variables to a predictable future based on assets squarely within the companys command. Strategy within this consists of the practices that allow and organization to fully realize its vision.

Experience. There are two parts to the creation of an experience It happens from within an organization when employees become agents of a new vision, and externally it is a means to deliver that vision to customers through products and services. Put another way, how people experience their interactions with a companys products and services builds a companys reputation - brand value - in an overall manner.

Prepared by Damien Newman, The Lab. Distributed by mdn press. 2005

Designing Your Clients Brand A Discussion of Your Clients Business.

P8

The Design Process designing experience.

If we can take the type of company that you wish to be, and then examine the way in which you wish customers to experience interacting with your company, we can set about developing a strong brand experience. We can do this through a process of design (like discussed here) rst by observing how other customers interact with leading competitors and what else the same customer is doing within context. Observing Customers: 1. How will potential customers experience the company at every touchpoint? 2. Where will you be winning customers, what are potential weak points? 3. What else are customers doing, at work, home or between them? 4. What other companies do the customers come into contact with every day? 5. What is your competition doing? Are they vulnerable? Is that an opportunity?

Additionally: 1. Will you be able to leverage the channels through which customers will interact with the company, to learn from them as they purchase and engage with your products and services? Can we build brand into form and function? Function represents: + Features + Expectations + Context/Device + Usefulness + User needs + User proles Form represents: + Experience + Brand voice + Communication + Context/Device + Organization + Prioritization + Usability

We should look to frame the problem and identify opportunities for innovation. Framing the Problem: 1. What is the right problem to be solved? 2. What is the relevance of your proposed product or services? In what context? 3. How will customers be drawn to your products or services? What will enable them to build trust in your promise?

Prepared by Damien Newman, The Lab. Distributed by mdn press. 2005

Designing Your Clients Brand A Discussion of Your Clients Business.

P9

The Design Process and some reading materials.

Good invention is both useful and signicant Dave Packard It is crucial to focus on a single audience, unearth the needs and desires of that audience, gure out the context in which theyll use the product, ensure that everything about the design of the product fullls that need, and formally and informally prototype and test the functionality of the design. Then and only then it is possible to produce successful, sustainable products. There are some gaps in this document which are covered in more details in the Designers Guide to Brand Strategy, which you can also get from mdn press online. These are some of the books I pulled information from for this working session I had planned. Building Your Companys Vision by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras Harvard Business Review 1996 reprint 96501 Chemistry And the Catalyst for Seismic Change by Stone Yamashita Partners (I was given a copy... not sure where to get it from)

Other titles: Brand Leadership by David A. Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaler Free Press Business For deep brand stuff: Strategic Brand Management Building, Measuring, and Managing Brand Equity by Kevin Lane Keller Prentice Hall This is a small format (annoyingly) but well written and thought-provoking book on the design process. Toothpicks & Logos by John Heskett Oxford University Press Recently Jim Collins repurposed a lot of his old papers and thinking into the new title, Good to Great by Jim Collins HarperBusiness

What follows are Vision and Purpose statements made by other companies. They come from the research study conducted by Collins and Porras at Stanford in 1994.

Prepared by Damien Newman, The Lab. Distributed by mdn press. 2005

Designing Your Clients Brand A Discussion of Your Clients Business.

P10

Articulating the Core Ideology some examples.

Core Values Are Companys Essential Tenets Merck - Corporate social responsibility - Unequivocal excellence in all aspects of the company - Science-based innovation - Honest and integrity - Prot, but prot from work that benets humanity Nordstrom - Service to the customer above all else - Hard work and individual productivity - Never being satised - Excellence in reputation; being part of something special Philip Morris - The right to freedom of choice - Winning beating others in a good ght - Encouraging individual initiative - Opportunity based on merit; no one is entitled to anything - Hard work and continuous self-improvement Sony - Elevation of the Japanese culture and national status - Being a pioneer not following others; doing the impossible - Encouraging individuality ability and creativity Walt Disney - No cynicism - Nurturing and promulgation of wholesome American values - Creativity, dreams, and imagination - Fanatical attention to consistency and detail - Preservation and control of the Disney magic

Core Purpose Is a Companys Reason for Being 3M: To solve unsolved problems innovatively Cargill: To improve the standard of living around the world Fannie Mae: To strengthen the social fabric by continually democratizing home ownership Hewlett-Packard: To make technical contributions for the advancement and welfare of humanity Lost Arrow Corporation: To be a role model and a tool for social change Mary Kay Cosmetics: To give unlimited opportunity to women McKinsey & Company: To help leading corporations and governments to be more successful Merck: To preserve and improve human life Nike: To experience the emotion of competition, winning, and crushing competitors Sony: To experience the joy of advancing and applying technology for the benet of the public Telecare Corporation: To help people with mental impairments realize their full potential Wal-Mart: To give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich people Walt Disney: To make people happy

Prepared by Damien Newman, The Lab. Distributed by mdn press. 2005

Designing Your Clients Brand A Discussion of Your Clients Business.

P11

The BHAG the big hairy audacious goal.

Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals Aid Long-Term Vision

Role-model BHAGs suit up-and coming organizations. Become the Nike of the cycling industry (Giro Sport Design, 1986) Become as respected in 20 years as Hewlett-Packard is today (Watkins-Johnson, 1996) Become the Harvard of the West (Stanford University, 1940s) Internal-transformation BHAGs suit large, establish organizations. Become number one or number two in every market we serve and revolutionize this company to have strengths of a big company combined with the leanness and agility of a small company (General Electric Company, 1980s) Transform this company from a defense contractor into the best-diversied high-technology company in the world (Rockwell 1995) Transform this division from a poorly respected internal products supplier to one of the most respected, exciting, and sought-after-divisions in the company (Components Support Division of a computer products company, 1989)

Target BHAGs can be quantitative or qualitative. Become a $125 billion company by the year 2000 (WalMart, 1990) Democratize the automobile (Ford Motor Company, early 1900s) Become the company most known for changing the worldwide poor quality image of Japanese products (Sony, early 1950s) Become the most powerful, the most serviceable, the most far-reaching world nancial institution that has ever been (City Bank, predecessor to Citicorp, 1915) Become the dominant player in commercial aircraft and bring the world into the jet age (Boeing, 1950) Common-enemy BHAGs involve David-vs-Goliath thinking. Knock off RJR as the number one tobacco company in the world (Philip Morris, 1950s) Crush Adidas (Nike, 1960s) Yamaha wo tsubusu! We will destroy Yamaha! (Honda, 1970s)

Prepared by Damien Newman, The Lab. Distributed by mdn press. 2005

Designing Your Clients Brand A Discussion of Your Clients Business.

P12

Putting it all together SONY in the 1950s

Core Ideology (SONYS) Core Values - Elevation of the Japanese culture and national status - Being a pioneer not following other; doing the impossible - Encouraging individual ability and creativity Purpose To experience the sheer joy of innovating and the application of technology for the benet and pleasure of the general public Envisioned Future BHAG Become the company mot known for changing the worldwide poor quality image of Japanese products Vivid Descriptions We will create products that become pervasive around the world We will be the rst Japanese company to go into the US market and distribute directly We will succeed with innovations that US companies have failed at such as the transistor radio Fifty years from now, our brand name will be as well know as any in the world and we will signify innovation and quality that rival the most innovative companies anywhere Made in Japan will mean something ne, not something shoddy.

Prepared by Damien Newman, The Lab. Distributed by mdn press. 2005