Brand & Design

See this interesting story on a Cooker, that has remained an iconic brand in UK. Is it great product, branding attitude, or simply the clinging to past by its consumer? Take your pick.

Agasales.com - History of the Aga Cooker
n 1922, Dr. Gustaf Dalen, a world renowned Swedish physicist and Nobel Prize Winner, lost his sight following an explosion during an experiment with pressurized liquids and gases.

Kept at home, Dr. Dalen learned how his wife was exhausted and harassed by the constant need to care for and watch over food as it was cooked. Although unable to see, he was determined to develop a cook stove that was both capable of every culinary technique and easy to use, with perfect results.

One would think that world’s designers and business innovators are as different as Mars from Venus. Take a look at this post
The20Business20Innovation20Insider
Computer20Arts20has20put20together20a20list20of205020tips20that20can20help20anyone20become20a20better20designer.20In20assembling20this20list20of205020design20tips2C20Computer20Arts20picked20the20brains20of201720leading20designers20working20in20print2C20video20and20on20the20web2C20in20order20to20obtain20their20insights20into20every20stage20of20the20design20process.20As20principles20from20design20become20increasingly20embedded20into20everyday20business2C20its20interesting20to20see20how20many20of20these20design20tips20can20be20applied20to20the20world20of20business20innovation.

It argues that suucessful innovators can learn from methods employed by good designers.

What do you say?

Hemant

Ordinary people like us think that designers are a crazy lot and that designs happen somehow. Designers might think that users lack aesthetic sensibilities and need to be educated.

Amidst this great divide here comes a paper by Hofstede on implications of culture on web user interface design. As the web spreads more and more in a multi-cultural world such articles bring fresh perspectives for designers. Read on…
Cultural Dimensions and Global Web User-Interface Design
This review of cultural dimensions raises many issues about UI design, especially for the Web. We have explored a number of design differences through sample Websites but other, more strategic questions remain. In crafting Websites and Web applications, the questions can be narrow or broad:
• How formal or rewarding should interaction be?
• What will motivate different groups of people? Money? Fame? Honor? Achievement?
• How much conflict can people tolerate in content or style of argumentation?
• Should sincerity, harmony, or honesty be used to make appeals?
• What role exists for personal opinion vs. group opinion?
• How well are ambiguity and uncertainty avoidance received?
• Will shame or guilt constrain negative behavior?
• What role should community values play in individualist vs collectivist cultures?

The paper illustrates above points through serveral examples. It is worth your time!

My take?
-web is usually explored in personal space (there are some examples of community use). That means social / cultural drivers have lower influence than expected.
-The “offering” (is it information, service, entertainment…..?) and its place in the context of individual’s belief systems(Culture or values), life-goals etc. exert larger influences on the web behavior. So culture is just one dimension
-Culture dimension can be used to lay down ‘dont”s or “avoid’ guidelines.
-Referring to the websites illustrating various design themes I feel that the designs are driven by the bias or stereotypes associated with those cultures or individual designer’s preferences.

I feel that threre is no alternative to a rigorous process of target audience / offering / value definition leading to a clearly articulated positioning and faithfully executed design

Phew! But it is important.

Hemant

Designers and brand builders live in a world of their own just as techies (aha those IT whizkids!) do.

But somewhere at the edge their worlds live customers who spend their cash and others who have to convince them to do so -people in sales, retailers etc.

What happens when those on edges simply fall off? Read on…
Package Design Magazine–Packaging, Branding and Design News for the flexible, plastic, and corrugated packaging industry

QUOTE
A dose of reality

Oh boy, did the engineers (procurement and operations included) have a field day with us. Within weeks, data obtained to evaluate the lead concepts (which were also consumer preferred) revealed that the cost of goods for packaging would almost double, distribution efficiencies would be 75% versus current, with the retailer taking a similar hit on shelf efficiencies–not to mention tooling costs, reduced cycle times, and reduced line efficiencies. I could go on.

UNQUOTE

What should the product champion do? I have tried to deal with such tangential creativity by putting together the designers, developers, even some vendors and customers right from start o the project. I even insisted and got away by having the top boss sitting through all the meetings.

It is not possible to describe the process in detail in this space, but we succeded in coming out with an innovative design that matched the product and that met the approval of all those living at the edge of the design world.

If you need some more information or direct support, please write to me at hemant.karandikar@purple stream.com

Hemant

For the time-challenged, word-challenged, and emotion-challenged people here is the emotion-nirvana! Follow the link

Futurelab’s Blog
Instant Feeling Messages

by: Régine Debatty

emosive is a service for mobile devices which allows capturing, storing and sharing of fleeting emotional experiences.

What do you think?

Hemant

Here is a fascinating story on how Russians are celebrating their love for their art and culture.

It’s a shampoo bottle. Cute, ain’t it?

Follow this link for a full story.

The Russians are loving it

Back home, here in India some Brand & Design companies are living their love too. Like my Purple Stream. Take a peep at a case study there.

More on this later

Hemant

There is an interesting article in McKinsey Quarterly on importance of brand image in attracting talent. See the link.
The McKinsey Quarterly: Using branding to attract talent

QUOTE
Identifying the competition is an important starting point for a company trying to decide which attributes it should emphasize at what stage of the recruitment process. Traditional recruiting focuses on functional employment benefits, such as job security; opportunities for creativity and individual growth; and compensation. But an employer’s intangible, emotional associations—”it’s fun to work at this company,” “we have a passionate and intelligent culture,” “there is a strong team feeling here”—are just as important to recruits as similar associations with branded consumer goods are to potential buyers. So companies would do well to compare themselves with their peers on both functional and intangible dimensions.
ENDQUOTE

All this is fine. But there are other aspects. One is attractiveness of the industry. Prospective employees are quite sensitive about the sector in which they wish to work, particularly the talented ones.

Talented people also checkout with those who are already working in a particular company. What employees think about their company is very important too.

I feel branding efforts must take into account a broader constituency of all stake holders -shareholders, suppliers, employees, public and of course customers. They are not as insular as many might believe.

It is also clear that this kind of branding must be driven from company’s top.

Branding is integral to leadership. It is less and less about advertising.

Hemant

There are two kinds of CEOs. Those who only aim to deliver numbers and others who swear that “Customer Experience is branding”

Let us see what do customers experience. Read on..
The Three “Ds” of Customer Experience : Marketing : HBS Working Knowledge
QUOTE
A recent Bain & Company survey reveals just how commonly companies misread the market. We surveyed 362 firms and found that 80 percent believed they delivered a “superior experience” to their customers. But when we asked customers about their own perceptions, we found that they rated only 8 percent of companies as truly delivering a superior experience. Clearly, it’s easy for leading companies to assume they’re keeping customers happy; it’s quite another thing to achieve that kind of customer devotion.
ENDQUOTE

Are you surprised? Aren’t we ourselves customers buying things or services? How often we get a feeling that we are really buying?

We know the ground reality.

We should also know by now that it takes much much more than marketing people and wild creativity to create and sustain customer experience. We should know that it takes leadership, strategy and supporting business processes that enable talented employees.

And that is quite some hard work. It takes months.. years. It involves business transformation.

Hemant

So you politely listen to all that on B2B branding etc. You turn over the pages of your business magazine when you encounter anything on B2B branding. Yes, yes you have important stakes in a B2B company -capital goods, packaged software, banking services…. You are not alone in being sceptical. But would you sit up and take notice now that IBM is doing putting money or real B2B experiential marketing?

The sugar and spice of baked treats greets visitors at the entrance of the IBM Merlin Center. Inside the warmly lit lobby, a Pottery Barn–style couch beckons and a kitchenette serves up coffee and a plate of fresh biscotti.

Now B2B companies, especially in the technology, pharmaceutical and banking industries, are looking for ways to immerse their business clients in experiences that tell a brand story. Companies such as IBM are realizing that business clients are not emotionally inured; rather, they bring to any decision the same mix of emotional and rational qualities attributed to consumers.

Banking executives—often represented by CMOs, CFOs and other business managers—hear the story over the course of a day-long, private tour at the Merlin Center. IBM targets existing clients that are looking to upgrade their facilities with newer technology and strategy. So far this year, 40 banks have toured the Merlin Center. “It’s meant to be an executive day, as opposed to a day for information technology professionals,” says Clark. “It’s a day to think about strategy. A day to bond people to the franchise as existing customers.”

Interestingly, the tours often evolve into an opportunity for a bank’s own executive colleagues to bond with one another. The conversations and interactions among executives are as much a part of the Merlin Center experience as the sweet-smelling lobby. In one instance, a bank’s vice chairman was reunited with some of the bank’s technology representatives for the first time in 14 years. “The most important thing is to get clients talking”

What do you say?

We at PURPLE STREAM have a very strong belief and track record of achieving B2B branding. Do you want it to work for you? Mail me

But before I sign off let me say that all that experience stuff will come to a naught if your business processes are pointed away. Exponient Consulting can help you with business process alignments.

Hemant

Packaging rocks the boat…of competitors, like Microsoft’s XBOX has done for Sony’s playstation.

There aren’t many companies who exploit the potential packaging has for communicating brand messages. The more successful a company is, the more it takes it brand for granted. Then such a company tries to buy its way out by spending fortunes for advertising, when it would have got a striking and expressive retail presence and even presence in consumer premises at no extra cost.

This should a good news for new or small companies since they can make an impact without needing the resources of big companies. They just need to get their packaging design right and get it to speak the language of the brand.

But, the big big Microsoft is an exception.

According to Patti Sullivan, a packaging project manager at the corporate headquarters, Microsoft came to this conclusion about 10 years ago after realizing that there was more to making packages than simply meeting shelf dates.

Since then, she says, the company has worked hard to mold a philosophy and a process of package development in the same spirit of innovation that characterizes all of its other operations.

So come to PURPLE STREAM Brand & Design and make sure that you exploit the potential packaging design offers. mail me at

Hemant