The market as a conversation: a constantly repeated mantra for 21st century brand communication. You might argue that “the brand is not possible to own nowadays, you can’t totally dictate your brand image anymore” suggests an idealised past that never existed, (change is, as you know, good for consultants) but anyway. But the accompanying idea that brands should be more human, less corporate and engage in personal conversations, though interesting in itself, seems to result in many cases in empty non-conversation, in boredom. “How do you like your coffee?” tweets the software company, and feels it’s now engaging with the human world in human way, by imitating how “real people” speak. Nothing happens.

Well of course, this kind of conversation is never engaging to anyone in itself. It’s a classic example of communication with a channel maintaining function – the information transmitted is not all that important or exciting or fun, but engaging in the conversation helps for example to establish and maintain relations of various kinds with other people. The same conversation that one finds pointless with a neighbour you normally only greet with a “hello”, feels totally different with your best friend. A very human activity. And face it, yes there are brands you love, but you’re acutely aware that even with the most engaging brand personality, a brand can’t speak and has to go through a human being, who’s the actual recipient of your channel maintaining chats, and for them to be everybody’s best friend on that massive scale just because they work somewhere nice, well. Unfortunately, a brand is not cuddly TV alien ALF, where a voice and a hand that fitted his little furry costume could create the perfect illusion of a family member.

Paul Fusco wants to know how you take your coffee.

Without prior investment in the relationship with another human being, this “conversation” is just the lacklustre reality of a February morning talk with a stranger, or neighbour, or semi-acquaintance, on the tube. Yes, the snow is terrible, yes, you’d think public transport in a Scandinavian capital would cope with it better, no, I normally don’t have to use the subway to get to work, but today I have an early-morning meeting. Cue hopefully not too rude display of we’re-finished-here behaviour, e.g. concentrated texting or Metro reading.

So why is it so many brands don’t instead try the type of interpersonal discussion that doesn’t depend totally on relationships, being the great conversationalist? The great conversationalist is interesting, knowledgeable, entertaining, shows her/his personality – which leads to a favourable view of the person, classic brand equity in fact. This inevitably leads to dinner invitations. Difficult, yes, but nothing in commercial communication is easy. That’s why people like me are (sometimes, very well) paid to spend all day and, frequently, all night creating it.

Brilliant at one-way communication, brilliant at two-way communication. And quite dashing.

And, anyway, the really interesting brand-as-conversation idea surely should evolve around where you and your customers place and replace your brand within the large tapestry of human life. What you might call cultural conversation. It might well be created with the help of one-on-one talks, and it can certainly be helped by following online conversations about your brand. But it’s above all a question of understanding and reacting to what your customers or fans or users need, think and do on a larger scale, and in a deeper way, no matter the medium. What do they dream about, what are their biggest griefs, their biggest prides? How do they use your brand in their life, and can you help them, honour them, challenge them even? Balancing that is being another kind of great conversationalist.

Actually, though useful for many things, there’s nothing intrinsically more engaging with two-way communication. Almost everyone in the whole world has been moved, touched and comforted on a very personal level by the totally closed one-way mass communication of recorded pop music. There’s no reason why your two-way conversations shouldn’t live up to the standards of the exciting, interesting brand personality your other communication channels imply you have going for you.

I’m a fan of maybe ten brands on Facebook. There’s one or two signs of support for friends’ businesses, some Stockholm clubs and art institutions whose events I want to be in the know about, and a couple of fashion/design magazines. It’s this last category that interests me here, as there is no particular practical reason for becoming a fan, other than getting the basic info of a new issue coming out. Well you don’t exactly have to be Bourdieu to craft a very simple theory of why I associate with certain brands (as a friend once put it: “habitus galore!“), so I won’t bore you with it. (Even though I think the question of type of product is mysteriously absent when the most avid of Brand Conversation Evangelists are preaching. Frankly, if you’re a toilet paper brand, you ARE a little less fascinating to strike up a conversation with than if you’re Acne.)

What fascinates me a bit is this: the very act of Facebook fandom seems to lessen my appetite to actually go out and buy the magazine. Not that I read the magazine on-line instead, that wouldn’t be especially interesting. I just… lose interest a little. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I suspect not – there’s something quite logical about this paradox. You could call it the commercial brand equivalent of “slacktivism”, simply signing up digitally for a cause without any actual change of behaviour or donation. (Purely digital activism is not all bad, of course – here’s a piece for design mind that makes a case for it, but sort of avoids the question of bottom-line contributions.)

There are as you probably know hundreds of models of consumer motivation, but one that seems useful here is Dan Ariely and Michael I Norton’s concept of conceptual and physical consumption. Conceptual consumption, meaning the psychological consumption of ideas and concepts, can occur both together with and independent of physical consumption. Basically, they argue that conceptual consumption is implicated in, and plays a large role in even the most basic consumption acts, such as eating or drinking. Rather than just eat something to survive, human beings add a lot of conceptual layers to the act: “Is this dish fairtrade/eco/healthy?”, “Doesn’t this dish feel a bit 80s?”, “Will my colleagues thinks I’m unmanly if I choose the salad?”. The satisfaction of successful conceptual consumption (feeling good about yourself in a number of ways for choosing the small, expensive, stylish, fairtrade chocolate) often drives behaviour even when it’s in conflict with physical consumption (assuming that you enjoy the taste of the cheap private label stuff more). My thinking is that if the conceptual part of the consumption of a brand’s products is large, it can be replaced by other interactions with the brand, that allow you to get the good bits without effort or having to pay.

It’s a common observation that the artefact is losing importance, that the enjoyment of physical ownership (the record collection) can be replaced by the access to shared digital files (Spotify) without much grievance. But the Facebook page does not even offer a part of the product, like the streamed Spotify album vs its physical (deluxe edition with book and linen cover) counterpart. It’s just the brand as a sign, without the product. And it’s interesting that when it comes to some brands, for many consumers, that might be what counts. In a world where more and more social life happens digitally, what’s the value of owning a pair of New Hip Brand shoes vs showing that you’re in the loop by being a fan of said brand on a social network?

The more a brand is building its strategy on its magic as some sort of status signifier, the easier it would probably be for the consumption of its products to be replaced by some free, purely symbolic consumption – the conceptual part of consumption is satisfied in any case. It leads to an interesting challenge for luxury and subculture brands: how to balance brand, product and digital presence, to be both in the conversation and in business?

This girl I’m sure you’re familiar with: the Health-Happiness-Energy Woman. Dressed in white, she goes down to the beach, stretches out her arms, and JUMPS. She does this to express her joy of living, and, not infrequently, her love for algae smoothies. An odd creature if you would meet her in real life, but so common in the brochures, ads, websites, posters that surround you that you don’t even notice her. A stock image cliché.

All communication is based on some sort of shared references. Designers communicate with a visual language that’s meant to be understood by the recipient, often instantly. It’s no wonder then, that many marketing communication images are constant repeats, Plato-esque variations of the same ideal images – especially when representing abstract concepts: fun, health, stress.

The low cost of images from the gigantic stock image banks, and probably in turn the working conditions of stock image photographers (creating images for maximum usability for popular keywords instead of a defined brief, at low fees), mean that these cheesy concept images are everywhere. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, communicating through simple symbols – woman biting apple for healthy, grey-haired man with sweater over shoulders stroking a golden retriever for post-retirement healthy. It does get the point across instantly to broad target groups, even if those images are equally instantly forgotten. If you’re trying to differentiate your brand against competitors, obviously they’re very counter-productive …

… but easy as they are to mock, these stock image clones are also a reminder of how easily visual clichés are reproduced, and difficult the balance is between communicating well within the reference world of your audience and being dispensible, derivative, boring. There are a myriad of similar repeating images/visual elements in the sexier, slicker high-end part of the design world, that can be just as damaging to your brand.

The fascinating thing about stock images: you only really start to notice the Health-Happiness-Energy Woman when she’s taken out of context and multiplied, like in this post. Different models, different beaches, different oceans – the same jump. And you only really see the strangeness of her ways when you look at a picture that strays too much from your mind’s ideal image. Like this one, above: too heavily bent forward, she looks bound for the humiliation of landing face down in the sand. Now, she’s almost a little disturbing, her open mouth possibly letting out not a joyful shout but a mad scream. Another angle, colouring, pose might have instead tweaked even this quite hopeless image subject from cliché to readable-but-attention-grabbing. But instead, most photographers settle for slight variations of the exact same image.

Another thing, how can they all jump so HIGH?

No, planned brand communication cannot be replaced by “delivering a great product or service that will get your customers talking (online)”, like I’ve heard said more than once in recent years. Not that you shouldn’t. You should deliver a spectacular product, if you can. But there’s something far too simple about this concept.

The fundamental flaw, as I see it, is a naive conceptualisation of what makes a “great product”. I’d say everybody would agree that the quality of the product is intrinsically linked to human experience. That is, at least when talking about products in this context (as objects on a market, as opposed to objects in a test setting or similar), it’s the user’s experience and opinion of the product that matters. A great product is one which the user thinks is a great product.

But there are literally hundreds of studies made on consumers over the course of the last, say, fifty years that tell you that people’s appraisal of a product is a highly subjective thing – a wonderfully complex concept filled with cultural bias, preconceptions, situational factors … All very typical for the complicated creature that is the human being. Consumers who drink beer with visible brands see those beers tasting very differently and prefer beers with their favorite brand label, whereas unbranded beers are judged as tasting similar to each other (Allison&Uhl:1964). Your enjoyment of a certain wine increases when you think it’s more expensive, even when you’re actually being served the same wine over and over. And so on.

When claiming that a “great product is the new marketing”, one seems to assume that suddenly, humans experience a product through a radically less complex process: a very non-human objective appraisal of product qualities, that will be shared equally objectively to information-hungry potential new consumers. But surely, it’s been a while since anyone could seriously have such a schematic concept of human behaviour. Even the Homo Economicus died some time ago, after years of illness.

This is not to say that people’s true conception of the quality of a product can be easily subverted by branding. It’s to say that there is no “true conception” based only on the physical product, and therefore, communication plays an integral part in the experience of the product. Together with other aspects (like, obviously, intrinsic product qualities), it helps create very real enjoyment. All very complicated business, and very human. That’s what makes it so interesting.

For the holidays, I’ve collected a couple of articles that designers (and design interested non-designers) should read, from recent weeks when like me you’ve been too busy with before-Christmas deadlines.

Slaves of the Feed – This is not the realtime we’ve been looking for
Thomas Petersen, founder and partner of Danish digital creative agency Hello discusses our digital life and ponders possible ways to solve the problem of information overload with design.

Re-thinking Interaction Design
Johnny Kolko claims interaction design should move away from talking both branding and user experience. I don’t agree with everything Kolko writes, specifically I find he’s muddling macro and micro perspectives on the role of interaction design (there’s both a critique of UX and branding as ways of maximizing profits, and a critique of using design for that purpose in the first place, and neither are fully explored), but there are some interesting points made about design’s role in culture.

Don Norman’s attack on design research, and ensuing debate
If you have missed this somehow, the debate goes on about what actually drives innovation, technology or design – and whether there’s actually any point in ethnographic and similar research into the consumer’s deep, subconscious wishes. Norman’s answer is basically no, as he finds that technology more often than not creates the needs it fills. Design research is only useful for small incremental changes, he claims (compare this to what Roberto Verganti says in Design Driven Innovation, a book I wrote about earlier this year!) Three responses to this claim: Bruce Nussbaum, who disagrees, Adam Richardson, who thinks Norman’s definition of design research is too narrow, and Steve Portigal, who raises some interesting questions around several points in Norman’s piece.

This year, PricewaterhouseCoopers came seventh in the Best Brands of British Origin study. PwC outranked a range of household UK names such as the BBC, Marks and Spencer and Virgin. The strength and visibility of this very typical professional services brand is not unique – all of the large professional services firms invest heavily in their brand and have done for decades. Still, there lingers some skepticism among small firms about the visual identity part of brands, and, in fact, any kind of marketing other than word-of-mouth. The fear I encounter when networking with owners of small-sized professional services firms is more or less this: “I don’t want to come across as a cheesy sales person, so I’d feel uncomfortable with a website, a fancy logotype, marketing material, anything that markets me to clients in an obvious way. My clients come to me from recommendations.”

However, you’re not afraid of branding. You’re afraid of bad branding and marketing.

This is very understandable. There are so many examples of small- to mid-sized firms which market their offering in a way that will make you cringe. Salesy, pushy and cliche-filled material, pestered with stock images of laptop carrying Ken dolls with light blue shirts. Not unlike if Gucci were to start doing the same kind of ads as a discount hardware store. Or getting into consumer telesales. Basically, you can do it the wrong way, and you can do the wrong things for your line of business. You are right to think that both will destroy your business rather than building it.

Part of the problem, I’d say, is that these firms are in the hands of branding and design consultancies that say they’re experts on every kind of business. Some have, doubtlessly, the expertise and sensitivity to “get” both the world of consumer products and the world of professional services. But others simply apply a consumer thinking to a B2B context, and then add a touch of visual conservatism to get a suitably PS look. Also, these firms have not found an agency that thinks professional services are exciting. There still exists an unfortunate view that professional services are “no fun”, in relation to consumer product brands that can be built with humourous ads, colourful packaging design and viral campaigns featuring, say, giant talking rabbits .Instead find someone who’s excited by the prospect of helping you grow your business, and who knows your line of business enough to be able to find room for creativity, in an appropriate context.

Secondly, you are building your brand the right way – a professional reputation is the foundation for the professional services brand. What the visual part of branding will add to that is mainly a form of emotional support for the potential client, who is perhaps the most frightened of any potential client. She’s about to buy something that doesn’t yet exist, is intangible, highly complex, and that she’s unlikely to be able to accurately judge the quality of. She will be unconsciously looking for clues that tell her that recommendations and your own verbal presentation are correct – you are truly professional, and you’re right for her business. Those clues are largely visual, and as a professional services provider with much fewer touchpoints than within consumer products, each clue counts.

Recently, I stayed a couple of nights at an Elite hotel. The Swedish Elite chain consists of twenty or so nice, mid-priced hotels, often charming old inner-city hotels. It’s also got an attractive and suitable, mostly black and white, brand language, done by people who obviously know what they’re doing. But. This is what a night or two at an Elite hotel leaves on the retina (well, a selection).

Not pictured: flags, plates, cups, under-bathroom-glass-paper-towels, laundry bags, pens, notepads, etc, etc.

Elite are of course not unique in this. Many service businesses whose services provide a lot of physical touchpoints – hotels, airlines, etc – put a logotype on everything they see. I understand why, but still wonder: does branding necessarily mean repeating your logotype constantly? It seems to me to be a quite dated way of doing things. Shouldn’t graphic design rather help heighten the brand experience by adding to the positive experience of the service? For example, in this case, by helping to create a welcoming atmosphere and a feeling of (mid-priced…) luxury. (You can get that in a logo, but most likely it’s more easily with other means, especially since there’s a convention of “discreet=exclusive, personal, tasteful”.) Of course there are times when a logo is very helpful on a service artifact. You want to know that the check-in kiosk is from BA if you’re flying BA. But you could still remove 1/2 of these Elite logos and still not be unsure at all of where you’re staying.

Also, the logotype is in many cases a sign of ownership. If it’s not applied with moderation, there’s a risk of the guest feeling like living in someone else’s room. Someone who’s marked all their belongings with “Property of…” before letting you move in. (Well, you shouldn’t steal hotel hangers, obviously, but that’s another issue.)

There’s also the question of standardization. You know you’re in a chain hotel, obviously, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing at all. The standard’s more predictable, etc. But in hotels that have their own atmosphere, overuse of logotypes are unnecessarily intrusive and detracts from the hotel experience. I understand the need to make your mark as a chain, but still.

Here’s a more modern way of letting your brand visually put its mark on your hotel, in a way that heightens the experience of the service. What would happen if a large hotel chain translated this way of thinking to its own brand and clientele?

Design thinking is a word that keeps coming up in business innovation discussions, and has done so for a couple of years. In my discussions, at least with non-designers and more traditionally oriented business people, it’s usually because I bring it up … which often puts me in the role of having to explain what design thinking is and why (I think) it’s one of the most promising ways to take your business to a new level. I thought it might be a good idea to put some of my thoughts on the subject in a post as well. Think of it as a crash course in design thinking for people that have missed out, rather than a thorough examination of how the term is used and what it can mean. I COULD talk for hours …

What is design thinking?

First of all, design thinking can basically be defined as using design methods to develop business. Now this doesn’t mean designing physical artifacts. It can be an integral part of using design thinking, but it’s not its core. Rather, it’s about thinking as a designer (or, naturally, letting a designer in to think with you.). At the Rotman School of Management, one of the schools that have been in the forefront of design thinking with their Business Design program, design thinking is conceptualized as an “integrative way of thinking and problem-solving that can be applied to all components of business”. Heather Fraser, from the Rotman School, talks of the following integral principles in design thinking (with my comments after the dashes):

Empathy and Deep Human Understanding – good designers are human-centered

Multi-disciplinary and Cross Industry Collaboration – good designers find inspiration in cross-pollution

Ability to Imagine New Possibilities – good designers find opportunities in new places

Embracing Constraints as a Source of Creativity – good designers love constraints and make their best work on a tightly defined brief

Making the Abstract Visually Concrete – good designers translate a concept that’s contained in the mind to something visible that can communicate

Iterative Prototyping and Co-creation with Users – good designers make many prototypes, and create them alongside their customers

Intuition and Common Sense – good designers make decisions based on instinct and gut feelings (in combination with research and logic, mind you)

Drawing Inspiration from a Broad Repertoire – good designers get themselves a broad range of experiences to learn from

Vision and Perseverance – good designers follow through with their visions*

What does design thinking DO, exactly?

Design thinking helps you in any area of business that needs innovation – and frankly, what area of your business is completely stable? It’s useful when developing new products or services or creating new ways of marketing. Or, of course, reinventing your brand or your entire business model. With the help of design thinking, you’ll produce bigger ideas, truly transformative innovation, and you get a more holistic way to take on complex challenges. And the great thing is, unlike some other business theories that become trendy, it’s not just a catchphrase for top level management in large companies. There are design thinking case studies of giant corporations like GE or Procter & Gamble, but it can be just as easily – or more easily – applied to small business entrepreneurs. For a designer with an interest in business (and if you aren’t interested in advancing your clients’ business, why are you a designer?), it’s an opportunity to help create innovative brands and businesses at a core level, not just as the visual afterthought we’re often left to deal with. Our design trained mind is our biggest competitive advantage in any field of business.

* I borrowed these aspects of design thinking from this excellent blog post by Jesse Thompson. Do read it, it provides plenty of examples.

How does it happen – the creation of really innovative products and brands? Not the ones that are slightly better than their predecessors. The ones that redefine their category, redefine the very activity of using a phone, buying groceries, playing video games … In Design-Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean, released last month, Roberto Verganti, Professor of Management of Innovation at Politecnico di Milano, covers this subject and reaches some interesting conclusions.

The problem with much product innovation, according to Verganti, is that is largely user-driven – changes are done to products in response to what consumers say that they want. This will create incremental changes; when asked about what more they want from their phone, say, few people will think up a radically new use for it. Rather, they will talk about small nuisances with their existing product that they would like to have fixed. More radical innovation has traditionally been driven by the emergence of new technologies, it’s technology-driven. Technology has created some groundbreaking products, but is it the only way?

No, Verganti argues, really radical innovation should be design-driven. With this term, he’s not referring to design in its everyday meaning but in its etymological essence, as “making sense of things.” The really interesting point Verganti makes, I think, is that innovation needs to be centered around the meaning of things. People don’t buy products or services – they buy meanings. They use things for various emotional, psychological, and sociocultural reasons, not just utilitarian ones. Companies should therefore look beyond the actual product and its technicalities, and instead try to understand the real meanings given to it by consumers.

Understanding these means being able to innovate radically, by redefining such meanings. This can not be done by standard consumer research. Instead it takes a broader approach to getting to know both the context in which the product is used and general trends in society (I’m thinking that ethnography, anthropology, possibly semiotics are the methods for this?). Additionally, it demands an analytic, creative mind – an interpreter – that can come up with a way to create a new, appealing, meaning.

Verganti uses some very well-known brands as examples of this type of innovation. For example, when asked what they wanted in video game consoles, users said more power, more virtual reality … Enter the Nintendo Wii, a product that doesn’t give you those things, but instead redefines how video games are used. Or, in the service sector, who would have thought that they could see shopping organic, healthy food as a pleasant pastime, pre-Whole Foods? Well, now they are. As these examples show, this approach to creating innovation is not detached from what the user wants at all. It aims to find what he or she wants, but doesn’t know yet. And who doesn’t like to be pleasantly surprised?

You can also hear Roberto Verganti speak about the main ideas in his book in a recent Harvard Business Ideacast.

In late 2008, the very successful online fashion store Net-a-Porter announced that they were launching a “discreet packaging” service – purchases could now be sent in brown paper bags, as opposed to their trademark, elegant black packaging. The e-mail informing of the new service featured the headline “You’ve been shopping – we won’t tell.”

The arrival of the so-called “Brown bag luxury” was mostly a way of simply disguising indulgent shopping – to avoid invoking envy or hostility from less fortunate neighbours and friends. But is also signaled a change in the financial crisis consumer’s mind; stepping away from ostentatious luxury. Net-a-Porter’s move was particularly interesting since their luxury packaging is credited with a part of their success – it’s an integral part of the shopping experience they provide, making it closer to real life boutique shopping.

Mainly, the redefinition of luxury is not merely about playing down the bling. Credit crunch or not, there has been a growing fatigue about luxury brands, that just justify their high prices with the status they represent instead of matching it with uniqueness and superior craftsmanship. Aspects such as environmental concerns and working conditions has also made their mark on how we think about luxury. One obvious way to signal craftsmanship, as well as an unique experience, is to include an element of craft in the packaging, especially when the packaging is an integral part of the product. These are two brands that have worked in different ways with their packaging to convey a sense of well crafted, artisan luxury goods worth spending your money on.

Bois D’Alexa handcrafted scented candles are specially created and poured in Grasse, France by historical candle makers, using lead-free 100% cotton wicks. Each candle is incased in a black French glass with an elegant lead-free pewter lid. The etching on the lid is hand done by artisans.

COTO is a luxury fashion accessories company in NYC, with quite unique packaging. COTO cuff links are packed in tiny glass vials sealed with a cork, while ties are in round capsule boxes. When shipped, COTO’s products come embedded in reindeer moss.

(COTO also talks about their products in a very “redefined luxury” way: “Utilizing nature-borrowed, sustainable materials, we create a limited collection for those who appreciate the details. By using carefully selected components, each product reveals a familiar, almost vintage quality in character and craftsmanship. They complement a style of understated sophistication – for the sartorial and sustainably minded.”)

(Photos from Lovelypackage.com and Reubenmiller.com)