What Can Branding Learn From Service Design? (And Vice Versa)

Brand consultancies come in all shapes and sizes, not to mention actual work output – from the very conceptual, intangible work of agencies that are basically management consultants with a brand focus, there’s a long way to the hands-on graphic design-based approach of others. But the basic approach of many of these agencies is that a brand is an intangible asset, that can be shaped and controlled with the help of the tangible means of communication: visual identity, advertising, and lately, social media. More extensive brand models place ”the product” as an integral part of the brand, as opposed to the brand being something that adds to it. Still, traditional brand building focus has been on communicating and persuading. I would argue, that as branding practice has evolved to include an ever larger perspective – much brand theory today is more concerned with organisational culture and abstract value propositions than with the humble design work once associated with it – it would be wise to include the repertoire of service design in its tool box.

Why service design? Basically, service design is all about creating great user experiences. This is quite different than the creation of a product, which is something that still needs the magic of human interaction to be meaningful (a great user experience can very well include the interaction with a product, but that’s another matter). The experience is what moves people, what they seek and what they remember. And the experience is a powerful thing: a strong, positive experience can create a lasting bond to the entity that provided it. Contrary to much market communication, it has value in itself to the user, it does not need to be associated with a marketable product/service in an artificial way. Instead, the service experience is the embodiment of the brand. Additionally, with its insistence on building value for the user, service design seems like the more modern way of building brands in a world where the mass marketing concepts of target groups of consumers being served story telling and randomly attached values seem increasingly out of touch with reality.

But is it that simple, really? No. Focusing on the design of services can mean a too narrow conceptualisation of how people see value and how they make sense of the world. In its most basic form, service design can seem almost obsessed by just simplifying daily life with a nifty service. But if too single-mindedly concerned with the sheer practicalities of a good service, there is a danger of forgetting the emotional aspect of human life. There’s a danger of falling into a service variety of the frankly quite naïve “cut the marketing bullshit, make a good product” rhetoric I ranted about a while ago (here).

This is the power of traditional branding: with its symbolism and metaphors, it talks to the powerful emotional, expressive part of the human brain. The part that dreams, imagines, plays. The part that makes the experience of getting a coffee in a small coffee shop in a tiny Italian village a memorable experience of excellence, even though the same coffee served in a high street chain would taste unremarkable. It seems to me that the real power of service design as a way to build brands lies where its user value focus is combined with a creative way of thinking about what a good user experience is. A way that accounts for both our longing for being told the myth of the Hero’s journey, and for being able to buy our train tickets with the help of an iPhone app.

1. Service Design for Beginners
2. The “Great Product” Claim
3. Tangible Aspects of Hotel Service Design – Do You Need Every Logo?
4. Design-Driven Innovation and Knowing the Consumer’s Mind
5. The Joy of Going to the Bank – Borrowing Spaces from Cafés and Shops

Additional comments powered by BackType