Understanding the importance of design
Published on 04/16/2005 under Book Reviews
In his recent book, Re-imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age, Tom Peters devotes several chapters to the importance of “design” in achieving business success. Not continuous, incremental improvement, organizational excellence or strategic planning. Design.
Peters says that design is the “principal reason for emotional attachment (or detachment) relative to a product, service or experience.” He quotes Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs in saying that design is the “fundamental soul of a man-made creation.” He also talks about how Ferrari uses design to “help customers become what they want to be.”
He’s taking about a lot more than graphic design, as I guess you can surmise. He’s talking about product design and image design--even something he calls “experience design.”
If you can hang with him through many pages of rambling anecdotes, stray thoughts and stream-of-consciousness observations, he’s ultimately talking about the need to inject excitement and passion in our businesses. And more importantly, how to find ways to transfer that euphoric feeling to our customers.
On one end of the spectrum, you’ve got Dilbert World with colorless, mindless drones fighting to keep their heads above the waterline of corporate insanity. On the other end, you’ve got Tom Peters advocating that we blow up the org chart and start fresh with new models based on giving customers what they want (assuming they can articulate those desires, which I think many b-to-b customers cannot).
Somewhere between Dilbert and Tom Peters, the rest of us reside.
I’ve spent a good part of my life urging, begging and pleading with middle management bureaucrats to think outside the box--to approve edgy, unconventional approaches that no one else would dare pursue. What that usually gets you is fired because thinking outside the box makes people uncomfortable. Even
But Tom Peters is right because thinking inside the box will get you fired, too. It will get the whole company fired eventually because someone else will zoom past you and take your market share along with them.
A big part of Peters’ book is about the importance of image design or branding. Branding creates the expectation of something more than features and benefits. It provides the foundation for a customer experience that goes far beyond the physical characteristics of a product or minimal requirements of a service request.
It’s the difference between motorcycles and the “ability for a 43-year-old accountant to dress in black leather, ride through small towns and have people be afraid of him.” That’s what Harley-Davidson sells.
It’s the difference between front-end loaders and the ability to “move mountains” that owners of Caterpillar equipment suddenly have at their fingertips.
It’s the difference between commodity chemicals and having an experienced, capable partner that helps “make your products better.” That’s what BASF has been doing for more than a decade now.
Design separates leaders from the pack. It creates intangible assets that build shareholder equity. And it energizes employees and makes other people wish they worked for your company.
I decided to join Conoco Chemicals in 1981 largely because they were running elegant magazine ads featuring the distinctive, impressionistic artwork of Jean-Michel Folon. Conoco had commissioned a series of original watercolors by Folon to promote the company’s primary strengths: innovation, self-sufficiency (from crude oil through finished specialty chemicals), proprietary technologies and a culture that rewarded risk-taking.
The copy in these ads was so esoteric, you could read it five times and still not be sure exactly what was being communicated. But the basic messages came through loud and clear. Readership studies showed that chemical industry targets “got it.” They played back all the key points.
The design factor in this program was so compelling, it convinced me to make the transition from the agency side back to the client side of our business. It made me think Conoco was the kind of company that I would be proud to work for. All of the Conoco managers I interviewed with epitomized this campaign perfectly--they were young, smart, self-assured and on the way up. I really wanted that job.
Then, within six months after I moved to Houston, DuPont came along and bought Conoco, and suddenly these same people couldn’t tell you which way to the bathroom. Of course, the Folon program was cancelled because, as one DuPont manager so delicately put it, “If we want Conoco to do corporate image advertising, we’ll do it for you.” And the company I wanted so desperately to join disappeared in a puff of smoke.
The reason DuPont couldn’t see allowing its Conoco division to continue the Folon advertising program is the same reason they decided to spin off Conoco some years later. The “design factors” were so radically different; it made more sense to operate the two organizations as separate companies.
When you consider the role of design in your company (or for your clients), ask yourself this question: Are we communicating our total customer offering in ways that help them get truly excited about buying from us?
Are we going beyond nuts and bolts to fashion an engaging personality for our company and all its products and services? Are we doing it consistently, year after year, so customers can feel like they really know us?
And are we doing it in a uniquely creative way that lets them know we’re not like other nuts and bolts suppliers?
If not, maybe it’s time for a Tom Peters injection.