This is a recurring pattern in many industries, where it replaces the more familiar bell curve. A simple example will be the fact that while big companies are getting bigger, we now have new small companies which are smaller than companies ever were.

It his post, Pink links two news items showing how the middle tier of the legal services industry deteriorates. On the low end – people will just get basic services online, which started with simple contracts, but quickly progressed into more complex services like divorce agreements. All for record-breaking low prices. On the other end of the well you get the big offices charging record-breaking high prices for high-end, bespoke services.

If you’re a law firm that used to make a lot of money out of divorce contracts but can’t justify a price premium any more – you’ll be falling into the well…

Make no mistake – this is happening in design and across the creative industry .

It is often believed that design and the creative industries as a whole will be the last to suffer from the wrath of globalisation and off-shoring, Pink himself has largely maintained this position in his excellent right-brain manifesto “A Whole New Mind.”

But the existence of a well curve within our own industry indicates that we are far from safe. Looking around I see that we are increasingly competing with both low end products (often rapidly becoming comparable) from emerging markets. Additionally, for high-end design, boutique agencies with more compelling price structures are competing with us on premium services (enjoying that other well-curve which makes being a small company increasingly acceptable and effective). I won’t even mention pro-am culture. This forces us to move higher and higher up the other side of the well, as the middle will not hold long-term and no leading company wants to become a part of the commoditised side of the well.

The solution? One option is to change the price structure to support this commoditisation of design – ad agencies have been doing it for years on some labour intensive deliverables. But who wants to work in that company, right?

So the other solution is to hire only outstanding talent and create an environment that lets them create fantastic stuff. Then, a company can price accordingly. Any big agency is clearly on the latter end of the spectrum, which implies – that its potential client pool will continue to shrink. It’s a scary trend – unless we price out more and more prospects, we’ll be facing more and more competition.

The next decade will be about finding new ways to justify this price premium facing an increasing amount of competition and new models for agencies, the major players won’t give up so quickly and will constantly push them and the entire industry, forward. Now isn’t that exciting?

P.S. the above would still hold if I was still working for a boutique agency, their prices are usually closer to the big ones than the other end.

The oldest trick in the spammer’s handbook, brought up to a new level. Just how convoluted is that?

Sigh… The road’s still long.

(This was encountered on a credit card application)

I’ve always rejected the myth of the suits/creatives split. Have always maintained a common language between marketing, design and other media is important and empowering to everyone involved. Hopefully, I can introduce some useful concepts and break some myths.

(And in case it doesn’t come through: OMG!!!!1! I’m so bloody psyched about this!)

Brand strategy reconstructed
How marketing lost the plot and how it might find meaning again

Marketing is a discipline in crisis. For the last decades it has become evident to practitioners and scholars alike that many of the trusted old methods were just not cutting it any more. Worse, it now seems some of them weren’t valid in the first place. This series of contemplative talks brings together ideas from narrative studies, semiotics and cultural theory to drive design thinking in solving the challenges of postmodern marketing. Numerous examples will be given from actual projects, popular culture and recent marketing cases.

The first six talks:

1. Marketing, meaning & decadence: an introduction to the sophistication of marketing sign-systems and their tendency to degenerate.
2. Suspicious minds: the myth of “a consumer subject”.
3. On branding and meaning: can a simplified theoretical tool-box cut through buzzwords and hype?
4. Advanced narrative marketing: the untold story of brand stories.
5. Marketing plots: cultural pattern-recognition as a strategic tool.
6. Embracing the mess: how clients and agencies are changing their work culture and methods to encourage more sustainable marketing strategies.

Mondays@17:00, Starting May 18th, excluding 25/5 (bank holiday) and 8/6 (prior obligation).

To my non-UK readers: London College of Communication, formerly London College of Printing, is the largest constituent College of the University of the Arts London, Europe’s largest university dedicated to art, communication, design and related technologies.
Two graduates Israeli readers will know are David Tartakover & Alex Livak.

NO!SPEC is a campaign against speculative work, which is the practice of companies asking creative professionals, mostly designers, to produce work without getting paid and “pitch” for it, competition style, for a chance to get the project (or, sometimes, just to get paid if their work is used).

Traditionally, Ad agencies happily participate in the “pitch” practice, because their business structure allows them to subsidise concept creation and then make their big money off the full campaigns that they win and/or media commissions.
For designers, whether independent or small-mid-size agencies, this is just not sustainable.

I totally agree with the campaign’s claim: Spec work devalues the potential of design and ultimately does a disservice to the client.

From a strategic angle, an example that comes to mind is FMCG package design, an area of design where this practice is extremely common in the UK.

The nature of FMCG and product cycles means work is created under great time pressure to begin with, and because the agency participating in a pitch knows it might not get any money out of it, it is forced to condense the time spent on the pitch even further. The first component to suffer is often strategy.
On a none-pitch brand project, I’ll typically have anywhere between two to six weeks (often more, when research is involved) to devise a strategy for a typical corporate branding or new FMCG identity project ; at least one or two for the typical non-pitch packaging for an existing brand project. Additionally, if it’s a larger effort on the client’s side, I’ll sometimes have the budget to lead a bigger consultant team and involve my other colleagues and the client in the thinking process.
In agencies who “pitch as practice” it is common to have anywhere between one to three days for a single planner working on a strategy, regardless of the scale of the client’s effort. This style of work forces creative strategy to choose the first reasonably sounding idea that can drive the visual design work.

(industry semantics: if your title is “planner” you’re more likely to get less time, just because that title originates in the advertising industry and might reflect the heritage your agency is used to)

And here’s a scary thing for everybody involved with spec work: Even if you have more time for design after you win spec work, the fundamental strategy will rarely change, as it is perceived as one of the main reasons the project was one for. Most clients will perceive it as chosen, even validated.

While working as an independent consultant, often building creative teams for clients, I’ve always done my best to avoid asking designers for spec work. Instead, I organise credentials presentations, helping the client find a designer they like from a group of trusted professionals I like to work with.
My work over the last three years has been mostly with boutique agency Brandinstinct. We rarely participate in pitches. We have as close to a “no-spec” policy as I’ve ever seen in a branding agency. When we do participate, these are usually “paid pitches”, and we make sure the agencies are short-listed to begin with and that enough time is given to produce work at the standards we strive for. As a result, most of our FMCG packaging projects are not pitches.
When I look at the high ROI rates on many of our projects, frequently way beyond average results, I strongly believe this is because of having enough time for strategy makes a huge difference in the overall quality of the resulting design work and specifically in its effectives in the market, and I know the designers I work with agree.

Oh, and thinking about the no-spec approach reminded me why I’m against the way internship works in many companies, but on that – later.

Huh?!
So I press the link and I learn, interestingly, that Outlook may be not shutting down properly because of Skype, or some versions of Google Desktop, and so on. I also learn that Xobni is making great efforts not to mess with the Outlook.exe process. My guess is that Xobni are getting complaints and probably uninstalls for bugs which are not their fault. Unfair.

This is an interesting branding situation. Who will the average user suspect? Skype? Google? Microsoft? or the relatively new and anonymous brand Xobni?

How likely are the users who just recently installed the massive Office SP2 update pack to still think “this Xobni thingy is messing up my Outlook”? I’m sure the Xobni team sees the irony, but doesn’t enjoy it…

And what can a small start-up do to build and maintain its own reputation in such a technology brand salad situation? (Not including selling out to Microsoft and consolidating the brand under Outlook)

(Funnily, I immediately suspect Microsoft, even though Outlook has been a central and loved tool for me for years, but that’s a different branding story…)
(Funnily = as long as you don’t work for Microsoft’s marketing)

Recovery, Java, Latency, Change, Art, RSS, Socialism, Elvis, Economics, Rotis, Analog, Location, Design, Snackr, Diversity, Violence, Prishtina, Enterprise search, Music, Elvis (again!), Prishtina (again), Matter (duh), The Pentagon (shiver), Elvis (lives!), Evolution, Ingrid Michaelson (lucky lady), Wildlife, Firefox, Elvis (never underestimate him ever again), Corruption.

End of page three, but it stays interesting.

There’s a web art installation waiting to happen here somewhere.

In the meantime – happy holidays and a happy new year.

(good night and good luck)

This post is a "sound bite version" of a more elaborate piece, based on a talk titled "Emerging practices in Branding".

This blog has been dormant for a while, and I expect it will stay low frequency. I still hope this will get some attention, as it summarises so much of my work and thoughts of the last years. Not a very web-like time-scale, I guess…

Background:
On September 25th, I gave a talk at the Strategic Branding forum in Romania. I was asked to speak about "The Future of Branding". I used the opportunity to bring together some of Brandinstinct’s and my ideas about how branding should be practiced. This is stuff that has been dominant in the way my team(s) and me do things over the last couple of years. These are also trends I recognise increasingly among leading members of the creative industry.

The full article deals with 5 important aspects of branding work (methodology, relationship, culture, identity and engagement) and, "to put money where my mouth is", uses examples from some of the Brandinstinct projects I managed (From the projects used, the Sohar project is the only one I didn’t lead.). In this short version, I’ve left the examples out and focused on summarising the principles.

1. Methodology: Use an emergent theory approach to replace black box limbo
   The marketing of marketing has hijacked many agencies, companies and marketing endeavours. Beware an agency who has THE METHODOLOGY™. Methodological dogmas are more dangerous than ever.
   Reality is too messy, complex, sophisticated and unique to fit into black boxes and templates.
   Instead, take an emergent theory approach to discover the hidden meaning. Let the uniqueness of the situation direct what you’re picking out of your eclectic and proven tool-box.

2. Relationships: Let go of outdated "chain of command" structures and collaborate
   Old school / Big agencies have collected unnecessary etiquette protocols creating disconnection from clients and among themselves. Meaning is lost along the way.
   Instead, getting both client and the full team to work together and often directly, even if their agendas are conflicting, eliminates political tensions and increases the chance to produce breakthrough ideas.
3. Culture: Embrace local insights to make a bigger difference
   What works in some countries isn’t automatically right for others. This may sound redundant, but some consultants (and designers) are still marching into new cultures like conquistadors whose international-marketing-guru knowledge cannot fail .
   You can’t have enough respect for the delicate ecology created when local and global cultures interact. That’s why we try to combine our international experience with local insight. In my experience, it is usually the local parts which triggers true differentiation and relevancy, which pulls it all together and makes it work.
   (The above is not only true for geographical/ethnic cultural diversity but for any tribe/community)
4. Identity: Deal with the full range of business needs
   Branding has become the "prima donna" of marketing. Over time, it emerged more and more as a practice that handles the "higher needs" of marketing communications. Shying away from "the dirty work" and leaving it for sales and advertising is one of the main reasons many branding programmes do not achieve the ROI they should.
   Create brand identities as systems which support everyday business needs, not just the "aspirational" stuff.
5. Engagement: Engage the entire organisation
   Most branding failures happen on implementation because the organisation won’t get behind a programme people don’t believe in.
   Instead, we recommend engaging the entire organisation from day one of the programme and increasing this engagement after launch.

The common thread:
Embrace the messiness to find meaning, instead of trying to fight it. Life is messy. Markets and marketing are getting messier and messier. By recognising the messiness, you don’t give up meaning, but actually improve your chances of finding unique, authentic solutions.
Prefer to be systemic, not systematic . Instead of a purely analytical, "modernist", approach that claims to paint a full, rational, map of a situation and then attacks a single aspect, try to see the whole hidden in the parts, and create a state of flow that is in harmony with the basic interconnectedness of all things.

When you appreciate it’s all connected, you can create sustainable brands.

You can read a long(ish) post summarising the talk here, or download it as a PDF article.
Both have links to further project case studies and longer posts.

This is the presentation on SlideShare, with full picture credits and links on the last slide (visible in full screen mode).

An apologetic aside: I’m often told that when expressing my views about the state of marketing, I tend to sound a little negative. Indeed, even this blog’s central metaphor’s opening point looks first at the trouble we’re in. But this time, it’s about what I believe the alternative is. This is probably because when I work, I’m in a much more progressive/appreciative state of mind, which is crucial in order to be creative. If I tend to be critical, it is because, like many dreamers, I have a very clear view of the way things should be ; while the reality of our world, and what major effects of the marketing discipline inflict on it, is so far from it.

I met Alex & Vitaly, brothers and founders, in the summer of 2006, while visiting Israel on another project. A long talk in my hotel room has developed to a short but sweet brand strategy project. One of my most enjoyable collaborations ever.

Over a couple of weeks, mostly through email and Skype, we had some seriously exciting conversations about the future of music and the Internet, and how Foxytunes can help. At the time they were already a highly popular Firefox extension, but found it hard to communicate and differentiate their offering.

My job is rarely that easy – all the good stuff was there, we just had to dig for it together, focus it, and articulate it. That’s because Alex & Vitally are true visionaries, driven by a very clear ideology. I would come up with catchy ways to convey what they were about, and they would gently slap my hand when the message wasn’t as accurate and clear as it was in their mind, or if it could make anyone, anywhere, confuse their true cause.
Back in the days, we used to talk about how information wants to be free (this fight is still going on, recently the fight for user information). It can also be said that music wants to be free, and Foxytunes is a product built around that world-view.

For me, Foxytunes were always the poster-boys-case-study for a post I wrote about the relationship between brand strategy and product development. Now I can finally say it.

I would like to think our collaboration helped them communicate more clearly and get decision makers along the way “get it” the same way Firefox users so easily groked them, but I always knew they were going to be successful – with or without my help.

I’ve met very few web entrepreneurs more deserving of becoming multi-millionaires.
My only regret is that at the time they politely declined my offer to get paid in stock-options…

Mazal Tov guys! It has been a pleasure and an honour!

I’m fascinated by stories where leading brands become stuck in that generic spot everybody is trying to get out of. These are players who worked very hard to get to the top, only to discover they’re all pretty much the same up there.
As a consultant I really like working with challenger brands, but often find them trudging through a painful plateau, that is something quite depressing for a hard-working
over-achieving team.

This is a plot that repeats in highly competitive global categories, especially with big service oriented B2B companies. In these categories it is common to have hundreds if not thousands of global players, but there will usually be a group of leaders that tower among everyone else. They may be top-5 top-10 or top-50, it depends on the category, but they stand apart from all the rest.

When a brand enters this exclusive club a common mistake will be to get stuck on things that no longer matter for audiences:
“We’ve grown a lot in the last couple of years – nobody seems knows it. Let’s make more noise about how big and good we are.”.
News-flash: no one cares. Of course you’re big, that’s why you’re a top-X player. Thus, this fact becomes boring and irrelevant. Counter-intuitive, eh?

The problem is that what got you so far, won’t set you apart from the rest of the leaders.
Why? It’s like the Olympics. When you compare all the runners in the world the performance varies greatly, but on the Olympic track, the winners differ by 0.1 or 0.01 of a second.

When this happens in business, you’re in trouble, many of your differentiating achievements magically disappear and turn into “entry prices”. The things you spent years fighting for, no longer mean that much.
Best practice is the new average. Hell, best of breed is the new average.

When this happens, top-of-mind counts for surprisingly a lot. If it’s a competitive B2B category, a decision maker will have one or two favourites, first ports of call, but beyond that? The first top-x name that comes to her mind. Being this top-of-mind player means a chance of winning those star accounts and star deals, and the benevolent circles they create – whether you’re a VC cherry-picking entrepreneurs (= being cherry-picked by the best entrepreneurs), a chemical manufacturer or a professional services provider.

So? “Now what?” That’s your big question, and yes, it can be a slightly depressing one. The futility of achievement is one of the challenges of leading a meaningful life, and that goes for doing meaningful work as well.
Now is the time to start exploring what really got you that far and what’s different about you. If the answer is: “nothing” it’s time to figure out what you want to stand for. Once you find it – find a way to tell it concisely at every opportunity you have.
Preferably, find some juicy stories you can use. Like the was sequoia uses the star Internet brands they invested in (Google, Paypal, Youtube and more) when talking about themselves, thus creating a virtuous cycle of star-deals. Architect firms use those star projects, their stories told in a very specific way.

Welcome to Olympus!
The bad news – everybody is immortal around here.
The good news – it’s a clear and limited group to stand out from.

The symptoms:
Your category’s brands all seem the same, they may be differentiated on the identity/communications level, but when you look at the actual perceptions (see brand vs. “brand”) of the target audiences, you find out that their perceptions are similar between competitors and pretty much correlate to the market-share of each player. It is an eerie feeling, as if no brand in the category stands for anything, even more so “owns” any positioning arena.

Epidemiology:
Common in markets where the brand experience in a category has been generic or dormant for very long – this could be due to lack of competition, or any other type of stagnation. It can also happen regardless of product innovation, because product innovation may stay purely functional if brands don’t differentiate.
I’ve found it is extremely common in emerging markets, where often many service categories used to be government owned or just heavily regulated.  A condition increasing the likelihood of this syndrome is when players try to adopt “best practices” from other markets instead of coming up with the meaningful moves necessary to shift image in their own market.

Microbiology:
The tacit structure is simple. People’s perception of their experiences is poor, and their expectations are low – so they don’t think players in the category stand for anything.
They will only switch brands on extreme negatives (e.g. a health crisis or gross-misconduct leading to a full scale public image crisis).
If you talk to them using focus groups or interviews, people in “trapped categories” will mostly talk about their fears / anger with relation to the brand experience. If you try to tap them for ideas, they will articulate their ambitions as the removal of negatives.

Roughly, in these situations, you will find customers in qualitative research divide into two groups: “Weak customers”, from marginal segments talk mainly about fears. Form the “please stop the pain“ group.
“Strong customers”, from sought-after and courted segments, will vent their anger about all players in the category. This the “go be stupid somewhere else“ group.

Ignoring this condition triggers the “generic loop complex”, which very simply works like this:

1. A brand’s category is largely generic
2. The company discover that the category, their brand included, is generic.
3. They turn to the customer for answers.
4. The customers can only speak of their generic experiences
5. The company bases any vision or “new” concept this input, mistakenly labelling it as  “customer insight”, or it borrows undifferentiated best practices from other markets as its home audience requirements seem generic.
6. Managers come up with generic briefs ; Agencies with generic solutions
7. Go to 1.

Treatment:
You have to be brave.
Look inside for answers. Another focus group just won’t do. Take a hard look at the company and realise what made this brand get so far. Then build on your best qualities. Start to communicate what you wish to stand for. Your audience can not tell you what the break-through experience should be, simply because they have never experienced it. Trying to force them into giving you an answer will just make things worse.
Only you can find what it all means.
If you want to make sense of your world, MAKE it.
Sense is made, rarely found.
Facts are found, stories are created.