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April 29, 2008

Ethno-shopno

Ethnography has become the "research" technique of choice in new product Development, and for good reason. Getting into an environment, experiencing and observing, are the best way to learn true user needs for any product or service. An effective variation on traditional ideas of ethnography is something I call "ethno-shopno" which involves in home and in-store interviewing all at the same time. About a 2 hour procedure, repeated. Video snipets from this kind of work are extremely effective ways to discern and communicate user needs and set the stage for effective design solutions. Social scientists and cultural anthropologists may be taken aback that 2 hour interviews qualify as any kind of true research, but compared to say, much of focus group results, the net benefit is quite amazing.

Posted by Mark Dziersk at 8:33 PM

February 4, 2008

Is the Opportunity Real?

We’ve all been in that sales situation where you think you have it wrapped up and at the last minute it stalls. They stop returning your calls and emails, all correspondences are very short and to the point, the RFP is hanging out there, it seems like your prospect has simply fallen off the face of the earth.

So what happened? Were they not an ideal client or part of your target audience? Was there secretly a competitor with an inside track or existing relationship (hint: there usually is, but that’s a different ezine topic)? Were they simply shopping to see what’s available in the marketplace?

It could’ve been any of those, and more, so today I want to introduce a framework to help you evaluate each opportunity - before you commit to chasing it. I can’t claim this model as my own, though I’ve adopted it in my daily client interactions.

When I got serious about understanding consultative sales, multiple colleagues recommended I pick up Mahan Khalsa’s book, “Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play.” And I recommend you read it as well. The short version of the story is that Mahan is responsible for sales performance at FranklinCovey, the Seven Habits folks, and this book shed more light on how modern sales work than anything I’ve read. When I read a recent ezine from Mahan, I knew I needed to share some of his wisdom with a little bit of “Nick Rice practicality” thrown in for good measure.

When you are presented with an opportunity for a new project or new business, you need to uncover as much as possible to gauge how successful you will be with this project. If you try to fix every problem that presents itself, you will never be seen as a specialist, and as such, you will never command high fees. Generalists stay busy with small projects, but when the client wakes up and decides to fix the big problem, who are they going to call?

So, how do you uncover such details? At a high level, you have to ensure that three things are present before you can properly evaluate an opportunity. Here is the Opportunity Framework:

Opportunity Framework

First off, you have to know that there truly is a problem to solve or a result to achieve. You cannot help someone that doesn’t admit or realize that something needs to change. It doesn’t matter if you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there’s an issue; if you cannot get your prospect to see it and admit it, you’re wasting your time. On the flip side of this, it has to be a problem worth fixing or a result worth achieving. Organizations live in a constant state of brokenness - and that’s okay as long as they are still profitably functional. Some problems are worth fixing, some are not. Realize that as soon as possible and move on.

The second item to uncover is the prospect’s ability to make and act upon a decision. There’s nothing worse than someone who cannot make a decision and move on it. If you’re running into this, chances are you’re not talking to the real decision maker or you’re not helping them paint a picture of what life could be like after fixing the situation. If you work with large organizations, know that junior level managers and staff love to keep consultants and sales people busy. They like the power trip. And it makes them look productive to their bosses. You need assurance that the person you’re working with can say yes to your proposed solution before you invest a lot of time and energy.

The third leg of this stool is ensuring that appropriate resources are available to address the issue. Resources can take the shape of budget dollars, staff availability, executive oversight, equipment - anything required to make the solution a reality. If there’s not enough budget or internal staff resources, the project will never get off the ground. If you cannot get commitment from a certain executive for support, you’re on thin ice. How can you be successful without appropriate resources?

If any one of these three items is left unknown, you put the project and your success at risk. Chances are you’re going to waste a lot of time when this initiative stalls at some point in the future.

We’ve all seen good opportunities with no budget. We’ve all seen executives than cannot make a decision. We’ve all walked into a client’s office and almost tripped over the problems in the organization. If you are someone that wants to be recognized as an expert in their field; someone that wants to truly provide the best solution to the client’s problem; you owe it to yourself to slow down enough to uncover all three parts of an opportunity. And don’t be afraid to walk away if the opportunity isn’t ideal. You should only work in an environment where you are set up to succeed. If the project isn’t right, it isn’t right and now it’s time to move on.

You cannot expect the client to simply lay all of this out on the table for you. You have to dig. You have to ask the right questions to bring these issues to the forefront - and in doing so you will separate yourself from 98% of the other sales people out there. Too many people simply jump at what’s presented in an RFP or what’s said a meetings as gospel without digging any deeper. Clients want and expect you to ask tough questions. They want to know that you fully understand their issue inside and out before presenting a solution.

When you approach each opportunity as a chance to find the perfect solution for your client - whether it involves you or not - you’re doing the right thing. And Carma has a way of rewarding those that do the right thing. In order to understand the problem and propose the perfect solution, you need to know all three parts of an opportunity.

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Nick Rice

I work with successful professional service firms that struggle to attract new clients and want to take their business to the next level. Download my free report, "7 Principles of Attracting More Clients" at http://www.nick-rice.com

Posted by Nick Rice at 2:44 PM | 1 Comment

January 30, 2008

Is the Design Revolution Here? Can Designers get to the top of a publicly traded company?

In the past months I’ve read several articles and blogs about the possibility that Jonathan Ive, SVP of Industrial Design at Apple, could succeed Steve Jobs as CEO. As far as I can tell this is only a rumor, but it prompts the questions: Is corporate America ready for the design revolution? Can designers be CEOs? I can only imagine how much fun that would be, not only for the people working in these companies but for the consumers, finally getting products and services that go beyond their expectations. And imagine what that would do to the stock price.

Although to many, designers as CEOs, may sound like a crazy idea. I believe designers could do very well as top executives. Designers have a unique set of skills that combined with traditional management knowledge could create a new kind of leader, more in tune with today’s needs. Why? Because they know how to explore possibilities, connect the dots, simplify complex information down to a relevant summary and remind of us of context and humanity. They know how to work closely with engineers, marketers and outside manufacturing contractors. Rather than being simple stylists, they're leading innovators in the use of new materials and production processes.

With this I am not advocating that any designer can be a good CEO, but a few have a unique set of skills that are more relevant to today’s and tomorrow’s competitive markets. Where almost everything is commoditized and differentiation can only come from thoughtful products and services, companies must go farther than just talking about design and begin using it.

Design is a powerful tool that is just being discovered and mildly used by most companies and strategically implemented by a few. I wonder how long it will take for most board of directors to understand the value of design and make bold moves to utilizing it?

manuel
manuel@manuelsaez.com

Posted by Manuel Saez at 11:53 AM | 5 Comments

January 15, 2008

Design Brainstorming: Creativity as Killer App

One way creativity can apply to every situation faced is to make a protocol of running a problem through a filter of crashing disparate influences. If everytime we are faced with a problem and two or three answers appear, there is great value in smashing those seemingly obvious first choices into other non intuative, even non sensical, options. Brainstorming can help here.

One method (or killer Brainstorm app) is to collect a group of problem solvers and start by brainstorming a list of 3 categories, let's say user, like product and like function. Next pick randomly from the lists, combining the three into an answer. Making the list is fun and thought starting. Combining the three, provides structure within the brainstorm ( I know, sounds counter intuitive, but it works) although the ideas may not be immediately applied, they almost always lead to unexpected answers and new directions.

Although a brainstorm like this is a small step and usually safe to do. The point is to provide a method that allows the embrace of ambiguity and encourages going someplace different. This kind of thing in the long run, helps encourage an organization to look for other ways to integrate creative thinking.

Mark

Mark Dziersk FIDSA.
VP Indusrial Design - laga/one80
mdziersk@laga.com

Posted by Mark Dziersk at 10:26 AM | 5 Comments

January 9, 2008

Excellence versus Perfection

Michael J. Fox once said, "I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business." Those words rang true as soon as I read them.

Early in my career I was a graphic designer for a local university. I was responsible for creating text books and classroom materials for the International College of Dentistry - super exciting work by the way :). Like any job I had deadlines to meet with the editors, publishers, printers, etc... One day I caught myself going back to tweak the layout for a certain book. That particular book was printed six months earlier and currently in use in Dental Schools throughout the Middle East. But here I was futzing with margins, font spacing and the like.

Something made me stop and think about what I was doing. Why in the world was I messing with a text book that would never be reprinted? I had other things to work on, but internally I was going nuts because I knew I could do a better job than I had originally. Mind you, there was nothing wrong with the final published book. It was great. Everyone signed off on my designs and loved it. Not to mention that it was a critical component of actually training and producing dentists. It was working.

And in that moment I realized that I was a "tweaker". My edits had nothing to do with my audience. They were strictly for my own benefit and justification. I wanted better margins simply because it was the right thing to do in my mind. Tweaking was a constant thread in my professional life for years. And to this day I still fight the urge to pull up a logo I designed nine months ago, or a strategic plan that I helped write with a client and make a few tweaks. It's just a part of who I am.

But a few years ago I realized that tweaking was just for me - not my clients - most of the time they never saw my tweaks anyway. When I did bring my revised files to a client, they would look at me like I just handed them a moon rock. You could see it in their eyes, "What is this? Why are you bringing this to me now?"

After more than a few of those interactions, I decided that perfectionism doesn't work for me. In fact, it was actually hurting my client relationships. They had moved on. I was obsessing. I was the crazy consultant or designer that couldn't let go. So today, I actively strive for excellence.

Excellence is something completely different than perfection. And it took me a long time to fully understand how powerful and good simply being excellent was. For me, perfection was the top. It was it. Anything else seemed like failure. I look back now and realize how silly I was to think that being excellent meant failure.

And here's the funny thing that all perfectionists know - perfection isn't possible. If it isn't possible, why keep killing ourselves to reach it? If it isn't possible, why even think and act like it is? Why assume that nothing else will suffice? Why do we set ourselves up for a letdown?

Being excellent is attainable. It's not always easy, but it is doable. Excellence doesn't mean that you're sacrificing your soul. It doesn't mean anything other than excellent. And how can that be a bad thing?

When you strive for perfection, you shoot yourself in the foot right from the start. You've given yourself a goal that's unreachable. You will never be satisfied with the end result and that creates a type of myopia. You cannot see past perfection. Perfection holds you back from reaching your true potential. It's a constrictive way of being. Perfection costs you more than you realize.

And here's the kicker - no one expects you to be perfect. People expect you to strive for excellence. Excellence is what people pay for. It's what people really want from you.

Being recognized as excellent in your field is the key to success. So I encourage all of you perfectionist out there to take a few minutes and look at how your never-ending quest for perfection affects your life and relationships. Is it helping or hurting you? Are you getting what you want?

If you're open to looking at it from another angle, ask yourself these two questions:

1. If it were impossible to be perfect who would I prefer to be?
2. If I could be the new way, what would things be like? What would happen?

If you're like me, you'll find that the new way of being is much better than the current constrictive way. Once you come to that realization, life and work take on a whole new meaning.

Like I said, I still fight the urge to tweak, but recognizing how it affects me and actively striving for excellence has allowed me to be more productive, more effective and happier. And that's something that most New Year's resolutions can't beat.

BTW, There are probably spelling and/or grammar mistakes in this blog post. And that's okay. I've spell checked it and I've re-read it and now I'm sending it. I want it to be right, but I also know that I can spend hours obsessing over every detail and it won't go out until tomorrow or the next day. Hopefully a few grammatical errors (if you catch them) won't keep you from thinking about what I've said. So here goes...

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Nick Rice

I work with successful professional service firms that struggle to attract new clients and want to take their business to the next level.

http://www.nick-rice.com

Posted by Nick Rice at 3:02 PM | 2 Comments

December 16, 2007

Welcome. The Power of Design

Recently a lot has been said about the “power of design” and its positive impact in business performance. According to the UK Design Council, “Share prices of companies using design effectively have outperformed the FTSE All-Share index by 200 per cent over ten years”. Apple, Google, P&G, and Samsung know this.

The question then is why, in the big picture, so few companies truly embrace design as a strategic tool? And why designers are not stronger players in the corporate world?

In my view design and designers are underutilized, and to a point miss-utilized, in today’s business world. I believe the main reason is due to the lack of understanding and appreciation between designers and business people.

My aim in this blog is to bridge this gap, highlighting the “power of design” and creating a greater understanding between designers and business people. Stay tuned for future postings. It will be fun!

Posted by Manuel Saez at 8:25 PM | 5 Comments

December 5, 2007

Design and Innovation: What's the Problem?

Innovation requires an environment that is open to new ideas. That's all well and good, but innovation is more than blue sky. In order to encourage new and novel solutions, you have to ask the right questions.

Many brainstorming sessions are centered around questions that boil down to “What should we do in response to our competitor’s product or service?” Now the reason you are having the meeting in the first place may be because your competitor has just taken a big chunk of your market share, so that seems like a legitimate question.

Continue reading "Design and Innovation: What's the Problem?"

Posted by David Oliver at 11:20 AM | 2 Comments

November 29, 2007

Design: Are you a consultant or a vendor?

Put another way, do you give your clients what they ask for, or, do you offer your best judgment even when it’s not what they want to hear?

Now before you dismiss this as a question meant for someone else, let me say this: No number of design awards, glowing articles, or Fortune 100 clients grants you exemption from this question.

Design consultancies lead a precarious life. They rely on the good graces of their clients. Of course, a big part of doing business is nurturing relationships, but just because you have a relationship with a client doesn’t mean it’s a healthy one. An upset middle managers at one Client Company or another can ruin a quarter for a design firm - big or small.

Continue reading "Design: Are you a consultant or a vendor?"

Posted by David Oliver at 10:05 AM | 2 Comments

November 27, 2007

Organizational Creativity

Creativity is a powerful motivator. If one does anything the same way for long enough it becomes boring, it doesn’t matter what it is or how lucrative it may be. People are usually very motivated when asked and challenged to use creativity to solve problems or invent new methods or discover new opportunities. Design is the tool that most organizations can embrace to infuse creative thinking into the equation. This is one of clearest reasons that Design and Design thinking are so important to business today, they serve as the method for “achieving use from creativity”. But the need is deeper than the role of the designer, it goes to the whole organization. Everyone is creative if given the opportunity and giving the opportunity is becoming an imperative.

Is creativity fostered, promoted, nurtured in your company? If so, in what ways?

Mark Dziersk

laga

Posted by Mark Dziersk at 6:03 PM | 1 Comment

Marketing Communications Vocabulary

Being on the same page with regards to vocabulary is one of the most effective ways to ensure that your projects come in on strategy, time, and budget. A while back, Ernie Mosteller did a great job of boiling down the basics with this marketing communications vocabulary. It's just as relevant today as ever.

Brand. Your brand is your personality, as determined by how the world sees you. How you want to be seen can affect how the world sees you, but it doesn't define it. The world gets to define its own take on you. Lots of things go into what the world sees of you. Your brand = (what you want it to be) + 2(X) what the world says it is. The world's actual view of you is at least twice as important as your desired view of you. As the world's view of you becomes more negative, X gets larger. As it becomes more positive, X shrinks.

Design. Design is not your brand. But it can affect your brand. Design is the clothes you wear in order to attempt to affect the world's perception of your personality. It may also be the car you drive, or the house you live in. It's your outward, visual, projection to the world. It may or may not have anything at all to do with who you really are -- though good design is always based on what's inside. Design can, and should, touch everything you do that the world sees. Which, basically, is everything.

Advertising. Advertising is not your brand. Advertising is what you say about yourself in order to attempt to affect the world's perception of your personality. What you say can also be defined as: how you act in public. Which is, everywhere. What you say about yourself is greatly affected by how you say it, because how you say it determines whether people will hear and/or listen. Whispering in the middle of an NFL stadium doesn't have the same effect as shouting in church. If I were you, I wouldn't do either. Advertising, by the way, is no longer defined as the placement of a pre-determined message in a purchased medium. Advertising is any piece of communications with an agenda.

Public Relations. PR is not your brand. PR is an active attempt to get other people to say something positive about you, without directly paying them to do so. Because this definition is so broad, and so clearly goes light years beyond churning out a press release, you can safely assume that I believe PR is pretty much anything, and is an integral, specialized component of quality advertising. PR is also the component you need to turn to for crisis management, assuming you're managing the crisis honestly. Because almost anything else has a real chance of making things worse.

Collateral. Collateral is not your brand. Collateral is reference material for people who have already expressed an interest in your brand. Whether it's a business card or brochure, collateral has almost no ability to create interest in you. Its function is to enhance interest, and provide information, for those who have already decided (if even in a small way) to check you out. Most websites function as collateral, though they are capable of a lot more.

Concept. A concept is no longer simply a storyboard, or a headline/visual relationship. A concept is an idea designed to encourage a specific action from the person who interacts with it. A concept could be an event, a direct mail piece, a Super Bowl commercial, a You Tube video, a boy band, or a newspaper ad. The key to making a concept work is to focus your attention on the desired action from the viewer, and simplify that action to its most basic element. A concept doesn't sell a car. A salesman sells a car. But the right concept can get someone to talk to a salesman. Or click a link. Or remember the car you have for sale, the next time they think about buying one. Good concepts surprise people. Great concepts hold their attention. Effective concepts are very specific, and very simplistic, about what they want to achieve.

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Nick Rice - I work with successful professional service firms that struggle to attract new clients - http://www.nick-rice.com

Posted by Nick Rice at 11:07 AM | 1 Comment

October 16, 2007

Design: Say Hi, Then Back Off

Homepages. You either love them or hate them as a designer and if you are a person in management you probably love them because you get to tell the world a million and one things about your company. To some there is a belief system that your homepage should say everything about your company. To others there is an understanding that the homepage should give a clear message and then help guide your audience further down your site.

It's hard to tell which is more successful, but let's look at a couple of examples from each side.

Less:

• Google
• Apple
• 9rules

More:

• Yahoo
• AOL
• eBay

All six are successful websites and no one is to say that one type of design is more effective than the other. However, can you think of the one clear message provided by Yahoo, AOL or eBay? Their designs tell you a million things about their companies, but your audience only needs to hear one to make a clear decision and gain an understanding of what you are about. Going over those sites and looking at them from top to bottom, once you get to the bottom can you even remember what type of information was provided at the top? Users love information, but give it to them how they want it, not right off the bat.

When you introduce yourself to someone do you speak for five seconds or five minutes? Your website is your introduction and conversation to your audience so say hi, then just back off. They will appreciate you more for it.

Posted by Paul Scrivens at 1:59 PM | 7 Comments

October 15, 2007

Design: When Simplicity Complicates...

I stumbled upon this while surfing my normal "kick off the week with design" RSS feeds. It's from Art Lebedev Studios and is a little over the top at ~20 inches long. There's no way that one would be able to find the appropriate channel button quicker than with a normal 10 button remote.

Sometimes form is better than function, but then it becomes a fashion statement instead of something useful. I do love the gradient buttons denoting sections of 10. But anywhooo...

Nick Rice | Nick Rice Consulting | http://www.nick-rice.com

Posted by Nick Rice at 3:16 PM | 1 Comment

October 3, 2007

Design: One Difference Changes the Whole Experience

Maybe you have heard that Microsoft has launched version 2 of its Zune media player today and for obvious reasons it draws comparisons to Apple's iPod. What interests me about the Zune is not the product itself, but the design of the Zune homepage. Obviously they took a page from the Apple handbook, which is a good thing, but there is one element of the page that annoys me to no end. Before I mention it, let me show you screens of the two sites.

As you can see they both contain a large image of the product that takes up the entire page. I love these kinds of pages because they focus on a singular message. The problem I have with the Zune is that the image is not clickable. It takes me no where so I actually have to go and find where I am supposed to click, which happens to be a little link below the picture that is hard to read due to the color of the background.

By not including such a simple item I have already become frustrated with the site. Imagine how frustrated others will get? What is amazing though is that Microsoft really can not afford such mishaps if they wish to compete head on with Apple. There site should go one step further than Apple's so that the full Zune experience is something that brings customers back. Nobody wants to return to a site, click the image again and again find out it does not work.

This only goes to show that even when you get most of the site right forgetting that last 5% can make everyone forget about the good 95%.

Posted by Paul Scrivens at 11:47 AM | 2 Comments

September 24, 2007

Yahoo: One Company, One Hundred Designs

If you are a business person I am sure you would like to get a crack at running Yahoo!. Maybe you are a designer and what better feeling would it be than to get the opportunity to redesign all of Yahoo? In either case you would be in for a bumpy ride considering the size of the actual site. It is hard to tell how large the site is just by looking at the homepage, but you would have to imagine they have hundreds of independent sections now each with a different design. A couple of years ago I longed for the day that a global internet power like Yahoo would change their ways and put more behind their designs.

About a year ago they finally embraced the importance of design and branding and worked on improving some sections. For example, Yahoo! Finance received an excellent makeover giving the site a much cleaner feel than before. With this example you can see the problem is not whether Yahoo is aware of design or even capable of pulling it off, but that there is so much to design they now have an inconsistent site with various designs all around.

The perfect example can be seen on Yahoo! News Politics. Here you can see the basic news page which is not that bad, but then again can be greatly improved. In the same section you also have People of the Web and the Democratic Candidate Mashup, which in my opinion are lightyears ahead when it comes to design. Three pages and three different designs all under the same section. If you removed the Yahoo logo you would think that they were three different sites.

Now with a strong, recognizable brand like Yahoo! having such fragmented designs across your whole site is not that damaging, but for your business and site it can be fatal. This does not mean that every page should share the exact same design, but the branding across the site should remain consistent and the only case of finding that on Yahoo is the logo.

In today's world where people get to know a company by their online presence more than anything it is vital to make sure all of the pieces fit in the same puzzle. Building a brand can be hard enough so try not to make it even harder for your audience by making each section a site by itself. A great example of this would be Apple where each section is unique, but each section has that Apple feel and branding behind it.

Posted by Paul Scrivens at 12:49 PM | 2 Comments

May 18, 2007

The Beauty of One Page Designs

Back in the early 90s when companies were beginning to jump on the web and create websites for themselves, many times people scoffed at the idea of having just a brochure site. These were the sites that were one page of information and nothing else. People believed you needed to have multiple pages on the site to easily breakdown all of the information that you want to present. However, over the past year one page designs have been making a comeback and for a good reason.

With so much competition on the web it can be difficult to even get people to come to your site and when they do often times they might not get the message you are trying to tell them because it is locked behind 3 pages of links. You are usually only given one chance to make an impression and sale so why bother with creating an elaborate site just to sell one product? Of course the idea of cramming a ton of information on one page will drive any designer crazy, but isn't that what upper-management try to do already?

The sites that 37signals have created for their online applications are not one page, but the homepages for each essentially server as one page designs. They give you the information that is needed and make sure to get their message across without you having to dig for it. Because of just one page you have the information needed to make decision whether to dig deeper or leave. Usually you have to figure out where the link is to the page that will answer the question that you have that will help you make that decision.

Another great example of the one page design paradigm can be seen on any Apple product page. For example, the Macbook page does a great job of showcasing the product and filling you in with tidbits of information. You leave the page feeling like you have a better idea of what the product is and what its capabilities are.

The key to this type of design is being able to throw out most of the information that you would usually try to include on a site and simply get right to the point. This is not easy when management feels they need to include the 100 page company manual on the site, but people value their time and they could be spending it better on another site if you wish to overwhelm them.

If your company currently has a site have a look at it and see if a one page design for certain products and services would be more fitting than a muli-page design. Keep in mind that users prefer to scroll rather than click on links and wait for pages to load. Also know that one page designs aren't meant for everything, but if you can pull it off you will notice the rewards immediately.

Posted by Paul Scrivens at 4:18 PM | 7 Comments

April 27, 2007

Did we ever remember design?

When it comes to design, every year is the same. You will see articles upon articles extolling the virtues of design and how companies can benefit by putting more emphasis behind it and what happens? The same companies innovate while other companies think they can overpower the competition through features and marketshare.

By now I am sure everyone is well aware of the success of Nintendo's Wii, the most under-powered of the big three's systems. The one with the least amount of games and probably the weakest online gaming platform. Yet, it's the one that is consistenly out of stock and topping the sales charts month after month. While Sony and Microsoft are fighting over what the next technology should be for high-definition DVDs, Nintendo is fighting over who can create the greatest experience and they are winning by a large margin. The design is the great experience in Nintendo's case.

I wil not talk about Apple in this entry because there will be plenty more times when I bring them up in this column, but can you argue their magical turnaround at the beginning of the century was something else besides pushing out quality designed products? We learn the same lessons from Apple and Nintendo every year, yet companies don't seem to ever take notice. The best designs don't always win, but they win more often than not.

When will every company begin to realize that if you are going to compete at least make design one of the categories you trump the competition in? You might not be able to compete on the size of your audience reach. You might not be able to compete when it comes to how many zeroes are in the bank account. However, losing because your design is not as good as the competition means your chances of success are slim to none.

We live in a world where so many things are grabbing for our attention that we do not have the time to sort through all the mess. We do not have the time to waste on ugly. We want to have pleasant experiences with everything that we use and that all begins with the design of things. Do not worry though, if you forget about everything I just wrote about I will write it again next year because that is how the cycle works.

Posted by Paul Scrivens at 3:15 AM | 5 Comments

April 24, 2007

5 Steps To The Conversational Economy

It's no secret that the web is moving to a conversation platform. That's one of the major check boxes for all "Web 2.0" apps online. You can have a 2.0 look (big fonts, clean simple design, and gradient color buttons), but to truly be 2.0 you have to build your site around information sharing and user contribution.

Well that's easy to do if you're a start-up. But what's the benefit to Fortune 500 companies that are decades or centuries old? It's hard to wrap your head around this paradigm shift if you've been pushing information out to your customers for the last 20 years. In the old model, a company would buy enough airtime and/or print advertising to throw their message out in the market. It was a shotgun approach in the purest sense. Even as media-scarcity started to disappear, new targeting models came about to direct budget dollars to more appropriate medium. Think cable TV versus network or niche magazines versus the NY Times.

The good part was that you had a better shot at your audience seeing your message, but the message was still pushed out to the audience. Focus groups and the occasional talk to a sales person was the primary method of hearing what was going on with customers.

We all know the world has changed. The TV industrial complex is all but gone. That's not to say that no one will ever advertise on TV again. But we now understand that the expense rarely generates a worthwhile return on budget dollars. And there's only one true mass market TV event - the SuperBowl - and that has pretty much sucked from an advertising point of view for the last few years.

The music industry is falling apart. Why would a band sell their souls to a record label when they can get online distribution on their own? When was the last time you walked into a CD or record store and bought something? The world has changed.

Ten years ago we had no idea what Amazon and eBay would do the marketplace. They built systems around trust - not to mention the innovations around warehousing, shipping and distribution. Trust comes from real people giving recommendations, ratings, comments and reviews. It's not new. It's just enabled by global technology networks today.

So where do you start? How do you get on the bus? And guess what, if you don't you'll continue to see your profit slip. You'll continue to get bashed on Technorati (didn't know that was happening did you?). And you'll continue to feel the seismic shift underfoot until you fall in the crack.

So, here are my five ways you can start to revamp your business around the conversational web:

1. Make it easy for consumers to talk about you - good and bad.
If you sell products, let users submit reviews and ratings on your site. If you're making good products, you shouldn't have to worry because you'll see glowing reviews. If not, you've most likely found the source of your profitability or marketshare issues.

2. Customers are always right.
Even when they're wrong, in their heads, they're right. You have an opportunity to educate them but at the end of the day, they choose whether to stay with you or leave. You cannot control that. How you handle the education part makes a big difference in their decision.

3. Stop trying to please everyone.
Make an awesome product for one segment. Dominate that group of users. Turn them into your biggest advocates. When you try to make something for everyone, you end up with mush. Think Apple. The only way to survive the conversational web or economy is to have people talking about you. They can either love you or hate you, but if you're stuck in the middle, you're toast.

4. Understand that each customer counts.
Like Chris Anderson said, "the ants have megaphones." You have to recognize vocal supporters and address vocal critics. One bad review by an influential blogger and you've lost untold revenues. People don't trust mass media. They trust people like themselves. And if you feel like addressing individual users is too much hassle, you now see how far you have to come to participate in the new marketplace.

5. Do something worth conversation.
I'm not talking about a press stunt. I'm talking about developing products that people love. I'm talking about delivering service that is delightfully unexpected. Simply meeting expectations doesn't count anymore. There are too many options to pick from. That mentality comes from a scarcity mindset and we live in an abundant world. Create joy. Make a difference. Get people talking.

Posted by Nick Rice at 7:11 AM

March 11, 2007

So, Design is Biased By Class. Now What?

The South-by-Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi) brings together many of the best and brightest minds in the technology, design, and communications/entertainment world for four days of panels and parties. The crowd here seems to be largely on the same page – they are comfortable with the (very rapid) pace of innovation in this space, desperately anxious for new insights on what the next big thing will be, and confident (at least on the outside) of their own abilities. Almost by definition, we are an elite group of thinkers and doers for this space.

The goal of the event, now in its 14th year, is to tap the collective brain trust of this elite audience and channel their knowledge to keep the interactive industry all on the bleeding edge. The secondary goal, of course, is to find better ways to engage the audience who will ultimately use the technologies and content we create. What does the bleeding edge look like to us? In the first four panels that I attended on Saturday (the first full day of events) the bleeding edge included things like advergaming, widgets, and the future of movie and television production and distribution via the web. From my perspective, none of those discussions pushed much beyond the basics and certainly didn’t challenge me to think very far (if at all) outside my current experiences and understanding. I’m sure there are lots of people who don’t live and breath this stuff every day that would have found it all very interesting.

Then the last panel of the day convened.

Continue reading "So, Design is Biased By Class. Now What?"

Posted by Brian Reich at 1:43 PM | 12 Comments

February 9, 2007

Strategies for Growth

As more and more markets commoditize, brand becomes a critical factor in the purchase decision. In most large cash cow commodity markets, there are typically only two or three major players. Everybody else is left picking at single digit marketshare scraps with little to no growth opportunities. And no one wants to be there.

You have basically three options for long term growth (this isn't about low price strategies). One, you can launch a break-through product or service in your category. Think bagless vacuum cleaners. When there were only bagged vacuums, all the players were pretty much equal. Then the bagless came out in Japan and revolutionized the market - and put most of the aftermarket bag suppliers on the hunt for business. It was a game changer. Before those bagless vacs appeared, people just assumed they needed a bag to catch the dust. Once bagless was the standard, the market leveled off again.

The second method is to be seen as “head and shoulders” better than anything else in the market. Think Dyson. When that brand was launched there was little growth or movement in vacuum cleaners. Now Dyson is stealing share from everyone. They really didn’t invent anything new or revolutionary, they just made a better product. They’ve done a great job creating a product that took advantage of the weaknesses of current market - weak vacuums that lose suction and pass a lot of dust through back to the carpet. And they’ve put their message out with consistently stylish advertising and marketing. Everything about a Dyson looks high tech, expensive, and worth it. They made vacuums stylish. It makes sense when you consider that Mr. Dyson was not an engineer by trade, but an industrial designer.

The third way to grow is to niche down to a specific audience. The unlimited shelf space on the web and powerful search has allowed for effect niche marketing. More and more firms are moving to a niche marketing strategy. They want to be seen as the best provider of a very specific offering or audience need. The Long Tail theory tells us that a lot of small providers with very passionate customers can be as powerful as one or two large providers. They can control a larger percentage of share than previously realized. It's why most people rent the top 1-100 videos at Blockbuster stores, but they rent #101-10,000 on NetFlix. It's an economic response to abundance versus limited selection. Of course, now Blockbuster is making a big push into NetFlix territory with their web offering.

The average retailer cannot compete with Wal*Mart. My advice is to not compete head-to-head. The Wal*Mart brand is known for low prices not premium products. You can make a lot of money offering the high-end products that Wal*Mart could never push. If a Mom & Pop shop tries to compete with Wal*Mart head on, they're going to lose - it shouldn't be a surprise by now. They would be more profitable if they differentiated. In theory, Mom & Pop shops have the advantage of convenience and the potential for much better customer service - both of which can be powerful drivers of customer loyalty.

If you cannot easily answer and defend what you are the best at, chances are you're heading to commodity-ville. Start planning now how your products and services can change the game, stand out from the competition or attract a niche audience. Once you can easily answer the question, your audience will you when promoted properly. People are always looking for specialists to solve their problems. Being recognized as an expert makes your marketing efforts a lot easier. No one wants to be sold, but everyone likes to buy. Being seen as a specialist creates a buying environment, not a sales situation.

What do you do better than anyone? How will you present your brand image to take advantage of your new positioning? Are you going to completely change the game, simply make the best product, or fully satisfy a niche need?

Nick Rice • Lexington, Ky • nick@cre8tivegroup.com • www.cre8tivegroup.com

Posted by Nick Rice at 11:02 PM | 6 Comments

January 30, 2007

Being Creative In a Box

Over the years I've learned to love creative constraints. It's not that I love tight deadlines or small budgets or off-the-wall executive requests, but that's the world we live in. The sooner we uncover the driving factor behind those constraints, the sooner we'll be successful as professional marketers.

The nature of client/agency relationship is naturally built around constraints. It always surprises me that few people like to talk about budgets or deadlines up front. Especially considering that these two very real constraints drive 99% of all marketing projects. After all who is going to pay an agency to work forever with no defined goals and/or an undetermined invoice amount? The client doesn't want to give away his or her budget amount because they feel it gives the agency too much power or insider information. But without that knowledge, the agency cannot effectively assign resources or understand the scope of what's possible. The best way is to work together to determine an appropriate budget based on business objectives - the client tells the agency what they'd like to accomplish and the agency tells the client the best way to accomplish those goals and how much it will cost. I know this is a little over-simplified, but after all you are paying the agency because they're the experts, right? A lot of businesses have trouble letting go enough to generate new ideas. Not giving an agency the right amount of information, the right type of information, and enough freedom to come up with something new can turn into very damaging constraints of your project.

The true genius of a creative person is finding the best solution available within the project constraints. It’s not unreasonable to renegotiate project deliverables to fit within constraints - and that goes for client expectations as well as agency desires to produce top notch materials on every engagement.

It’s hard to fault a designer for wanting to do the best job possible on each and every assignment. Unfortunately the business world is one of realities more so than possibilities. The trick is doing the best job possible under the deadline and budget restrictions. That’s hard for a lot of creative directors and producers to wrap their heads around. You have to make conscious design decisions early in the project that meet the project/brand goals while staying on time and budget.

As an agency, we have to set client expectations up front about what is possible within given project constraints. With margins thinning, it’s a fine line to walk between customer satisfaction and agency profitability. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. The days of multi-year take-over-my-business retainer relationships are gone. I’ve heard a lot of mega-agency people talk about retainers as if they are an open bucket of money without defined deliverables or deadlines. In reality, retainers are just multi-project engagements under contract with one agency. You still have the same constraints as one-off project work; you’re just not fighting off other firms for each job which frees up resources to put into the work.

We have to learn to embrace constraints. Use the constraints as fuel to kick-start creative thinking. Great work comes from finding unique solutions while meeting all goals (project objectives, client satisfaction, time frame, budget, agency goals and designer expectations - probably in that order). Budget and time frame should determine level of effort on a sliding scale. A seasoned design professional will know what is possible when they understand the constraints. After that it’s a matter of aligning client & agency expectations with those constraints and everyone involved making purposeful decisions to stay on target.

Nick Rice • Lexington, Ky • nick@cre8tivegroup.com • www.cre8tivegroup.com

Posted by Nick Rice at 8:52 AM | 2 Comments

January 25, 2007

HELLO, my name is...

Don't we all love those ubiquitous name tags they give out at networking events? Anyway, I'm Nick Rice, the latest expert blogger for Fast Company. I wanted to put out a short post to introduce myself and give you some background on me.

I started professional life as a graphic designer for my alma mater and after a few years realized that my talents fell more on the business side of design. I moved from a university setting to a Fortune 500 global manufacturing firm. There I spent ten years in various marketing management roles in both a B2C and B2B capacity. While there, I was able to explore the consultative side of marketing with companies like Adobe, Dell, Farmers Insurance, and IBM. After a decade of success, my entrepreneurial spirit took over and I jumped at the opportunity to work in a small business environment.

I am currently responsible for Account Strategy and New Business Development for Cre8tive Group, a firm that specializes in marketing and branding strategies for socially aware organizations. I am passionate about helping people improve through better communications and marketing efforts. I've been actively involved in the blogosphere for over a year and keep an increasingly popular personal/professional blog entitled Strategic Design.

I'm very excited about joining the Fast Company team. Like you, I've loved the magazine for years and I cannot wait to begin contributing to the website. Don't hesitate to ask me a question or post a comment - after all that's what social media is all about. The conversations are the best part. Look for more posts on marketing, branding, design and new media.

Nick Rice • Lexington, Ky • nick@cre8tivegroup.com • www.cre8tivegroup.com

Posted by Nick Rice at 9:31 AM | 5 Comments