It is widely accepted among creative types that research kills unusual ideas. I was among the few to be sorry to see Arnell’s Tropicana redesign dismissed last year. When the customer rage erupted, PepsiCo (Tropicana’s parent company) instantly forgot what it seemed to have been the design brief—making Tropicana be more competitive agains private label brands created by large retail chains. Reverting back to the old packaging was dubbed by the media as a consumer victory. But Tropicana is still facing the same market challenge.

That’s not to say I agree with rulers who ignore customers (from Henry Ford’s ‘they can have any car color, as long as it’s black’ to Mark Zuckerberg’s telling ‘companies are stupid for listening to their customers’. Yet I grew tired of focus groups which are used to make sure brands play safe and innovation gets ignored. The next two videos make fun of the process. Enjoy, and show them to your client before considering focus groups!

Part 1. What drove you mad about each other?

Part 2. The split and attitudes to Wolff Olins today

Part 3. Their impact on branding. No-Logo and brand bullshit

Part 4. On media attitudes to branding and the branding world today

Movie trailers are passé. Now typeface trailers come into fashion—see the promo for Heroine, a new release from Fountain Type Foundry.

Heroine is inspired by the typeface Windsor, designed by Eleisha Pechey in 1905. Windsor is the typeface used in the titles of many Woody Allen films. A modern interpretation of this rusty pearl is something that is something that has always been missing in the major type libraries. But Heroine is not only an interpretation, it goes beyond that. With the addition of swashes and alternate letters in several styles it becomes very addictive.

It’s like a breeze of Art Noveau with modern bezier skills, old and new celebrated in a typeface family with 9 styles. The weights are handpicked with small steps between them to bring out the best of Heroine. True to history, condensed versions are also included in the family.

The old catalogue design, vs the new one

In an interview for CAP & Design (translation here), Ikea’s Ivana Hrdlickova argues that the decision was driven by the need to have a typeface that would support also Asian character sets. Another statement, by Ikea’s spokesman Monika Gocic, claims that the typeface choice has to do with efficiency and cost-effectiveness. “Plus, it’s a simple, modern-looking typeface.”, says Gocic.

Most designers I’ve talked to about this change are stupefied. Verdana is a typeface that was created in 1996 by Matthew Carter, specifically for making small text readable on computer screens—an it does that very effectively. But its print version is a compromise—common and ugly. Here are some more reasons why I think this change was not thoroughly analyzed:

• Why change something that works? Creating more alphabets for Futura would seem a more natural move.
• Verdana makes Ikea look common and amateurish, like thousands of small businesses that use Verdana as their default font in print, just because it’s there, in their computer.
• Verdana looks awful at large sizes, especially in headlines and signage.
• Verdana is a wide typeface, leading to a waste of space in print. Since Ikea’s catalogue is the third most printed publication (after the Bible and Harry Potter), you have to wonder whether this change shouldn’t have been made with sustainability in mind.
• I’m not sure why Verdana is effective (except for the fact it comes for free on most computers). But it’s definitely not a modern typeface.

Why all the fuss?

I know this isn’t world hunger. I know that this will pass unnoticed to most consumers. But as a designer, I feel betrayed. I’ve always seen Ikea, along with Apple and Braun, as the most important purveyors of design values to the masses. So this change is a step against their core design philosophy, and the only explanation I can find for this is that no designer was involved in the design process. If a company like Ikea can make this mistake, you have to wonder who is going to lead when it comes to design.

It’s not something irrelevant, since Time magazine addressed this as a serious issue, interviewing me and other designers who protested in this. So sign this online petition, maybe Ikea will understand the seriousness of this issue and prove their respect to design, which has brought them where they are.

Update (Aug 31)

Ikea reacted to the unexpected coverage of this in Time magazine and throughout social media:

We’re surprised. But I think it’s mainly experts who have expressed their views, people who are interested in fonts. I don’t think the broad public is that interested. Verdana is a simple, cost-effective font which works well in all media and languages.

Camilla Meiby, Ikea spokesman (quoted by Associated Press)

It’s sad that some people react negative. Still, we are very glad that people care so much. But what’s important is the message, not good looking fonts.

Ivana Hrdlickova, Ikea (quoted by Swedish Wire)

I really appreciate Ikea’s intervention and their response. It shows an open mind and I really want to thank them for joining a conversation started by people who appreciate both their role in promoting design to masses, and design itself.

However, there are certain aspects that I would argue about:

• Indeed, the broad public is not interested. Although this change in identity rather makes Ikea look unremarkable (in visual communication), similar to tens of thousands of businessed in the world who only use Arial, Times New Roman or Verdana. This will impact on the long run on the perception.
• Verdana does not work well in print. Ask any graphic designer that has basic typography knowledge. And it does not work well in all languages (it only has Latin, Cyrillic and Greek letterforms)
• It’s not about good looking fonts. It’s about design, which is more about functionality and solving a problem, than just pure aesthetics. Would you argue similarly about any of your products—that it has to work, no matter how it looks? I think this undermines the whole philosophy Ikea is built around.

Ikea, you say you are glad that design/typography experts care about you. I think that’s something few brands can brag about. This whole fuss is about nothing else than caring about your design strategy—a strategy that I (and other 3000+ fellow designers who signed the above mentioned petition) hope you will revise!

Thank you!

It’s a nice song—although I’m not that fond about country-style music.

The important this about it is that I see it as a milestone in how brands regard the power of social media. Of course, there was the Domino Pizza scandal (not that far ago), but that may have seemed as an accident. Now this guitarist comes and proves again not only the power of social media, but the power consumers get through it.

Customers trust other customers much more than they trust companies. And those companies that still think they are in control of their brand communication, are going to face serious headaches when they realized they’ve stayed for too long in an ivory tower and failed to be part of the conversation.

But first and foremost, companies should really re-consider their customer service.

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And more often than not, clients choose logos based on subjective criteria and gut feeling. As a design consultant, I respect gut feeling because it comes from experience and common sense. But at the same time, I advise against letting pure subjectivity overwhelm the identity design decision process. After all, it’s not a tie or a dress, but one of the most important brand communication assets.

Image courtesy of Mike Rohde

However, an identity redesign is not a very common event in an organization’s lifetime, so it is very unlikely that most clients know how to deal with it. How can you expect your client to objectively evaluate design proposals, if you don’t offer guidance? They need a framework, especially since each agency can have more or less different approaches. The following framework establishes a set of criteria that is helpful for both the designer (in creating optimal solutions) and the client (in making decisions). Whenever I have used it, this method significantly reduced subjectivity and allowed for an effective decision.

Here are some of the most common criteria that I use:

1. Memorability—essential when competing in a busy market, when you cannot repeat your visual message as often as you’d like, to imprint it in the minds of the audience.
2. Distinctiveness—how different, and therefore ownable the logo is within your industry/area; a criterion directly linked to memorability and protectability.
3. Durability—rebrandings with shiny, multidimensional logos are in fashion, and initially may help get attention (to the logo, if not the company). But a simpler, less trendy logo can in the long run generate higher ROI. Remember that logos are primarily identification/association devices, not communication devices.
4. Likeability—does the main audience like it? Most often, the main audience is the employees. (I advise against testing the likeability of a logo outside the company. After all, the corporate identity is a reflection of the organizational brand, and not a package on a shelf fighting for the shopper’s attention.) Likeability is one of the trickiest evaluation criteria, since subjectivity still plays an important part. But people won’t rally around a new logo and identity unless they like it.
5. Alignment to brand look & feel—a lot of times, designers develop the look and feel after they have developed the logo. I strongly advise to agree upon that first, and then come up with a logo. It’s just a more focused process.
6. Signification—while the logo is not primarily a communication device, any communicative content (if it is not a wholly abstract logo) should help the organization convey brand values (and not industry clichés).
7. Intrinsic vs. acquired meaning—some logos have meaning from the beginning, making it easier to convey certain organizational values (usually figurative logos-see Akzo Nobel); others are more abstract, but acquire meaning and value after being associated with the brand image and behavior for some time (see Visa). A more abstract logo allows changes in positioning and values over time, without the need for a radical visual change (logo makeover)-therefore a more durable approach. On the other hand, if you are looking into communicating your brand values/positioning faster (by using the logo also as a communication device), it’s better to use a logo that has meaning from the start.
8. Appropriateness—in the search for distinctiveness, there is a risk to go over the edge of appropriateness, which will result in an identity that will be difficult to adopt by the employees or the market (see Abbey’s transparent logo by Wolff Olins).
9. Protectability—a criteria that can (and should) be assessed only by a professional IP counselor.
10. Adaptability (transferability)—important when the logo will endorse divisions, sub-brands, alliances or brand extensions.
11. Ease of implementation—gradients, special colors, 3D effects might raise production issues and implementation difficulties and result in a longer roll-out of a new identity.
12. Cost of implementation—it can be an issue, and not only in a recession. I’ve seen identity implementation projects fade out before finish because of cost issues (most often a consequence of bad planning).

Usually, I seek client agreement with the top six criteria, and then prioritize them, so that the final results can be weighted. This is extremely useful when working with a committee/board, as it offers a solid, objective assessment, hard to refute with merely subjective opinions. Ideally, the assessment for each criteria should be made outside the immediate working team (agency + client) and as accurately as possible. Due to time constraints, it’s not always possible to properly evaluate memorability among customers, or distinctiveness-and you will have to resort to the assessment of the work team members (which is still OK).

In the end, it is the client who has the final decision, but the above framework should help minimize your frustration and increase the chance of a correct logo choice. It did that for my projects.

So here’s my point of view, beyond the part where I boasted with our work and discussed our holistic approach of the brading process:

What is the predominant management strategy during crisis? Budget slashing. Period.

I had a recent discussion with a large client, and I was terrified that his management strategy was focused exclusively on survival throughout the crisis period (which, obviously, no one has any idea when it would end). Nothing more. Just get the ship to the shore without sinking. Hello? What happened to the part with increasing revenues?

Crisis is an opportunity

Most managers are in a state of panic. Investors hire managers that know how to cut. People are sacked, products and brands are buried forever, marketing and HR budgets are just a shadow.

This is a great opportunity for someone who wants to zig when others zag. Competition is in chaos fighting in pricing. Costs are lower (from production to media to salaries and almost everything). I don’t see a low budget as a threat (well, it is, but it’s not the end of the world), but as an opportunity to do things smarter.

Wise managers adjust their strategy to exploit this status-quo to their advantage. Their management (and implicit branding) strategy is based on action rather than expenditure. They have a plan that extends beyond the crisis. They listen, then act and always measure (that’s why accountability now becomes more important than time to market).

Build loyalty, rather than awareness

It’s common sense. New client acquisition costs are higher than retaining an existing client. And strong brands are about loyalty, not about awareness (think of niche brands).

Consolidate and optimize

Choose to work with just a few suppliers. Benefits will show sooner in volume discounts and in shorter project timeframes (due to smoother process). Optimize production costs—Unilever plans to save hundreds of millions by reducing their packaging color palette from over 100 to just 6 throughout their range of products.

Less advertising. More PR and digital.

This is a plea for more effective communication. PR and digital branding are cheaper and more accountable than TV. While during the past years, huge amounts of the budgets were spent on TV, due to convenience and time-to-market, a good idea and carefully chosen channels can get good results with just a fraction of the former TV budgets.

Social media allows for good listening, measurable objectives. By the way, get the habit of setting hard objectives (30% success rate) rather than soft objectives (7% success rate).

Most importantly, communicate as often as possible (be relevant) to make up for the loss in media space.

Most important. Focus on people.

I always complain about clients not understanding the whole of branding. I have to admit that leadership is often more disregarded than branding (at least in Romania, and probably in most emerging economies). Leadership is an essential (if not vital) skill, especially during tough times when the crew needs a strong captain that steers the ship towards a clearly stated goal.

The most important asset (brand-wise, too) in pharma companies that manufacture/market generics are people. Great people (defined by Auren Hoffman as A-players) are harder to find, due to the noise of mostly-mediocre, freshly unemployed victims of the downturn, which haunt the recruitment market. However, I think they are more likely to come aboard a ship with vision, rather than keep a safe-place on a ship going nowhere.

Staff whose daily tasks are reduced due to decreased production or other processes, should receive new responsibilities that will help them feel a part of the solution (not of the problem). Job enrichment is a good way to keep optimism and motivation.

The final conclusion

Charles Darwin, the known naturalist said that

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.

However, the closing question of the conference’s moderator, Nicolae Iordache Iordache, should give more food for thought on this eternal debate on branding, management, marketing and crisis—what’s your plan for when the crisis ends?

Seth Godin recently wrote about a dilemma marketers have—is marketing an art or a science?

It’s both, and that’s the problem. [...] When we’re artists sometimes and scientists other times, we often seem like charlatans, because we’re associating scientific results with artistic endeavors.

I can fully relate to that feeling, since designers are in an even more delicate situation. While a client expects science from a marketer, they will—most often than not—disregard that component in design work. And here we are—again more often than not—bowing in front of a client’s subjective decision.

On thing I’ve learned is that the client is not to blame. He’s been taught that design is art, therefore something to be judged emotionally. He’s been given concepts to choose from, therefore increasing the need to choose by likeability rather than other criteria. He has been given absurd rationale for concepts created with no logical thinking behind them. So, I think designers are to blame for the status quo.

Seven simple steps toward improvement:

1. Think of design as a problem-solving discipline, rather than a self-expression discipline. Milton Glaser has a thorough definition: ‘design is improving an existing situation to achieve a desired effect’. I agree—moving a pedestrian crossing to another place to reduce casualties is more design than a poster designed one night before the deadline, with royalty-free photography, free type and lorem ipsum.
2. Ask for a brief. Most of the times, clients will offer incomplete information. Lack of information is misguiding, and there’s never too much information—some designers complain about this limiting creativity. I see constraints as helping with focusing the solution, not putting barriers. Anyway, make sure you get at least the basic five questions answered:
   1. who is at the center of the problem (a description of the organization, product or service).
   2. what is the desired action/the message to be communicated.
   3. to whom—more about the audience. Demographic segmentation is useful only if it helps you understand how the audience behaves and what it needs and likes.
   4. how this should be done—the tactical part. Is it a brochure, a communication campaign or part of a larger solution?
   5. why—what is the expected outcome. Most clients will find it difficult to define SMART (simple, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound) objectives. Have them define the goal and how they will decide whether the project is a success, at least.
3. Clearly define what the problem is. Don’t jump to the solution in Photoshop. Think! Take one hour without your laptop/mobile/sketchpad and just think about the problem. Photoshop and sketching are poor excuses for skipping the thinking part, and that results in solutions that are rather decorative.
4. Agree upon a set of evaluation criteria for the design work. Is it memorability? Differentiation? Ease of implementation? Cost-saving? Trying to impose some objective criteria will not save you from the subjectivity of your client, but at least will help you build a case to defend your solution. It will also help you create a more appropriate design solution.
5. Present a short rationale with each solution/concept. It has to be the answer to the ‘how does this solve the problem‘ question. Spare yourself the embarrassment of not being listened to when talking about typography, colors, symbols or other things that might be completely irrelevant to the client. Rather use examples from other designers or agencies that proved to be good solutions to similar problems.
6. Accept failure. In 15 years of being a designer and graphic artist, dealing with hundreds of clients, I’ve learned one thing: it does not matter if you’re right. It matters whether your client thinks the solution is good. It’s a long ethical debate, but eventually the designer’s role is to solve the client’s problem. If the solution is not accepted and implemented, the fact it is the best (at least in theory) is worthless. Accept failure and start over. Just make sure you get clear feedback on why the design solution is not appropriate—never settle for ‘I just don’t like it’.
7. Don’t give up, as long as your client respects you and your work. But, please, do stop if you are at the tenth concept and the client still does not like it. It’s either a difficult client with serious decision-making issues, or your solution. You can be wrong, you know? Anyway, it’s a good moment to give up and spare your client (and most important, yourself) the pain and frustration of what’s to come. Part, but in a professional manner. Tell the client you feel you are not the right person for the project specifics since you were not able to do the job, and excuse yourself for any delays you have caused. You will sometimes lose money, but earn more respect (and, it happened to me, sometimes the client realizes he has decision-making issues and fixes that for the job to go on well).

If you have any experience with promoting design as a science-not-only-art discipline to your clients. Either comment to this article or write to me (marius dot ursache at gmail dot com) and I’ll follow up.

I’ve recently had clients fancy with the idea of using Twitter and Facebook as a brand marketing tool, and asking similar questions. However, none ever asked the most important thing—‘Why would I use Twitter?’. I can imagine that marketing people are currently overwhelmed with the things happening in digital marketing and branding, and that sometimes the hype is strong enough to make them consider a new tool, such as Twitter. Therefore, the need to give some pieces of advice, from a branding consultant’s point of view:

1. Strategy first. Tools after. You risk losing focus and doing irrelevant or ineffective things, instead of being fiercely careful with the resources. While twittering seems an easy thing to do, with global reach, zero costs and thousands of success stories, it also requires time and planning. So start seeing if your audience is on Twitter, how they are using it, whether you can speak to them on Twitter and engage in a conversation, and—most important—what’s your outcome for the invested time and resources. Think ROI.
2. Be relevant. Is it interesting and meaningful for those you are talking to? Why would anyone read what you write on Twitter, let alone engage in a conversation that will do you more good than harm? Use Twitter only if you can provide value (news, advice, cool things etc.) to your followers. Branding is about telling engaging stories. Spreading only crap corporate messages will make you annoying. Attracting hundreds of followers with sweepstakes, virals or games, to just spam then later with promotional messages won’t work either.
3. Be trustable. While it is obvious that people will trust more what other people say rather than trust companies, you still got a chance. Try to have a human profile rather than a corporate profile and be an ambassador for the brand you try to promote, than a cold corporate account people will trust less and distrust most of the times.
4. Share your brand. Building a brand with the help of social media assumes you are willing to share it, and lose control. Social branding means you have to be able to react and turn every interaction in an opportunity to build awareness, loyalty or brand associations, rather than worry about anything bad that might happen. Remember that I Got a Crush on Obama video? A political disaster for traditionalist political marketers, this proved to be a good thing eventually, by enhancing the perception of a popular, desirable person for the candidate.

These are just the most important details. They apply to building brands on Twitter, and require planning, commitment, imagination and losing control over your brand. That does not mean you cannot use Twitter for spam or for pushing your message or blatantly promoting a commercial offer. Just don’t expect attention or goodwill.

For those of you still interested, here are my answers to the seven questions:

1. Should we create multiple accounts for different divisions? How should we name them?  How should the content be different?

If you use the account just to spread official newsbits to whoever follows you, then use an account with your company’s name (eg. CompanyX). For multiple audiences, with different interests, use different accounts (eg. CompanyXInnovation, CompanyXSupport). Follow the ‘be relevant‘ rule and adjust the number and topics of your posts accordingly.

If you want to engage in conversation, use personal avatars for interacting with your followers (eg. JohnDoeCompanyX) and make clear from their profile that they represent your company. A personal approach is much more likely to generate goodwill rather than talking to an abstract corporate entity. If your company has a high personnel turnover, or if you don’t want to be too personal, then create a personified account (a virtual assistant).

2. Is it ok to just tweet out news on our main corporate account? Or should we be conversational?

It depends on what the outcome of the conversation is. Twitter is a good branding tool because it is a good PR tool. Conversation will rather generate goodwill, rather than allow you to explain yourself as a company. Think also about the amount of involvement you want to give your users in building (or breaking) your brand.

3. How do we get our corporate reps (sales, product teams) to use this tool, and be conversational?

It all starts with your corporate culture and your communication policies. Work on these first, see how these can be improved to get you close to your bigger goals. Conversation should be carried with the same openness and tone as on the phone, in real life, on e-mail or instant messengers. Twitter is just another channel/tool, but the main rules are the same.

4. Should we follow folks? If so, what’s the protocol? Should we only follow folks that follow us? We don’t want to appear like ‘big brother’.

There’s a total craze about getting followers, believing that they will, in turn, follow you. Why would they do that? To get thousands, if not tens of thousands of messages they will overlook? Do you want to be overlooked?

Success on Twitter is measured by the ratio followers/following, given by relevance. And success comes slow.

5. What are the tools to use to manage multiple authors/tweeters?

There are plenty. I recommend Twhirl and Splitweet. Hootsuite is also popular.

6. How can we find other examples of B2B twitter examples?

Jeremiah’s blog is a good source of best practice examples of social marketing, including Twitter. Kristin Foster of Ogilvy PR has also some good recommendations, as well as the analysts at Gartner.

7. How should we brand our Twitter backgrounds images?

Think of them as a 5-second elevator pitch. Make them interesting and meaningful by text also (as image), not only by graphics. Use the left column for the main message (that’s where everyone looks first, not at the tiny avatar/photo and small text bio at the top of the right column).

I’m sure a lot would disagree or feel the need to add a lot of ifs and buts. I couldn’t agree more—except that these are not generic advice for using Twitter, but rather guidelines for building a brand towards a specific goal, over a longer period of time and with measurable results. I’d love to hear about experiences you’ve had, issues you’ve encountered and brands that do very well on Twitter.