Here is the text of my article published in MARKETING earlier this month (in case you missed it in the print version).
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I’ve been fascinated by Starbucks’ recent experiment in unbranded, “local” stores. One minute I think it’s a brilliant idea and a return to the company’s “third place” promise. The next minute I think the day they consider their brand a liability is the day they’re done. So I’ll be watching this one with a lot of interest. That said, one of the interesting sub-plots included in all the press coverage concerned how Starbucks went about observing their competition. Essentially, local coffee shops complained about not-so-covert Starbucks employees idling in their cafes with folders marked conspicuously with the word “Observation.” Another purveyor noted that he had to ask large groups of Starbucks employees to leave his store when their sheer numbers overwhelmed the space. Of course, these local coffee shops know Starbucks as a competitor, and who wouldn’t be at least a little uncomfortable with your rival spending so much time in your space? But here’s where you can’t fault Starbucks: competitive auditing is a basic component of strategic hygiene. As marketing professionals, we have to know what’s happening in the competitive landscape. Purposeful differentiation is not possible without that knowledge.
But what’s the line between gathering competitive intelligence and industrial espionage? How can you keep tabs on your competitors in a responsible manner?
A decade ago, I was tasked with photographing construction signage as part of a project for a general contractor. I was rightfully chased from a competitor’s site because I was trespassing. My activities were thrilling, but not legal. So I’m not going to address bribery, hacking, B&E, and other crimes clearly on the no-no list. Instead, here are three “nevers” I think should guide the ethics of gathering competitive intelligence:
Never Create an Excessive Expense for Your Competitors
An ethical audit never costs a competitor critical time, money or talent. That is, an audit should not cause economic harm, either in the expenditure of resources or the loss of opportunity. Of course, the term “excessive” is open to interpretation, but the guiding principle is important. For example, I think it’s okay to request corporate overview literature, but definitely not okay to request a proposal or other customized document. The former is existing collateral that likely exists in large quantities and will cost a few minutes and some postage to secure. The latter is essentially hijacking a human resource under the pretenses of an opportunity that does not exist. Another example: it’s okay to visit a competing restaurant chain so long as you order enough food to be consistent with a typical customer, and your presence doesn’t preclude ordinary customers from their patronage.
Never Allow an Insider to Compromise Their Ethics
You have a friend who happens to work for an organization you’re tasked with auditing. It would seem reasonable to have them secure materials and just skip the request for information forms on the Web site. Whether or not their willing to do this, you’ve now allowed them to compromise their ethical responsibilities. The person or mail house sending you corporate collateral doesn’t know what you’re really doing, and that’s a good kind of ignorance. A friend or acquaintance does know your agenda, so their compliance definitely violates their obligations as an employee. Worse, if they hand over materials it could, technically, even be considered theft. That also means you’d be in possession of stolen materials. Yikes. Steer clear of involving insiders.
Never Misrepresent Who You Are Unless You Absolutely Have No Other Option
One of the advantages of an increasingly networked and transparent world is the ready availability of all sorts of Web-based information. And modern retail environments are “brand destinations.” So peeping on the competition requires a lot less sneaking around than it did just a few years ago. An online sleuth and keen observer can secure most competitive intelligence. In B2B scenarios, some information can be harder to come by than in consumer categories. Even there, however, all-out deception to gather marketing materials is typically unnecessary and certainly to be avoided if at all possible. You’re a marketer, not a spy.
What do you think? Send your thoughts and guiding principles on the subject to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and I’ll post them to a follow-up blog. Or, perhaps I’ll just claim them as my own.
The recent deaths of the pop star, a star athlete, and the architect of the Vietnam War have inspired some interesting reactions. While the public has mourned the loss of Michael Jackson, Steve McNair and Robert McNamara, there’s also been a lot of grappling with their overall legacy. That’s because each man hardly turned out to be an easy read. Jackson’s chart-topping talent was only rivaled by his well-documented strangeness. McNair—a cool-under-fire quarterback who was also extraordinarily generous, devoted to his community, and gracious with fans—apparently wandered from his marriage and died at the hands of his 20-year-old mistress. And McNamara’s good works fighting poverty as president of the World Bank were definitely eclipsed by his role as Secretary of Defense and unanimous scapegoat of the left, right and center during the Vietnam War. I’m not making judgments about these men. Instead, I’m a witness to the public’s difficulty in arriving at its net perception of them following the reality of their deaths.
There’s a lesson here for all of us, including businesses. All organizations have reputations. Those reputations are representative of our past and present achievements, and indications of future contributions. What would be our net perception of Nike’s extraordinary ability to empower athletes if it weren’t complicated by the company’s past exploitation of third-world workers? Would non-profit hospitals be more successful in fundraising if their reputations weren’t dragged down by allegations of excessive pay to executives? As a Qwest customer, how great would I feel about the company’s bold defiance of the NSA’s domestic spying program if it weren’t for the former CEO’s indictment on 42 counts of insider trading, not to mention some shaky customer service?
These questions aren’t for answering. They can’t be answered. Instead, they create questions for ourselves: What do we truly want to be known for? What’s getting in the way? What are the words within your organization’s Venn diagram? Are they the words you want? If they aren’t, what will it take to change them?
I have a niece who’s now finishing her senior year of high school. Now that it’s May, she’s fervently in the market for a prom dress. And she has the same concern all young women prepping for the prom share: will my dress be so unique—so distinctly me—that I’ll be the only one wearing that dress at the dance? I mentioned this recently while speaking at a marketing conference in Chicago, and asked the women in the audience to remember what the primary driver was in purchasing their own prom dress. A decade or more removed from the event, they all immediately recalled a fundamental desire for their dress to be a one-of-a-kind presence.
Why am I telling you this? Because prom goers have a lot to teach us about positioning. Is your company or product going to the prom wearing the same dress everyone else is wearing? That is, is your brand—including its core message and overall look and feel—very similar to the competition? This is easy enough to find out. Across most industries, a simple competitive audit often reveals too many same-old, me-too messages and shared color palettes. A teenager knows the inherent value in being differentiated on a crowded dance floor. Does your brand?
Since 2005, I’ve had the honor of serving as the lead writer for Boeing’s standalone exhibits at the Paris Air Show and the Farnborough International Airshow, which alternate hosting duties each year. These international events—where the world’s aerospace community gathers to showcase key innovations in both civilian and military aircraft—attract thousands of exhibitors and more than 150,000 visitors annually from around the world. From the 787 Dreamliner to algae-based biofuels, Boeing has utilized the Paris and Farnborough events to unveil game-changing advances. This year’s show in Farnborough was no different, and focused on new technologies, some of which had never been publicly detailed before. The exhibit was visually stunning; the biofuels area of the exhibit even featured live algae tanks. More importantly, though, it communicated Boeing’s significant investment in a carbon-neutral future for aviation. As always, PBDH was thrilled to collaborate with Boeing’s brilliant designer, Paul Haverly, project leader Laura Henderson, and all the other amazing professionals at the aerospace innovator.
I could go on forever, but I think you’ll enjoy the photographs more. Have a look and let me know what you think.
I’ve just returned from the American Marketing Association’s 2008 Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education, where I spoke on developing a compelling brand strategy within the constraints of a consensus-driven organization. Basically, how to keep from diluting an idea internally to the point that it becomes meaningless externally. I covered five approaches—all of them free!—for achieving alignment across diverse internal audiences without sacrificing boldness and clarity. My presentation slides are available here.
Nearly 700 professionals attended the conference, held this year in Chicago, which I was glad to see is still buzzing with the Obama victory. There were a number of really fantastic presentations, including a keynote by author Neil Howe articulating the challenges colleges and universities will face as they welcome millennials to campus; a great show and tell by the marketing team at Southern Polytechnic State University of some really compelling viral work; and a portrait from the team at the University of Delaware on updating audience perceptions. I was sorry to miss the presentation of Dartmouth’s Karlyn Morissette, especially after I heard the raves. Karlyn also provides a recap of the conference here.
A short history of revelation
“Eureka!” This is the exclamation Archimedes shouted while running through the streets naked. He’d just invented a method for measuring the volume of an object through water displacement. A new gold crown had been made for King Hiero II, and Archimedes was tasked with determining if the crown was solid gold. Archimedes had to measure the crown’s density without damaging it in the process. While taking a bath, Archimedes noticed that the water level rose as he got in. He then realized submerging an object in water displaces an amount of water equal to its own volume. Dividing the weight of the crown by the volume of water displaced would yield its density—which would be lower if silver or other lighter alloys were present. Archimedes was so excited by this inspiration that he didn’t bother getting dressed for his celebration.
Another popular story claims that an apple falling from a tree inspired Sir Isaac Newton’s theory of universal gravitation. Seeing the apple fall, Newton contemplated that gravity extended so far from Earth that it was also responsible for holding the moon in its orbit. That’s a big idea. These famous anecdotes have become symbols of inspiration, and reminders that big thinking is hard to schedule. That is, the best ideas don’t always occur when we ask them to occur. Bathtub revelations and fruit-inspired contemplations show us that a relaxed and receptive mind is more likely to generate the best ideas. For the modern thinker, thoughts in the shower and bar-napkin sketches testify to this truth. But what if Archimedes or Newton had been on a deadline?
This is the problem facing creative firms. The best creative firms are essentially in the business of ideas. They’re primarily hired to develop concepts that move their clients’ businesses forward, and how those concepts are realized—advertising, marketing collateral, branded events, etc.—is secondary. So a creative firm is really only as good as its ideas. Put this reality into the context of modern industry, where the pace is faster and faster, and schedules for getting products to market or launching a new marketing campaign don’t include a lot of time for walks in the orchard or taking leisurely baths. This means a creative firm is only as good as its ideas—and thus only as good as its ability to generate those ideas on a deadline. Outside of installing showers in every office (which, actually, is not a terrible idea), what’s a firm to do?
Better ways to brainstorm
Archimedes and Newton showed us that the best ideas happen when you 1) put yourself in a position to receive new information that helps you think about something in a different way or 2) create a different way of brainstorming so you come up with something new. And yet here’s a dirty industry secret I’ve said before: most brainstorms don’t work. Why? There’s still a tendency to put “brainstorm” on the calendar, show up with pen and paper and hope for the best. This rarely works. Coming up with breakthrough ideas—especially on the clock—requires a more thoughtful approach to how we brainstorm. Put another way, you get out what you put in. Sitting in a conference room with blank whiteboards and blank pads of paper isn’t really putting much in, so it’s no surprise not much comes out. No matter what industry you’re in, here are three easy ways to get more out of brainstorms by being more thoughtful in how you approach them.
1) Structure the brainstorm. Kicking off the meeting with “Okay, tell me your good ideas” puts too much pressure on thinkers and not enough faith in process. Liberate participants from having to generate concepts on the fly by creating exercises that encourage unexpected ways of thinking about the challenge. For a project last year, we built a brainstorm around an unusual question: what are the bad ideas? This sounds counterproductive, but it worked. One of those “bad” ideas eventually inspired the big idea. And we never would have arrived there without approaching the brainstorm in a different way. Email me and I’d be happy to provide a playbook of these kinds of exercises that we continually evolve.
2) Invite different people. Ever notice how one guest can take a dinner party conversation in a whole new direction? The same holds true for brainstorms. When the premium is on new ideas and unique perspectives, adding new participants with unique perspectives is a sure-fire way to put everyone in contact with unexpected information. If you’re a creative firm, invite your clients. If you’re a client, invite your creative firm. Look up an academic luminary on the subject at a nearby university and invite them (even if it means paying them an honorarium). Or, recruit a member of the target audience and invite them. New people = new ideas.
3) Go somewhere. Archimedes went to the bath. Newton went to the orchard. Franklin flew a kite in a lightning storm. Albert Einstein said, “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” And how many times have you heard someone say something akin to “Think outside the box” when they’re in one (read: building). This is all to say: go somewhere other than that beige, windowless room with those smelly whiteboard markers. Go outside. Go where you can see the target audience. Go to a museum. Rent an inspirational space, perhaps an artist’s studio. Take your brainstorm on the road. Take it on the ferry, with a quick stop for lunch on the other side. The simple act of moving the brainstorm beyond the same-old conference room sends an important signal to participants that the status quo has got to go. And a new setting stimulates thinking. Remember how energized you felt when your college professor took the discussion to the lawn on spring days? Remember how much you loved field trips in grade school. Those feelings still apply and they do wonders for your brain.
From setting the stage for unexpected thinking to simply changing the setting, you can create better ideas by developing better ways of getting to those ideas.
I’ve seen lots and lots of RFPs over the years and some very good ones recently. A good RFP—at least in my view, and I’m not making any claims about objectivity here—has agencies respond to a few focused questions as a pre-qualification and sets the stage for in-person presentations. However, I’ve also seen RFPs that go a bit further and delve into some serious minutia. Make sure your margins are an inch all around, use a certain typeface, alphabetically list every client you’ve ever worked for, etc. A year or so ago, we received an RFP with this kind of flavor, and we quickly determined that the cost (in hours) to respond exceeded the project budget detailed within the RFP. That’s a no-brainer: we opted out. Worse, though, was that the RFP’s intense granularity didn’t seem to serve much purpose. It created hoops to jump through that were unnecessary, especially considering that the vast majority of client-agency relationships are determined through “fit”—the two teams like each other and trust each other to make the work happen in the best way possible. So RFPs should get to “fit” faster and skip the extraneous hoops.
Here’s another big reason to eliminate all the unnecessary elements from your RFP: you’ll end up with the weakest participants. Aside from normal dips and lumps in the snake that happen to everyone, great agencies tend to stay busy . . . because they’re great. Not-so-great firms tend to consistently have more time on their hands. The more time-intensive response a RFP requires (e.g., multitudes of questions requiring voluminous written responses, requests for obscure information, asking an agency to abandon its own established proposal documentation, etc.), the more likely a busy agency is to focus its energies elsewhere. An agency working on fewer projects and with more time available will likely jump through those hoops. This scenario turns Darwin’s theory on its head. Instead of an RFP process advancing the strongest participants (its purported goal), the process self-selects the weakest participants because those are the only agencies with the time to respond. This is bad.
So the key takeaway? It’s definitely in your best interest to structure RFPs that encourage the best participants and get to “fit” faster.
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A simple rule for developing breakthrough ideas
On May 14 I spoke at the University of Washington on the use of process within strategy and design projects. During this presentation, hosted by design faculty member Annabelle Gould, I articulated what I see as the major tension within process: repeatable versus unexpected. That is, a process should be the result of a proven methodology that can be applied over and over again—you don’t want to have to make it up as you go each time you start a new project. At the same time, you don’t want the same process to start churning out the same results. Generating the same results is great for homogenizing milk, but not in creative endeavors. For us, new ideas are entirely the point. So we want an expected approach to yield unexpected ideas. That’s the tension.
For creative professionals, a great process is a repeatable approach for putting yourself in position to connect with the unexpected. Note that I think it’s about putting yourself in position to connect with the unexpected, not that the process itself will spit out new ideas. That’s what your brain is for.
When it comes to using process to get to great ideas, I apply what I call the New/Different Rule. Creating new, unexpected ideas is the result of either:
1) Putting yourself in position to receive new information that helps you think about something in a different way.
Or . . .
2) Creating a different way of brainstorming so you come up with something new.
The first is usually about research. While the term research can sometimes sound a bit overstarched and monolithic, research can be a fantastic means of debunking assumptions. And that’s all about getting access to new information that will help you think about something in a different way. When we started working with the Seattle Symphony, one of the assumptions we were working with was that celebrity guest artists were important to have on the cover of sales materials because their celebrity images sold tickets. However, the research we did with subscribers and other ticket buyers revealed that the truth was citizens identified their patronage with the orchestra—not the guest artists. They were passionate and definitive about this. This new information fueled our creative explorations in a totally different direction.
The second is about architecting better brainstorms. During my talk at UW, I revealed a dirty industry secret: most brainstorms don’t work. I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and I’ve participated in plenty of brainstorms that didn’t generate anything more than some interesting tangents and maybe some toilet humor. Coming up with breakthrough ideas requires a more thoughtful approach to the brainstorms themselves. Putting “brainstorm” on the calendar and then hoping for the best isn’t enough. Last summer when we were concepting for Boeing’s communications at the 2007 Paris Air Show, we structured our brainstorm around a different question: what are the bad ideas? I know this sounds counterproductive, but it worked. Sure, we came up with some stinkers, but we also came up with some concepts that eventually inspired the idea. And we never would have arrived there without approaching the brainstorm in a different way.
So there you have it. The New/Different Rule. Put yourself in position to receive new information that helps you think about something in a different way. Or create a different way of brainstorming so you come up with something new. I’d love to hear how it works for you!
A short history of transparency
The restaurants George Orwell described in his 1933 novel Down and Out in Paris and London were not places you’d want diners to see. A wall separated the dining room’s calm ambience from the chaotic grime of the “cold, filthy kitchen.” Architecturally, the wall between these two interconnected worlds was a good thing, and important for both sides. For the restaurant, it concealed the ugly frenzy behind the scenes. For the diners, it preserved a shinier belief in what they were buying.
The model that Orwell experienced persisted for six more decades before restaurateurs and their architects in the early 1990s—mostly in the Bay Area—did something unexpected: they brought the “back of house” front and center, putting chefs and line cooks on display to diners. This was done primarily as a means of demonstrating spotless kitchens and the use of fresh ingredients. Arguably, this design decision also set the table for the celebrity chef craze that began shortly thereafter. With open kitchens, chefs and their staffs were transformed from obsessed, cantankerous artisans to obsessed, cantankerous, celebrity artisans. But more importantly, making kitchens and patrons visible to one another created a transparency that enriched the experience on both sides of the now-non-existent wall. Chefs got better visibility into the dining room, providing an instant feedback loop. Diners got better visibility into the kitchen, seeing firsthand the collaboration, technical skill and artistic inspiration responsible for their gastronomic experience. The “culinary arts” were finally on display to its patrons. Seeing the kitchen enriched the eating experience in the same way seeing a symphony orchestra enriches the listening experience.
It’s important to distinguish the kind of transparency at play in restaurants with the transparency between corporations and shareholders legislated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act after the Enron, WorldCom and other accounting scandals. Transparency that is inspired by the idea of mutually enriching an experience is different than transparency focused on proving integrity. Sarbanes-Oxley dictates how and what public companies communicate to shareholders. Similarly, many car dealers love to tout customer access to “dealer invoices” as a measure of their transparency. This is totally different than the kind of transparency open kitchens deliver. As an example, one equivalent of Sarbanes-Oxley for restaurants would be to disclose department of health inspection reports in the back of the menu. Whether or not that’s a good idea, open kitchens are inspired by a desire to enrich the experience, not prove their adherence to the most basic disclosure requirements.
At the same time, while transparency for the sake of disclosure and compliance is different than transparency that enriches the experience, they do have something in common. For each, a lack of transparency has a cost. Enron shareholders were kept in the dark and ended up losing their money. Restaurant diners were missing out on the joys of seeing chefs at work creatively. They are different kinds of costs, but costs all the same.
A more transparent creative process
Within the client-agency relationship, a creative process that isn’t transparent also has costs. Put in the simplest terms, these costs are:
- Time and Productivity: Without a transparent creative process, agencies can head down the wrong path. This happens frequently. Ultimately, this lost time makes for longer project durations—time that could’ve been spent doing something else.
- Expense: More time equals more money. Plus, late deliverables can make clients late to market, a direct hit to revenue.
- What Could’ve Been: Is a great idea a great idea if no one knows about it? For clients and agencies alike, a lack of transparency means they will never know what could’ve been. If the client had shared that key perspective before an agency brainstorm, what inspiration would’ve followed? And what would’ve happened if the client had seen the idea that the agency eventually abandoned? Neither of them will ever know, and that’s a painful cost.
So how can clients avoid paying these costs? There are three easy steps clients can take with their agencies to inspire a more transparent creative process.
1) Invite yourself to brainstorms. The traditional model for the client-agency relationship calls for the client to brief the agency, the agency to retreat to their headquarters for several weeks, and then the agency to return to the client with brilliant new ideas. But why wouldn’t the client be involved in the brainstorms where those ideas are born? They know their business best. Plus, they’re thinkers, too, and have plenty of good ideas and bad ideas—just like the agency team. All the reasons for having the client in the brainstorms are about enriching the creative process. And all the reasons for not having the client in the brainstorms are about an agency’s insecurities. So invite yourself.
2) Eliminate all the big reveals. Agencies are addicted to the big reveal—the rush that comes from unveiling new ideas the client has never seen before. A big part of this rush comes from how dangerous it feels. Clients will be thrilled, or clients will be unhappy. But the risk of unhappy clients isn’t the biggest danger in a big-reveal approach. It’s time and expense. Why would either the client or the agency invest so much of a project’s schedule and scope in a leap of faith that the agency has it right? Instead, clients should insert more frequent “small reveals” by the agency throughout the process. It may steal thunder from the big ta-da, but it will ensure a more successful outcome for everyone.
3) Join the critique early. After initial brainstorms, most agencies set out to sketching lots and lots of ideas in rough form. This is true across all sorts of deliverables, from brand positioning statements and taglines to logos and advertising concepts. Most clients end up seeing a fraction of the initial output and, instead, are presented with the magical “3-5 directions” outlined in the scope of work. Why? What if the agency leaves behind a really good idea in favor of investing too much time refining an idea a client would have killed from the start? Clients should join the earliest critiques, offering their guidance when it arguably matters the most. Agencies will feel vulnerable about showing ideas without their normal client-facing polish and drama, but joining the critique early on will save clients and agencies time and further the best ideas.
This post first appeared in Think About This, our quarterly email dispatch focused on new thinking. Subscribe to Think About This.
I regularly teach a workshop at the School of Visual Concepts (SVC) on writing creative briefs. I always set up the workshop with what I believe is the fundamental tension within creative briefs: being comprehensive versus being concise. And while a big challenge in writing a creative brief is cramming a whole bunch of important information into a one-page document that should also be inspiring and…well, brief, this tension goes way beyond just creative briefs. This tension is at play in all communications, especially brand design.
This is the set-up I use: If you were mugged at the ATM, you might end up at the police precinct to give a report and offer your description of the villain. While it’s unlikely for (just) a mugging, a sketch artist might be brought in and the two of you might go back and forth with the charcoal pencil and sketch pad, endlessly adjusting details such as ear size, eyebrow height, lip shape, and on and on. If it was a slow news night, that sketch might even be shared with the public. And then what do you think would happen? Probably nothing. That’s because police sketches don’t work very well. Over the years, researchers from MIT, the University of Central Lancashire in England, and others have conducted studies that show police sketches work less than 10% of the time. Have a look at these police sketches and the actual criminal faces that informed them.
There’s not a ton of resemblance. And, just to take the Unabomber and Son of Sam as two very high profile cases, neither sketch aided in their capture at all despite press coverage that dwarfed the media buys of most brands.
Conversely, take a look at these political cartoons of George W. Bush and North Korea’s Kim Jong Il.
The proportions hardly look human, and yet we instantly recognize these individuals. And if you think this is just about having a face that everyone sees over and over, think again. The same truth is at work with those caricature artists depicting everyday citizens at waterfront piers, amusement parks, county fairs and birthday parties around the world. This isn’t about celebrity. This is about the way the brain works.
The human brain recognizes faces and other images by exaggerated characteristics, not finely tuned details. I think this also holds true in communications. Which is why there’s a lesson here for those concerned with marketing and brand design. The most recognizable brands are about big, bold strokes, not lots of details. They are concise, not comprehensive. It’s why the innovator’s use of white space is better than the stalwart’s gazillions of bullet points. Remember this when you’re having difficulty focusing your brand on just one or two exaggerated characteristics.
The inclination to be comprehensive is human. And so is the human brain’s inclination to ignore all those details. So it’s a simple formula for your brand: be bold, be concise, and be remembered. If you’re a criminal, you should hope police sketch artists keep focusing on all those finely tuned details no one will recognize.
The cobbler’s kids have no shoes for the same reason a brand design firm takes so long to update its own brand. While we absolutely live and breathe to shape and steward our clients’ unique brands, it’d been almost 14 years since the launch of our previous brand identity and 4 years since our last major overhaul of pbdh.com. So last August we got a new client: us. We knew that was the only way to make it happen, even though we knew we’d probably end up being the worst client we’ve ever had.
We started where you’re supposed to start: brand positioning. Creative firms are notorious for being positioning-less, since most are willing to be whatever clients want them to be. Also, a lot of firms end up being havens for undiagnosed ADHD sufferers, so focusing on a long-term positioning strategy for the firm itself—without the wonder and sex appeal of an actual client—can be difficult to orchestrate. Even if one person cares fervently, other stakeholders are pre-occupied with client work (go figure).
We did manage to focus long enough to develop what we believed to be a great brand position. We called it Small and Mighty and we loved how it celebrated our unique place in the marketplace. As an independent firm with a 25-year history, we thought it pointed out how we’re smaller than the too bigs, bigger than the too smalls, and mighty in our strategic and creative expertise. But this was a classic blunder. The concept was too much about us and not enough about our relationship with clients. Of course, when developing strategy for our clients, we expertly counsel them about avoiding this mistake, so you’d think we’d know better. But being a client was harder than we thought and made us realize that, when it’s all about you and your business (which it is for our clients), this is hard stuff to sort out. We’re hoping this realization makes us an even better guide and advocate for our clients.
So we started over. We went back and thought more about what makes us different, and if any of those differences were anything our clients would really care about. Concurrently, we’d been tinkering with how we develop and present our work. Instead of showing three refined directions after mowing through most of the budget, we were shrugging off our sense of vulnerability and showing dozens and dozens of rough sketches early on and encouraging clients to explore them with us. We’d also been architecting a new deliverable, called Ideation Lab, which invited our clients directly into the brainstorming process. We were having tremendous success with our new approach, even though nothing was really broken with our old one. What was moving us forward was the realization that the standard model of agency-client relationships is too territorial. This is the standard set-up: client briefs agency and agrees to pay agency. Agency then retreats to some undefined territory where “the magic happens” and tells the client to sit tight—for several weeks—until agency returns with the magic. But our process was definitively moving away from that model. Instead, we were openly inviting our clients into all aspects of the brand development process. So we had a bold idea: maybe we are the most transparent brand design firm. We were getting great results and glowing feedback from current clients about our inclusive approach to brand design and the creative process. We road-tested it with prospective clients during pitch meetings, and we got great feedback from them as well. So that was it. In a word, transparency. We’re striving to be the most transparent brand design firm.
But that was not it. Not quite. Thanks to some expert guidance from someone outside the house that pushed us a bit further—perhaps proving that no one, not even experts who do this for a living, can develop positioning without a trusted, objective, external partner. We were urged to be more clear about who we’re best suited to serve, and to not focus so exclusively on our process. Positioning statements aren’t typically external-facing, but in the spirit of transparency, here’s the positioning statement we came up with:
Phinney Bischoff Design House is a leading brand design and ideation firm on the West Coast. We work with clients in highly competitive markets to help them develop breakthrough ideas through an inclusive, transparent creative process.
Finished. This idea is who we are, what we do, and how we do it. It’s our promise to the market. From this idea we’ve completely refreshed our voice and redesigned our look and feel—including a new logo, business papers, Web site, and more.
Now for the big question: what do you think of our new brand?
