Customer retention comes down to one simple thing: Having a good reason to stick around. In this presentation for the banking / finance industry I argue how brand and design strategy is not only underused in the category, but also, if used properly, can represent a cost effective way of creating loyal and motivated customers.
Some core arguments:
- It’s not about creating a psychological value-layer “outside” the product or service. But having the brand strategy define and guide the development and design of the services and/or offerings themselves. The brand is the promise, the service is the proof.
- Online is the most important interface in the relationship between the client and the company (especially in banking and finance). Still many companies waste this opportunity by adhering to sterile, engineered calculators.
- It’s not about tools or applications, but the bigger picture. Helping the customer achieve a goal through tailored, specialized applications delivering on the brand promise – and by that differentiating oneself in the marketplace.
- Emotions and aesthetics are about motivation – inspiring people to learn and use what is offered. Services often disappear because they lack the ability to motivate use.
- Visualizing existing data sets creates meaning where there was none, but also learning and even new services.
- Personal banking should think of itself as a membership platform, committing itself to fill the customer relationship with valuable offerings and services.
Are we stuck? Or are we just at an interim stage in the evolutionary cycle, waiting for the next step to shift the landscape again? In this presentation I introduce some thoughts in regards to how we need to change our thinking if we are to break out of the repetitive cycle we seem to be in.
1. The missing link
If we divide the value chain of a product into three parts; logistics and infrastructure, sales and in-store and marketing and advertising. We see that the first part is very innovative and quick at adapting new technology. The last part is testing out some of these technologies carefully in the consumer interface. But the middle part, where decisions are made and sales are closed, in this part of the chain the technology seems to be missing – and this is where we need it the most…
2. Continuous Movement
In the history of products and brands we started with products. These soon became unidentifiable in competition with its rivals and we started adding a value/story to them to give them a uniqueness that people could connect with and build preference to. Unfortunately we are, as Richard Murray told us; good at creating categories, but bad at creating individual brands. This has led to a situation where the brands themselves are difficult to differentiate because they are built on the same premises inside the same categories. And the generic result of this pushes us to the next generation of brand preference building: experience / services. What we are trying to do now is offer an integrated experience part to the product that differentiates it by offering additional unique value.
The Nokia / Burton Push project is an example of this. Where buying a Burton snowboard will give you access to a set of electronic services and experiences that will completely change the role of snowboarding for the people engaging in it.
3. The negative impact of standards
We are champions of copying other success but do this to uncritically online. We end up copying tools and services offered to consumers by competing brands or brands in different categories. The problem is that as connected technologies are becoming one of the most important arenas where brands and consumers interact, it also becomes on of the most important arenas to create brand preference and shared value. This is not possible when everyone designs the same tools and services online – then the experiences become generic and meaningless. We need to find ways to tailor even the smallest applications to create awareness and preference for our brand.
Cost or business models
I also suggest that the problem with most initiatives today is that they are designed as marketing and by that inevitably will be perceived as a cost. If we are to see more money and more innovation being put into the digital and connected activities, we need to start helping companies identify, design and benefit from new business opportunities, not new marketing opportunities.
I quickly suggest six ideas for six Norwegian brands to prove my point (please see the second last page of the presentation to view in full size):
Technology itself is just a black box and can exist as something uninteresting and unused for years. But it is the articulation of that technology, through the craft of design, based on human and situational insight that molds it into utilities, tools and objects that gets absorbed by people and society and turn into behaviors and needs.
The title of a highly insightful article by Donald Norman’s is: “Technology first, needs last”. In which Norman states that needs are not the drivers of technology. Instead technology comes first, and then we sometimes end up developing a need for it. The following quote is added at the beginning of the article:
“When humans possess a tool, they excel at finding new uses for it. The tool often exists before the problem to be solved.” Nye, D. E. (2006)
It is in this setting important to recognize that technology itself does not invite people in to understand it, explore it or play with it. There is the need for a layer in between, a sieve, furnace or mold in order for the technology to adapt to a human or situational context, and this is design.
As an example have a look at the beginning of this presentation(about four minutes in) by Michael Tchao at that time the general manager of Nike Techlan/Nike+ at Nike from his appearance at Picnic in 2008. Where he suggests that they didn’t invent something new, they just redesigned existing technology so that it connected with people and they started caring about it and using it. From the presentation:
“If you think about sports technology in the past, the challenge around this space was that the experience looked a bit like this … and I say they [the user interfaces] combined the emotional appeal of an EKG with Microsoft Excel. So if you put those two together, that rich emotional experience [irony], that’s pretty much what you got in sports technology”. – Michael Tchao
A more recent example is the Nokia Push project. Where Nokia says that the technology already exists, but they ask for help in regards to designing new uses for it – they want people to help them hack it.
(It’s the Nokia N900, a phone with brilliant computational power that in its current form (the phone) people don’t care about).
And this design invitation from Nokia created an incredible project, now in collaboration with Burton:
If anyone remembers the Nabaztag; the plastic rabbit connected to the other rabbits all around the world via the Internet, communicating via sound, light, ear movement etc. It was a completely useless product as described by its creator Rafi HalaDjian – but still its design made it a success.
Unfortunately the company went bankrupt. Now according to, I think it was Matt Jones, this was not because the rabbits where useless, people loved them. But it was because the online interface where people could administer the rabbits were useless. Violet (the company behind the Nabaztag) forgot to see that even online interfaces need to have the same intensity and design as the physical object in order to create a need.
Donald Norman even has his own example from his former research into alarm clocks, seeing that the more beautiful and aesthetically pleasing the clocks were, the more time people would spend with them in order to try to figure out how they worked.
And this is the initial argument; that Norman’s quote “technology first, needs last” must include a reference to the tool that transforms technology into a need, into something that gets adopted by society, which is design.
And this pattern of technology-design-need is what we’ve always done, from objects where the design has molded the technology, like designing the alphabet into letters and fonts so that we were able to write and exchange ideas. To where the design is the technology; like the wheel or the spear.
Should clients have 100% veto power over designers and creative’s art direction and design?
Firstly they are paying for it, and secondly their product and brand is at the mercy of it. But the result is all to often that expert craftsmanship and brilliant work is being destroyed and turned into mediocre craft and ineffective communication at the hands of unskilled clients. Affecting all parties negatively.
Is only one party to blame here? Or is the problem more nuanced? With both creatives and companies having to be more aware of their weaknesses and strengths?
“We need to include our clients in the articulation of design, if not products will become unsophisticated and conservative (research proves that the will of unarticulated people creates products that people themselves find uninteresting and boring).”
Aaron Winters requested the references to this, and I thought the feedback would be interesting for several readers:
1. The first reference is from the book Emotional Design by Donald Norman, where he mentions an art project where two artists ask people their preferences in regards to visualization and art. Collecting a range of answers these are then used as instructions for a series of paintings, which garnered terrible feedback. Directly externalizing people’s preferences turned ideas of beauty into something expected and boring.
You can find a larger reference to this statement on slide 17 in the slideshow below, or here.
First Gladwell talks about a research project where a group of students were asked to choose their favorite of two posters; one impressionistic and one of a cat. The first group could just take their favorite poster and leave. But the second group had to explain what they liked about the image and then take it. The group that could just take the poster (without explanation) tended to take the impressionistic one, the group that had to explain their preference tended to take the one of the cat. Even more interesting was the fact that when the researchers called these people back after a while to ask them if they still had/liked the posters, the group who chose the impressionistic one tended to still like their posters while the people who picked the cat did not.
3. Secondly Gladwell mentions that some TV stations in the US turned down what would later prove to be some of America’s most popular TV shows after asking everyday people their opinion on the pilots. The interesting thing about this though is that what the focus groups would criticize and dislike was the things that eventually would make these shows a great success – the quirkiness, the odd things out, the exaggerated personality, the unexpected.
Gladwell points to several things:
- Having to explain our preferences changes them, because we start favoring the stuff we can explain.
- Having to explain ourselves changes our preferences to the least sophisticated, traditional and expected.
- Having to explain ourselves changes our preference from something we really would like, to something we don’t.
At the same time as these three references favor the work and craft of the designer or art director there are arguments favoring the clients perspective:
While clients are not skilled in the creative crafts most designers and art directors are not skilled business experts. And almost no one has as good an understanding of the clients business as the business themselves – shooting out brilliant ideas is one thing, solving business challenges and generating value inside a foreign context a completely different one.
Donald Norman in his article “Design thinking: A useful Myth” suggests that designers, in the context of design thinking, do not possess “some mystical, creative thought process that places them above all others in their skills at creative, groundbreaking thought”, but they do offer an outside perspective.
And I would ad; have a greater propensity to push one self out of the excepted and into the unexpected.
People skilled in the creative crafts are indispensible in the role of solving big communication challenges for companies who need disruptive and innovative solutions. But it is not because they, as Norman says, possess some unnatural ability to have all the solutions in the universe – it is because they help clients remove blinders, and push them to explore opportunities in what will initially be perceived as uncomfortable spaces.
And this is the problem; it is not that the creative work is to good or to bad. The root of the challenge is that creative professionals need to understand that their work is as much related to removing blinders and luring clients into the uncomfortable. If they are not able to do that from a business perspective and on a layman’s level in regards to the design craft, then the product or solution they provide will seem natural to them but be without explanation and relevant context to the client.
The way brands and agencies have combined new technology with their sales, marketing and design strategies, give the impression that technology is outgrowing the creative and communications industry almost ten to one.
A descriptive example is the OMO/Unilever campaign being run in Brazil at the moment (read it here: popsop.com / brandchannel.com). Where they are putting a large GPS tracking device into 50 boxes of a new OMO detergent. And then having teams follow customers as they take it out of the store. At home the people are given a small video recorder and asked to video tape personal moments of family happiness.
To me this presents several missed opportunities. First of all having teams following 50 boxes in a large country as Brazil seems like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Secondly the prize seems to small, thirdly asking people to share their private and personal family moments with the world might be difficult (at least when you are only inviting 50 random people to participate). And lastly; this is detergent, people don’t care, and the context surrounding detergent is probably more connected to housework or clean stuff than the universal value of family happiness (I rant, and am not familiar with the target group, but there it is).
What the campaign does unveil though, and is a brilliant example of, is how bad we are in the communications and creative business at using technological innovation to do our own innovation. We seem to spend large amounts of time and resources on picking out a technology, fitting it into a marketing campaign (and avoiding the hurdles it introduces), rather than using it to innovate our own concepts.
What I am saying is that new technology hasn’t brought with it new ideas, we are just using these new opportunities as vehicles for old communication strategies.
Donald Norman suggest thattechnology always comes first, and then it creates a need. I interpret this as technology in the beginning will always be rudimentary and difficult to use – innovation in application and design follows in the footsteps of the technology (and I might be a bit impatient).
But we need to keep our eyes on the goal, we need to be aware that we are still talking to people in the same old way – even if the format available has changed completely. In a former post I mentioned the mobile industry having been the only industry to see that what they have been doing has been completely wrong – it is time for the other industries to follow suit.
With the energy, innovation and ideas we are seeing from engineers, start-ups and even companies established production and logistical chains, the creative business is presenting itself as conservative and slow to react.
The creative business might be the most boring business.
The way we are making and selling design is becoming generic and confusing. One of the challenges is that design, as creativity, is described as a product, an end goal. When the fact is that neither design nor creativity is a result; it’s a description of how we get there, not what we will end up with.
The presentation discusses some of the challenges and opportunities of design today, as I see them. The content has previously been posted as three articles on popsop.com and linked to from this blog. The presentation tries to put it all together, make it more internet consumption friendly (read: packed with sound bites), and offer it as a pleasant and enjoyable printable document.
Digital is expanding yet again, from the first editorial version, to a second social version and now the third installment; integration.
Some arguments:
1. Integration is not merely about offering services where people are, it’s about implementing connected technology within our everyday objects, or designing new objects based on the new opportunities and additional meaning introduced by technology.
Which gives that this could introduce a completely new generation of needs and behaviors: In the words of Donald Norman;
“Need is created by technology, not the other way around.” Link.
2. With integration we are not only moving from destination sites to aggregate sites, from horizontals to verticals. We are moving from screens to objects, from input devices to sensors and from keyboarded instruments to everyday life.
Jesko Stoetzer’s RFID Sleeve prototype for the Betacup project is a good example. Showing how digital technology, using no screens, no keyboards, just an electronic augmentation and a redesign of an existing object, the cup sleeve. Can improve the coffee experience for enthusiasts, create new business opportunities and increase product sustainability.
“The use of Internet on PC’s will decrease from 95% today to only 50% the next five years.” – pdf
But Microsoft was only talking about our connected lives moving from PC’s to mobile, gaming platforms or “connected TV-boxes”. They where not looking into the emerging opportunities from smart objects, SPIMEs or coffee sleeves.
The Europe Logs on report were looking at machines. But the days when only machines were connected to the Internet is already in the past.
Devices are machines where the structure of the object itself affords no utility, but there is a screen and a circuit board in there offering us a range of opportunities. And object is different, it already has an immediate utility, but technology ads a new layer of meaning.
“Devices fool us because they look like objects and do all this stuff, and we are kind of hypnotized by their ability to do all this stuff. Where as when you see an ornament in the shop you know exactly what it is and what it is for. And you don’t except more of it. I think some of the delights that some of these can contain is when it looks like a simple object but contains meaning that you weren’t excepting.” – Russel Davies.
4. Machines are hubs. Take the mobile phone as an example; it should be (and hopefully will be) connecting people to their objects, not filled with an application for each one (object).
Appvertising and applications belong to machines, and are just scratching the surface of connected technology, it is by and far only the answer to the following question: “What do people want access to all the time?”
Integration as a term is not about access, it’s about turning everyday objects into identities, which enables them to organize, create structure and through feedback add a new layer to spaces in our everyday life.
Bill Moggridge mentions in his book Designing Interactions, that there are not only three (spatial) dimensions to an interface, but also a fourth one; time. We are now building a fifth dimension; the digital identity of the physical object.
“This cat is completely unaware of the most important thing about this particular stuffed animal. Which is that it has a whole other life online. This is a Webkinz stuffed animal. And this cat has no idea. It thinks it’s actually engaging with the thing, and in fact it has a whole parallell life thats going on, that this cat can’t touch. And I want to make it clear, that this is where we are heading, towards a world in which entities have this physical presence as well as this digital presence.”
Conclusion:
The important shift with integration is not that we put technology into things (devices), but that everyday objects with an existing physicality and purpose, get a new dimension and additional meaning: A digital identity.
With these identities comes data, responsiveness, organization and connection.
The next generation is all about connecting our stuff, offering new layers of meaning to our objects, our situations and the world at large.
If creativity and design is the process of exploring and articulating the product, then what is the product?
This is the second installment from a rather lengthy article on design published on popsop.com. It discusses what our product is as the first article argues that creativity is a ubiquitous human trait, and design is a craft and a process (first article here).
The marketing relationship is different, it is characterized by two hurdles in the relationship mindset; first of all, where the product relationship generates a hundred thousand individual stories, the marketing relationship can only tell one. Secondly, it assumes their doesn’t exist a product relationship, and wants to create a new one, by associating the “empty” object to a set of values already existing in peoples minds for something else, this is called “storytelling”.
The identity of a product should not be defined by its loud advertising, but it should shape its advertising, a task often left to branding and marketing. This creates products out of touch with its experience, sometimes missing the point and often generalizing its ambition so that it mixes with more fundamental traits and needs of human nature. (The product is important, but inside situations, not as general as contributors to peoples lives on par with friends or sleep).
The way we are making and selling design is becoming generic and confusing. One of the challenges is that design, as creativity, is described as a product, an end goal. When the fact is that neither design nor creativity is a result, it’s a description of how we get there not what we will end up with.
I suggest using the term “design” correctly, for its unique abilities, purpose and meaning. The goal would be to offer a product with clear direction and intention, where staring into the unknown is still tangible, where the initial idea/spark has grown into a shared dream and where the need to articulate the process hasn’t created any premature answers.
This is the introduction to a rather lengthy article being broken up into three installments and published on popsop.com. This first installment discusses our vernacular; both the term “creativity” (which I published here previously), and the term “design”.
Two takeouts:
…A simple question to answer is: ‘Is there bad design?” And I would say no. Bad design is not design, if it does not fulfill its intended goal, if it doesn’t solve the components of a brief but veers of on its own, its decoration. Of course, one could argue that the language and instrument used is different from the personal preference, but there is a big difference between liking something based on gut feeling or personal taste, and evaluating a work of design. There is a difference between liking the posture and personality of a spoon and evaluating the craft of the spoon and its ability to work as a kitchen utensil. Of course, personal taste is an important aspect of the visual language, but do not confuse taste with craft…
…The best way of assuring that everybody comes up with the same ideas is to give them the same tools, the same models and the same mindset to work with. This is the way the linear development model works. The design process knows that if you are to discover something new, then even the design process itself needs to be original, and it does this by acting organic and responsive to the temperature, explorations, discoveries and insights found during each iteration…
