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Is Branding Dead?

Branding is a term I struggle with. My definition is out of step with mainstream usage that I know I’ll be misunderstood, yet I don’t know what else to call it.

Recently Bruce Temkin of Forrester spoke at Adaptive Path’s MX 2009 and he said that “brands are dying”, meaning companies are failing to sufficiently embed their brand into customer experiences. He followed this up by saying this offers an opportunity for companies better integrate their branding to swoop in and grab customers.

While I agree with him, I am still dismayed that he only mentions customer touchpoints. What’s nearly always missing from the brand experience conversation are the importance of non-consumer brand touchpoints — for example, community relationships and internal HR policies — that also play a role in shaping how your company is perceived. One of the few voices I hear echoing this is Marty Neumeier, who calls it Invisible Branding.

To me, true brand alignment means that every single decision you make, even those you think don’t matter, must be consistent with your values, goals, and strategies. To do this, you need to put brand experience and strategy at the core of an organization, driving all decision-making. Wanting to be the person who can accomplish this is the reason I decided to get an MBA.

But what do I call this? Is this brand management, or is it simply business strategy at this point?

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Optimism

I’ve been flying for past two weeks, running on the buzz of optimism and positive change I see everywhere in my life right now.

Certainly it’s impossible not to be buoyed by the inauguration of a historic President who has wasted no time in trying to set things right. President Obama’s election has given me reason to hope we are not, perhaps, completely doomed after all. He enters office along with the Chinese Year of the Ox, a sign we both share. The symbolism of an Ox ascending as a Rat leaves is not lost on me.

More personally, the new semester has brought me renewed faith in the DMBA program and in my professional future. Last semester I was questioning the program and what I was getting out of it, but the new courses have re-energized me. These are exactly the subjects I entered the program for — experience and meaning, business models, leadership, and sustainability — and I’m thrilled with the instructors, too. Honestly, I just can’t stop smiling. It’s been a long time since I felt that way.

One of the most inspiring things right now is watching my cohort, seeing so many minds come alive with the idea that we can change business to be more personal and creative. In our leadership class, we are discussing Obama as an example of a new kind of leader, one that is outwardly focused and emotionally intelligent, driven to cultivate a greater good rather than personal glory. It’s probably not fair to say this is new, but it is one we haven’t seen promoted in the business world. For me, this model of leadership is a lot like being a parent: Your job is to create an organization so healthy and self-sufficient that it thrives after you are gone, and you hope it will grow even stronger and more successful than you.

I don’t know if I can be this leader, but I know this is the leader I want to follow.

The photo above, from the inauguration of President Obama, was taken by Vinitha Watson, a fellow pioneer in the Design Strategy MBA program at CCA.

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Don’t Litter!

Why is it that people have to be told not to litter?

A CCA grad student created a small set of installation pieces, evidently as a statement against cigarette-butt litterbugs. In this scene, a series of little clay men carry inappropriately discarded butts from the base of a tree, across the concrete, up a ladder, finally depositing them in an ash tray on a bench. In another scene, the red figures have erected a fence around a storm drain, drawing attention to the “No Dumping” signs.

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Farmers Markets

I’m constantly amazed at how incredible California produce is and I am glad to see small-scale farming and artisan food is making a comeback.

For my Innovation Studio class, my team is researching people, food, and how they come together. As I created a “deconstruction” of the food domain, I realized how much food creates meaning in our lives. There is a deep social and community component to food (see: Slow Food) and the resurgence of buying straight from farmers expands this relationship beyond our families and neighbors to include a connection to the land and to the people who toil to feed us. I’m thrilled to live in a place and time fighting so hard to bring back biodiversity and support sustainable family farms. It will mean higher prices, in a time when we many can least afford them, but the environmental and societal cost of our current corporate farming system is even higher.

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All about the O

obama2I’m in awe of Barack Obama’s campaign identity. I have never seen a political identity this sophisticated — it’s simple, well-rendered, and somehow it manages to turn an American political cliché of a sun rising over farmland into good design! That’s remarkable on its own, but the flexibility this one little mark has provided is astonishing. There are versions for every state and every group and they have plastered it on every available surface on the official site, and somehow it all works together cohesively and attractively. I think it’s a great idea to let the mark itself morph substantially for the iterations; the payoff of individuality overcomes any risk of lack of consistency.
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Do the Right Thing

I believe in supporting companies that make a commitment to doing good, both as a designer and a customer. Whether or not they always succeed, understanding that business should also be socially and environmentally responsible is a big step towards where we need to be. Although the real trick is you have to mean it.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been working on a great project for Levi Strauss & Co. While I have always avoided retail fashion, especially the mass-market kind, I’m pleased to be working with a company that embraces values. The photo above is from their lobby, and it is great to see what they stand for plastered up, bigger than life.

I was also very impressed at their attitude towards their customers; we discussed how important it was to talk to and about all of their customers in a respectful and positive way. It’s easy in this business to look down on those who are unfashionable, poor, or overweight, and I appreciate their desire to be inclusive.

As I look to move up in brand management (the purpose of getting the MBA), it would benefit me to work for larger organizations for a few years to gain credibility and learn more about the challenges of a large, multi-national company. However, I still want to work for a company I can believe. Levi’s is just the kind of company that could fit both bills, and now I’m motivated to push aside my assumptions and look more closely for other opportunities I might be overlooking.

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Barcelona

After 5 long years, I’m finally getting around to organizing my Europe photos. I’m starting with Barcelona, a city that stole my heart.

Gaudi has a lot to do with why I loved Barcelona so much — his work is whimsical, colorful, and imaginative in a way that makes me wonder if hallucinogens were in vogue at the time. Every inch of this town is covered with textures and patterns and it was incredible to be enveloped so completely by detail. Even when it was too much (as Gaudi often is) it made me giddy to be in a city that lives and breathes design this much.

What I loved most was how the mundane — chimneys, attic ceilings, benches, vents — was transformed into the exotic. Form follows function, of course, but I see no reason why everything practical can’t also be whimsical or elegant.

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Defining Art

Last weekend there was a highly critical article about the Chihuly exhibit at the De Young that really got my back up. The money quote:

“The history of art is a history of ideas, not just of valuable property. Chihuly has no place in it, and the de Young disserves its public by pretending that he does.”

I have my own criticisms of Chihuly — primarily that his work can be overly gilded and that commercial success has led to excessive repetition — but there are ways to critique an artist without declaring his work isn’t art. The author’s main arguments seemed to be that the exhibit is a spectacle and not serious enough, and that Chihuly’s work is too flamboyant and decorative to be considered “art”.

The former is more than a little puzzling. Yes, the exhibit is a spectacle and the gift shop is indeed “barnacled” on. But this criticism could easily be made of much modern culture and art, and it is unfair to single Chihuly out. His work is flamboyant and showy, but that just makes a theatrical exhibit seem all the more authentic. On the other hand, despite the spectacle the author claims “educated viewers” will get bored because is not enough intellectual content to hold their interest. That must mean I’m not educated, because there were plenty of beautiful visuals to keep my attention.

It’s also seriously misguided to claim that art must be high-concept. We do have rough categories of fine art, decorative art, craft, and the like, but the lines are blurry at best. Going by the author’s yardstick, we’d have to disregard half of the “history of art”! Dutch and Flemish masters are a good example — the technique is remarkable, but in the end it’s often just a painting of of a dead rabbit, a rich patron, or a vase of flowers. Where’s the intellectual statement there? And yet we don’t question those paintings as art.

Perhaps more importantly than how he defines art is the arrogance of claiming to define art for others. As the resident creative in my family I spend a lot of time defending art, and I think it’s important to take a broad view of it. If it expresses something, even if I don’t like or understand it, it can still be considered art. You don’t have to like it or agree with it, but it’s generally not appropriate to define someone else’s experience. That’s not to say you can’t ever draw a line, but you should draw it as generously as possible.

The entire article felt like a thinly veiled assertion that if the masses like it, it can’t be art-with-a-capital-A. Enough people already question and dismiss art without elitism like this to alienate them further. It occurs to me artists complain art isn’t appreciated, but often they seem to work very hard at preserving image of the starving, misunderstood artist. After all, if the plebeians get it, it can’t be any good.

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Michelle Bachelet

Recently Michelle Bachelet, the first female president of Chile, visited California to sign an alternative energy pact and afterwards she spoke at UC Berkeley.

I was disappointed that we heard very little about the renewable energy agreement at the speech. Evidently that discussion happened up at the Berkeley Labs and not on campus as advertised. However, it was still exciting to hear her vision for Chile — despite my cynicism, I have to admit she said all the right things about equitable growth and social justice. There were a few times in the speech when I wondered if she might be persuaded to run our country, too! Her vision sounded more honest and insightful than anything I’ve heard from an American president in my lifetime. She may not be able to accomplish it all, but at least she is acknowledging some hard truths.

The ever-present crew of Berkeley protesters was outside, and they highlighted a particularly thorny issue: Bachelet is committed to pursuing clean, sustainable energy but she skirted around directly stating that developing energy independence may require unpleasant compromises. One of the more viable options for Chile involves building dams in Patagonia. While hydroelectric power is relatively clean and plentiful, damming destroys ecosystems and swallows up untold acres of land. In this case, the stakes are even higher: it will irreparably change a national environmental treasure.

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Mad Men

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Mad Men will soon be back on AMC for its 2nd season. The setting, a Madison Avenue ad agency in 1960, is so interesting to me because it represents a turning point in advertising. Around this time advertisers started embracing conceptual ideas and humor instead of straight pitches, and watching the Sterling Cooper creative team dismiss these newfangled ideas is amusing. In the pilot, they debate the famous DDB Lemon ad for Volkswagen, and most of them don’t get it. That sets up the whole show — this is a group of old white guys about to be hit by a cultural revolution, and they aren’t going to be able to keep up.

Mad Men can be hard to watch at times, as many plot points center around a sexist, racist society that I am thankful not to live in. That’s not to say racism and sexism don’t still exist (see: Election 2008) but at least I don’t live in a time when it’s practically laughable to hire a woman as a writer. Rumor has it the show will resume two years in the future, which I think will be a good move. It allows the characters to experience cultural shifts and to grow emotionally more quickly.

But setting the serious stuff aside, the art direction alone is worth watching this show for: Sharp suits, perfectly tailored dresses, sleek mid-century furniture, intriguing vintage baubles, you name it. Nothing is overlooked.  (Of course, there are times it’s hard to see all this greatness through great clouds of cigarette smoke!)