Tag Archive | brand

Going Holistic

Nov24

Digitalist Design Forum 2017
Tennispalatsi, Helsinki 16.11.2017

An event for designers, producers and buyers to increase insights of design thinking and brand experiences

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I attended the event with high hopes to get insights of design and holistic customer experiences. I have to admit I was a little bit disappointed when most of the talks focused on branding. I decided to make the most of the day and learn everything I could on branding, a somewhat unfamiliar topic to me.

For starters we learned that Finland has a huge potential on being a design superpower but has failed terribly in using its potential. Petteri Kolinen (CEO, Design Forum Finland) and Ville Tolvanen (CEO, Digitalist Group) pointed out that there is a lack of a holistic view in finnish design and too much focus on the outcome or product. The lack of a holistic ensemble and an identity results in incoherent results.

 

The trick is to pull everything together
– Andreas Rosenlew

 

Andreas Rosenlew (Executive brand advisor & Managing Partner, Grow Partners) carried out with the same theme reminding us that there are a lot of brand evangelists and service designers running around. Rosenlew pointed out that the trick to survive in the competition is to be able to pull everything together to form a valuable and cumulative process. A successful designer truly understands the process of value creation and the different dimensions of value for the customer, such as financial, functional, social and experimental aspects of value creation.

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Päivi Svens (Head of Marketing, Fazer Lifestyle goods) also pointed out the importance of values. Svens argued that when concentrating on value creation for the customer the customer sees the brand as more valuable which in turn increases commitment to the brand. Svens described a situation where the designing and branding was very fragmented in the Fazer Makeiset unit, a situation that led to mistakes when bringing new products to the market. The company took a huge effort in dissolving and rebuilding all the processes, reconstructing the tasks of employees and creating a coherent branding around the products. Svens said she had to learn a lot of new things on simplifying and making things visible but that effort paid off in the form of prizes and gaining trust and valuation within the company.

 

Simplify to Amplify
– Päivi Svens

 

Heidi Rantala (Co-owner, Chief Marketing Officer, Yepzon) had an important angle on branding from a growing business point of view. Her point was that it is not always the almighty brand that enables growth but growth that enables a brand to develop. Rantala pointed out that you need patience to build a brand and meanwhile you owe to the customers who invested in you and your company. Sometimes you need to make profit and grow first to enable an experience of a successful brand to customers.

Alexander Matt (Chief Marketing Officer, Fiskars Group) entertained us with a fictional clip of a graphic designer obsessed with the papyrus font in the Avatar movie logo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVhlJNJopOQ and some heroic stories of well known brands such as Levi’s jeans and Adidas sneakers. The formula of a successful brand is that it is universal, holistic and aesthetic. It is consistent and it speaks the language of the customers.

Written by: Mira Grönlund

Are visual design skills important for service designers?

Jan7

Figure 1: Blog post mind map.

To understand and develop service design we need to combine knowledge from different areas, as business administration, publishing, marketing, psychology, journalism, design, mathematics, ethnography, among others. Every service solution will need a better understand of context, user needs and usage.

The natural born service designer is beholder, curious, focused, communicative, organized and creative. Among other proficiencies, we need to develop the visual design skills. Designers communicate in a visual or an object language as symbols, signs, and metaphors. They are used for sketching, diagrams and technical drawings to translate abstract requirements into concrete objects.

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Brand together – Book review

Nov23
“Brand Together – How co-creation generates innovation and re-energizes brands”
Nicholas Ind, Charles Trevail and Clare Fuller
Have you ever listened to two women talking about brands? Sounds too trivial? Well, this conversation is different…
Such important first impression,  and we are not judging the book by its cover
Tatjana: For me, brand is a ‘loud’ name that represents quality and value. Products and services with solid brand names will win over despite the price margin that I would be paying just for having that label on a product. The reputation that brand has, often comes with a history of quality level. When seeing book title “Brand together” among other very interesting books for the assignment, I immediately knew that this is something I can relate to naturally. The anticipation of something stylish, bright, lightweight and attractive, packaged into one nice word, was on in an instant. The book turned out to be a ‘heavy-reading’, but with interesting insights to compensate for the writing style.