At the Front-End of Innovation conference in Copenhagen last
night, there was a fascinating presentation on “Why Companies Can't Afford Not
to be Design-Centric: The Future of Strategic Brand Identity” by Vince Voron
@vincevoron from Coca-Cola, North Americas.
Vince has an interesting background: he is former senior
designer of Apple where he worked for 16 years, before joining Coca-Cola six
years ago.
Vince in essence deconstructed the Apple methodology, so he
could teach it and apply it in other companies. He looked back at the 1998 – 2004 history of innovation at
apple, where designers were key to drive innovation for their business and
their cultural relevancy. I like that: for their cultural “relevancy”
In the early days, R&D money was going first into
software, hardware engineering and product design; in that order. So
the first big insight was where does the money go, and how can you switch the
priorities.
Good Design was NOT good brand identity: all products in
1997-1998 looked/felt differently, even though all products were designed by
one design company (IDEO). Personal design preferences were not controlled.
Then there was a phase of designing with constraints. Apple
identified a geometric shape to be core to visual identity, the lozenge (on
oval shape) as a unifying element of design. It was a way for objective, non-confrontational
conversations on design.
Apple started designing for all consumer touch-points.
Hardware buttons that were touched most were designed like “Jewels” and there
was a move towards empowering passion inspired innovation; from functional to
emotional experiences.
Apple also was (still is ?) a better integrator than
innovator; for example integrating packaging and product design.
The biggest lesson learned however was that packaging
was valued and incentivized on productivity and cost containment. And
the way to make package creators think like designers was to give credit to
those people and let them shine based on their metrics.
Over to Coca-Cola. When arriving at Coca-Cola, the biggest
challenge was to develop a culture based on design driven innovation. When
Vince started the biggest R&D investments went into liquids/beverages,
packaging and equipment; in hat order.
In 2006, Coca-Cola made a huge investment in equipment, integrating people, assets and partners.
To sell the idea to finance people to like their models, it was really about
using the same language as the CFO.
Vince did an awesome job in decomposing the language used,
whether you talk about your innovations to Finance, Marketing or Manufacturing,
realizing that this way each of them could be a designer. “Everyone is a
designer” and professional designers are best suited to drive innovation to shape
ideas and provide tools for x-functional team to achieve success. Designers had
to come out of their design studios and into the organization. Designers also
need to be trained to understand business jargon like ROI, finance terms, marketers,
etc
A great example was to reposition vending machines to marketers
as “Consumer Touch points” and “Media Assets”, and to measure success based on
the number of “impressions”.
Same for manufacturing. Before: it was about design what we
could manufacture (vending machines). Now it was about manufacture what we
design.
All this lead to the second big insight to “respect
your partners in different business units” and make them win on their terms and based on the
metrics that they are incentivized
on.
The third big insight was about the importance of language
and narratives. Vince described this as “Design by Common Nomenclatures for
“Inclusivity”. Instead of talking about industrial designers, graphical
designers, digital designers, it was now about “Media Designers”, “Iconic
Assets” Engaging with the equipment (vending machine) and “emotional engagement
with the equipment (in this case vending machines).
Not just thinking about the transactional experience of
buying a bottle of Coke, but looking what a young person’s first experience was
when that person for the very first time in her life decided herself on what
machine to put your 1 $. This was about brand love at first retail experience.
Even for vending machines there is a way about thinking in
terms of a “3D Visual Identity System”: similar geometric shape, respect the
past, sculpted flows, and using on purpose asymmetric design as it was prove to
be more attractive. And yes, even in vending machines you can conceive “jewels”
for the touch-points, thinking in great detail for example about the shape and
look and feel of the refrigerator plate, making sure it is well lit where you
serve the ice.
Coca-Cola is now also experimenting with digital consistent
user experience. “We are so naïve, we have so much to learn”, said Vince and
showed crowdsourcing experiments for creating environments for co-creation: checkout http://unlock.coke.com/. They went also so
far in integrating new tech on old machines; replacing all refrigerator doors
with a new door with Samsung screens (yes, Samsung, not Apple). Results are
staggering: +38% brand love, +78% volume lift, +83% media savings.
Integration is also at the level of “Integrated Partnerships”.
Coca-Cola partners with all their suppliers on THEIR innovation initiatives.
They now operate as a multi-dimensional agency; brokering and bringing together
BMW and Coke for example, and make them play in the same Sandbox.
Vince was rightfully proud to close his presentation with
the reward by Forbes of the iPhone and Coca-Cola listed as the coolest products
of the decade. Vince is now in the list of great design thinkers. Checkout this
video http://designthinkingmovie.com
The Q&A was fairly interesting as well, and about a
theme that I have heard a lot about during this conference. Vince does not
really like the term “design thinking”. It was just a term invented by an IDEO
guy who wrote about it. In essence the big achievement of design thinking is
that it brought together Engineering academics and Business academics
to have a conversation and get their act together around “customer driven
integrated design”.
I would have loved seeing Vince coming on/off stage with
tanned torso, carrying a crate of Coca-Cola on his shoulder, as from a design
point of you, he is probably the real Coca-Cola Man ;-)
By @petervan for #FEIEMEA
No comments:
Post a Comment