10:54 AM Thursday July 29, 2010
by Warren Berger

What can people in business learn from studying the ways successful designers solve problems and innovate? On the most basic level, they can learn to question, care, connect, and commit — four of the most important things successful designers do to achieve significant breakthroughs.

Having studied more than a hundred top designers in various fields over the past couple of years (while doing research for a book), I found that there were a few shared behaviors that seemed to be almost second nature to many designers. And these ingrained habits were intrinsically linked to the designer’s ability to bring original ideas into the world as successful innovations. All of which suggests that they merit a closer look.

Question. If you spend any time around designers, you quickly discover this about them: They ask, and raise, a lot of questions. Often this is the starting point in the design process, and it can have a profound influence on everything that follows. Many of the designers I studied, from Bruce Mau to Richard Saul Wurman to Paula Scher, talked about the importance of asking “stupid questions”–the ones that challenge the existing realities and assumptions in a given industry or sector. The persistent tendency of designers to do this is captured in the joke designers tell about themselves. How many designers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Does it have to be a light bulb?

In a business setting, asking basic “why” questions can make the questioner seem naïve while putting others on the defensive (as in, “What do you mean ‘Why are we doing it this way?’ We’ve been doing it this way for 22 years!”). But by encouraging people to step back and reconsider old problems or entrenched practices, the designer can begin to re-frame the challenge at hand — which can then steer thinking in new directions. For business in today’s volatile marketplace, the ability to question and rethink basic fundamentals — What business are we really in? What do today’s consumers actually need or expect from us? — has never been more important.

Care. It’s easy for companies to say they care about customer needs. But to really empathize, you have to be willing to do what many of the best designers do: step out of the corporate bubble and actually immerse yourself in the daily lives of people you’re trying to serve. What impressed me about design researchers such as Jane Fulton Suri of IDEO was the dedication to really observing and paying close attention to people — because this is usually the best way to ferret out their deep, unarticulated needs. Focus groups and questionnaires don’t cut it; designers know that you must care enough to actually be present in people’s lives.

Connect. Designers, I discovered, have a knack for synthesizing–for taking existing elements or ideas and mashing them together in fresh new ways. This can be a valuable shortcut to innovation because it means you don’t necessarily have to invent from scratch. By coming up with “smart recombinations” (to use a term coined by the designer John Thackara), Apple has produced some of its most successful hybrid products; and Nike smartly combining a running shoe with an iPod to produce its groundbreaking Nike Plus line (which enables users to program their runs). It isn’t easy to come up with these great combos. Designers know that you must “think laterally” — searching far and wide for ideas and influences — and must also be willing to try connecting ideas that might not seem to go together. This is a way of thinking that can also be embraced by non-designers.

Commit. It’s one thing to dream up original ideas. But designers quickly take those ideas beyond the realm of imagination by giving form to them. Whether it’s a napkin sketch, a prototype carved from foam rubber, or a digital mock-up, the quick-and-rough models that designers constantly create are a critical component of innovation — because when you give form to an idea, you begin to make it real.

But it’s also true that when you commit to an idea early — putting it out into the world while it’s still young and imperfect — you increase the possibility of short-term failure. Designers tend to be much more comfortable with this risk than most of us. They know that innovation often involves an iterative process with setbacks along the way — and those small failures are actually useful because they show the designer what works and what needs fixing. The designer’s ability to “fail forward” is a particularly valuable quality in times of dynamic change. Today, many companies find themselves operating in a test-and-learn business environment that requires rapid prototyping. Which is just one more reason to pay attention to the people who’ve been conducting their work this way all along.

This post is originally from the Harvard Business Review and can be found here.

This is one of the most touching, honest and real stories we have seen in a long time.

Last Minutes with ODEN from phos pictures on Vimeo.

We don’t share this only for entertainment value. There is a lesson here for marketers as well.

In this age of financial challenge and competition for consumers, marketers and companies alike MUST be honest, strait-forward and REAL with customers. They won’t settle for anything else.

It’s not about being perfect.
It’s not about being slick.
It’s not about being all things to all people.

This is not to say that we can’t continue to come up with smart and conceptual ways to communicate with customers. We just all need to make sure that we’re doing it in a truthful, honest and supportable way.

Tell your story.
Tell it with truth and honest representation of your product/service.
Treat your customers as part of your family.
Respect the strength of reason.
Respect the power of emotion.

Some years ago I was a creative director for the international agency known as ATTIK in their New York studio. For years and years I’d yearned for total creative freedom that so many young creatives dream of. To me, this was creative Nirvana.

Many of you are familiar with the Noise series of books published by ATTIK and I had been a fan for a long time. These are books filled with design experiments and explorations with absolute creative freedom. This led to some really interesting and stunningly beautiful works that inspired people like me.

Things that you look at and (if you’ve been in the business of advertising for a while) think “That’s great, but you’ll never get a client to buy something like that”. But that is one of the things that made ATTIK so amazing.

The two founders Simon Needham and James Sommerville founded ATTIK in James’ grandmother’s attic with passion and a dream. (Read the story here.) They took their youth and passion for great work and focused everything they had on feeding the fire within. To date, they have created amazing work for clients like Scion, AOL, Adidas, SONY, and so many others, at a level that most “experienced” advertising people would never believe could be commercially viable. Now, ATTIK is part of Dentsu, one the largest global players out there.

NOTE: If you ever have the chance to work with ATTIK, do it. You won’t be disappointed.

Was this Simon and James’ goal from the get go? That I cannot honestly answer, but I would guess not. So why was ATTIK able to succeed where so may others have not?

Innocence? Why not.

Luck? Maybe.

Passion? Definitely.

Unwavering dedication to an idea? Damn straight.

No one can define what exactly is going to make a successful company or effort. It just has too many varying elements. But more oft than not, the companies that I see succeed, and companies that inspire me, share these same attributes.

1. A willingness to explore, push boundaries and have fun
2. No acceptance of “failure”, only learnings toward future progress
3. An unwavering passion and belief in who you are and what you do (not ego driven!)
4. The ability to get out of your own way and let your zeal lead you to people who share the same ideals and values
5. An openness to always learning new things and new ways
6. The absolute rule of never settling for “good enough”

To return to the beginning of the story, when I was at ATTIK we would get hundreds of portfolios from young creative hopefuls every week. So much great design talent out there, but so few with vision beyond the trends of the day.

One of the portfolios that came across my desk was from Ji Lee. There was something unique and different about his work and his perspective. I had the opportunity to meet him. He was an unassuming young man with vision and passion for creative thought. As much as I wanted to work with him at the time, we were unable to make him a permanent part of the ATTIK NY team. I have never forgotten his work, his passion or his ideals.

Today I came across a video of a lecture he’d given discussing the power of personal projects and how that translates to your professional vision. He hasn’t only lectured on it. He lives it. One of the really interesting things I remember from his portfolio was the Bubble Project that he talks about in the video below.

Ji Lee was born in Seoul, Korea, and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, he studied design at Parsons School of Design. In the past, Lee has worked as the branding director at Droga5 and art director at Saatchi & Saatchi. He currently works as the Creative Director at Google Creative Lab in New York and teaches design at School of Visual Arts. Success indeed.

So my point is this. Don’t let what might NOT happen, what may NOT be “feasible”, what hasn’t been done, or what everybody else does, stop you from thinking, from dreaming or from following that little voice inside that drives you.

Two great thoughts before I leave you with the video. There’s a sign in my office sent from one of our clients (Thanks Leslie!) that says

“Live What You Love”.

And another thought that I ran across today that said

“Redefine what is possible”.

So there are no guarantees of anything here. Just a viewpoint and fire that I continue to feed. That I have to feed. There are a lot of you out there. Don’t let the fire ever go away.

This post was written by Tim Scott, founder and creative director of THEM!. Find out more about THEM! at www.THEMdidit.com or call 541 306 6723 for more information.

It’s really easy to make our jobs in advertising just another job.

The routine goes on day-in and day-out. Briefs, ROI, turn-key, blah, blah, blah.

Take a second today and try to remember why it is you got into this business to begin with. Mine began at Miami Ad School. Late nights working on a concept, forgetting to eat or drink for hours while you were so engrossed in creating something you believed in with all of your heart. The hours spent tweaking type even thought there was no thought of billings or time sheets. The passion that you talked about an idea with and the fire that burned inside you to create greatness. This is the determination that we need to find again to make our work great.

“Don’t mistake a message for communication.”

Our agency mission is this:

THEM! We exist to create, to experiment, to generate thought, to move people, to push buttons, stimulate conversation, to change minds and to provoke action.

Focus on the idea, the concept, the message, the communication, and not just all of the cool bells and whistles you can do to make it “cool”. Have a great concept before you even begin to think about the execution and let THAT dictate the communication.

Follow that with every bit as much creativity and thought as your concept as you plan your execution phase. Amazing design, perfect media execution and placement, and a thorough and complete understanding of who you are trying to reach will all add up to a successful effort. And let’s face it. We’re all in the sales business.

We don’t have to sell our creative souls to be successful.

Look at how many of the campaigns and efforts that have inspired us to get into this business to begin with have been successful sales efforts for their clients. Doyle Dane Bernbach and the amazing work for Volkswagon. Chiat Day and the iPod campaign. And too many more to list.

“Don’t just start a business. Start a revolution”

Please, let us as an industry get back to our youth. The days of great ideas at all cost. The days of creating movements and not accepting mediocrity. Let’s add some fuel to the fire of our industry and make it respectable again in boardrooms around the world. We do truly have the power to change the world. We just have to believe in ourselves like young students again.

This post was inspired after watching this interview with John Hagerty of BBH. Watch, learn and fuel the fire.

What is your inspiration? What campaigns moved you? Please add your comments below.

The state of the “ADVERTISING” business.

Preview:

The Breakup:

The plot thickens:

Thought for the day:
Build relationships. Not impressions.

Success rarely comes easy.

There is a quote that I have loved for a while:

“Push yourself farther than you think you can go or you’ll never know how far you can reach”.

I’m not sure where this came from but it’s been a powerful push in my life for a while now. This article from HarvardBusiness.org seemed appropriate for today. -Tim

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Why You Need to Fail
Monday July 6, 2009
PETER BREGMAN

“Peter, I’d like you to stay for a minute after class.” Calvin teaches my favorite body conditioning class at the gym.

“What’d I do?” I asked him.

“It’s what you didn’t do.”

“What didn’t I do?”

“Fail.”

“You kept me after class for not failing?”

“This,” he began to mimic my casual weight lifting style, using weights that were obviously too light, “is not going to get you anywhere. A muscle only grows if you work it till it fails. You need to use more challenging weights. You need to fail.”

Calvin’s onto something.

Every time I ask a room of executives to list the top five moments their career took a leap forward — not just a step, but a leap — failure is always on the list. For some it was the loss of a job. For others it was a project gone bad. And for others still it was the failure of a larger system, like an economic downturn, that required them to step up.

Yet most of us spend a tremendous effort trying to avoid even the possibility of failure.

According to Dr. Carol Dweck, professor at Stanford University, we have a mindset problem. Dweck has done a tremendous amount of research to understand what makes someone give up in the face of adversity versus strive to overcome it.

It turns out the answer is deceptively simple. It’s all in your head.

If you believe that your talents are inborn or fixed, then you will try to avoid failure at all costs because failure is proof of your limitation. People with a fixed mindset like to solve the same problems over and over again. It reinforces their sense of competence.

Children with fixed mindsets would rather redo an easy jigsaw puzzle than try a harder one. Students with fixed mindsets would rather not learn new languages. CEOs with fixed mindsets will surround themselves with people who agree with them. They feel smart when they get it right.

But if you believe your talent grows with persistence and effort, then you seek failure as an opportunity to improve. People with a growth mindset feel smart when they’re learning, not when they’re flawless.

Michael Jordan, arguably the world’s best basketball player, has a growth mindset. Most successful people do. In high school he was cut from the basketball team but that obviously didn’t discourage him: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career, I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game wining shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

If you have a growth mindset, then you use your failures to improve. If you have a fixed mindset, you may never fail, but neither do you learn or grow.

In business, we have to be discriminating about when we choose to challenge ourselves. In high risk, high leverage situations, it’s better to stay within your current capability. In lower risk situations, where the consequences of failure are less, better to push the envelope. The important point is to know that pushing the envelope, that failing, is how you learn and grow and succeed. It’s your opportunity.

Here’s the good news: you can change your success by changing your mindset. When Dweck trained children to view themselves as capable of growing their intelligence, they worked harder, more persistently, and with greater success on math problems they had previously abandoned as unsolvable.

A growth mindset is the secret to maximizing potential. Want to grow your staff? Give them tasks above their ability. They don’t think they could do it? Tell them you expect them to work at it for a while, struggle with it. That it will take more time than the tasks they’re used to doing. That you expect they’ll make some mistakes along the way. But you know they could do it.

Want to increase your own performance? Set high goals where you have a 50-70% chance of success. According to Psychologist and Harvard researcher the late David McClelland, that’s the sweet spot for high achievers. Then, when you fail half the time, figure out what you should do differently and try again. That’s practice. And according to recent studies, 10,000 hours of that kind of practice will make you an expert in anything. No matter where you start.

The next class I did with Calvin, I doubled the weight I was using. Yeah, that’s right. Unfortunately, that gave me tendonitis in my elbow, which I’m nursing with rest and ice. Sometimes you can even fail when you’re trying to fail.

Hey, I’m learning.

The original article can be found here.

“I think people who are sacred with and idea and they feel like they don’t want to be copies, have no other ideas.” – KARIM RASHID

More here: http://www.idsgn.org/posts/karim-rashid-inspiring-a-new-way-of-thinking/

Businesses have been trying to make creativity a commodity for years now. If only it was that easy.

Coca-Cola announced on April 27th, 2009 their intention to move toward a pay-for-performance model. P&G has been experimenting with this model for a while now. The idea in itself is nothing new and honestly is not a bad idea. At first glance is seems a great idea for both agencies and their clients. Agencies are challenged with a goal and have to provide the “creative” ideas and executions to answer them. That’s what we all claim to do, right? Step-up or shut-up. However, there are many things to consider in the actual application of this theory that makes it challenging.

1. Who actually determines what these “goals” are and what is financially reasonable to reach them?
2. How do we define that these “goals” have indeed been reached?
3. If the model is a percentage, how is the level of “success” decided?

From the 10,000 foot perspective all of these questions are easily answered. In all honesty, it is quite similar to what the “traditional” process has been for quite a few years now:

A goal is set = the brief;

the agency develops strategy, tactics and execution = the creative;

the effort is reviewed and critiqued by the clients = the feedback;

the creative is modified and launched = the execution;

the goals are either met or not = the results.

Simple. The difference is, the agency is only paid based on the results and not on a previously generated estimate.

Here, in our opinion, is the way that the pay-for-performance model could work:

1. The agency and the client need to work hand-in-hand to set goals. It will take a mutual respect at this phase. While it’s great to set huge goals, the goals should be based on at least on a semi-realistic expectation and then add a bonus option for quantifiably overachieving.  As the relationship evolves and the agency continually “over-delivers” on results, then raise the bar. It’s good for both of us.
2. Recognize that some goals are quantifiable and some are not. If the assignment is coupon, direct mail or click-thru based, it is easy to track specific redemption of offers. If you are working on more “brand” driven efforts, it is much harder to quantify exact results. Again, agree on some attainable general results that can be justified. Please, please, please don’t under-value the power of brand. It is always a vital part of your marketing equation, but most definitely not the only one.
3. When setting the goals and targets of the project be perfectly clear of what the definitions of success are. If this is not implicitly done the project will invariably end up in a “he said – she said” stalemate. And we’ll tell you right now, the client will always win – and they should.

Accountability vs. Ownability.

One of the other difficult points comes from the perspective of client changes. If the agency has done complete due diligence and the client makes changes that the agency thinks will affect the performance of the effort, where is the line drawn?

“If all targets are hit, the agency could make as much as 30% on a project; if all targets are missed, the agency won’t make any profit at all.”

To use the Coca-Cola model above as an example, if the client wants to make changes to an effort the agency believes to be the most effective, does the agency’s “risk factor” go down? In real world ideals this (very roughly) means that if the client makes significant changes, can the agency charge for work done as the client will have to accept more of the risk since their changes are being included? Also, the wording “if all targets are missed, the agency won’t make any profit at all”. Does this mean that the agency can charge hard costs and then gets a percentage bonus on performance review? Confusing indeed.

What now?

In all honesty, we’re not against the pay-for-performance model at all. In fact, we like the basic premise of accountability and shared risk/reward. We’re not afraid to stand behind what we do. But we need to find a simple (or as simple as possible) way to handle the nuances and risk/reward balance.

We welcome and would love your comments and thoughts. Please chime in!

UPDATE: June 8,2009

Unilever is now looking to some really stringent guidelines as well? What does this mean for agencies?

Unilever Set to Join Cost-Cutting Push

Agencies working for the CPG giant face lower margins, extended payment times

June 7, 2009  -By Andrew McMains