Book Review: The Designful Company

It wasn't that long ago that a company could manufacture a mediocre product and use mass advertising to succeed in the marketplace. According to author Marty Neumeier, those days "have come to an end." [p. 61]

It's innovation that's driving opportunity and market share -- think iPod, Google, Prius and NetFlix.

How do you radically differentiate, as well as solve all the other persistent, pervasive, slippery problems facing business today?

The answer to that question is the central theme of his book. According to Neumeier, you'll need to adapt design principles into your management processes, fundamentally changing the way you do business.

Easier said than done, of course. How do you

"trade the false security of best practices for the insecurity of new practices?" [p. 47]

He has a lot of ideas about how to make it happen. I loved his good/different chart, as well as the identification of the "levers of change."

This is a book about creativity and business, and it's crafted like one. Fun illustrations, text that goes over pages, and a solid index. For photos of some of the spreads (plus another review of this same book), see the Designer's Review of Books.

The book isn't as much fun to read as something from Jack Trout, but if you're thinking strategically about how you'll need to shape your organization to thrive in the future, you should give this book a serious read.

Thanks to Catherine Stickel, Academic Director for Graphic Design & Advertising at Art Institute of California for giving me a copy of the book.

NBC Brands Itself GM Style

An article in today's Los Angeles Times reminded me of a line in Al & Laura Ries' The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding.

In describing some of GM's many branding boo-boos, Ries & Ries wrote (p. 170):

What's a Chevrolet? In truth, a Chevrolet is a large, small, cheap, expensive car or truck.

The short version of the long, sad story is that Chevrolet tried to be all things to all people, and at the end of the day, didn't mean much of anything to anybody.

Fast forward to present day: Angela Bromstad, president of NBC's prime-time entertainment, had just told a room full of reporters and critics that one of NBC's problems was that it had strayed too far from its brand.

Later in the news conference, Paul Telegdy, who is in charge of the network's unscripted programming, was asked about NBC's brand. Here's how he responded:

Well, that's something that we have spent a lot of research and focus on, in terms of core pillars on what is and where is it an NBC show. We refer to certain key identifying characteristics of NBC shows. That they be human first, deal with real people, people that our cast, our viewers identify with. That are fundamentally positive and that embraces our comedy brand but also, an optimism....

Well, you get the idea. There is some content in his answer but the average listener's eyes would have glazed over long before he got to his third sentence.

So, what's your brand? Do the people who work for you know what it is, and can they articulate it in a meaningful way?

Can you?

Banging the Drum in Social Media

More and more, entrepreneurs are banging their drums using Twitter or FaceBook or LinkedIn or Plaxo or.... Mostly, that's a good thing. Social media is an increasingly important marketing tool.

Even so:

• One trainer I follow tweets a tidbit of wisdom or exhortation of some kind just about every hour.
  
• A brand attorney I follow tweets every detail of his workout plan.

Why do they think I care? Why do they think anyone cares?

If you're using social media to promote your products or services, ask yourself:

• Are you creating awareness with the right target audience?
• Are you creating the right kind of awareness?
  
• Does your activity increase the perceived value of your brand?
• Does it generate referrals?
  

Don't measure your success by the number of tweets, blog postings, or comments you create, nor the number of followers, friends and connections you have.

Measure your success by the leads and revenue you generate.

Which brings us to the bigger question: what's the social media metric that's the most likely predictor of leads and revenue?

How about: measure the number of meaningful conversations you have.

If you've got a better idea for a social media metric, please post it as a comment in this blog. Thanks!