The other day, I came across a t-shirt that read “I’ll pay more for good design.” Now granted, I found it on a site I’d gotten from CoolHunter as I was looking for Hanukkah gifts, and the store was in Brooklyn and all that.
(For those of you not in NYC, there’s a not-all-that-inaccurate stereotype of a certain type of Brooklynite who works in an arts/media related field, doesn’t make a whole lot of money, but who asserts his/her superiority over the Wall Street crew by “paying more for good design.”)
It set me to thinking though about how much design matters. I recently did a post on Dell’s agency search where I noted that The Real Digital Revolution had made advertising somewhat secondary to actual product performance and design, both of which can easily be researched on the interweb. I heard back from a VP at Dell who was very excited to tell me (and my readers) all about the hot new product designer they’d just hired. And I remember thinking “Oh, okay. He gets it.”
At a time when so many products have become mere commodities and when advertising doesn’t have the effect it once did, design is the best way to differentiate yourself from the pack. And, hipster t-shirts notwithstanding, people will pay more for good design, because good design has a halo effect and makes the product seem more valuable.
Good design isn’t limited to products, either. Stores can have good design (Starbucks, Whole Foods) and so can airlines (Virgin, Jet Blue). The message of good design is that “we’re thinking about you, our customer. We’re designing a product that you’ll feel good about.” It’s how companies can differentiate themselves these days and it’s more valuable than any kind of advertising or 2.0 trick out there.
Simply put, design is the new advertising.
Good post and one that begs the question: When wasn’t design a critical component of marketing?
Within the four coportations that I worked for beginning in 1980 and ending in 1996, with a substantial free-lance stint in between, each of those companies hired more designers than marketers to work in the marketing department. Doesn’t that speak to the importance of design over at least several decades?
I agree with Lewis. Design has always been a crucial element to marketing communications. If the message is great, but the design weak, few will bother to read the message.
@Elaine: I’m referring to product design- not ad design.
@Lewis: Look at the bulk of products in the consumer electronics space. Then ask your question again.
Apple products stand out for a reason.
Many products follow an ordered trajectory of important attributes that lead to mass-adoption or commoditization:
Functionality -> Reliability -> Convenience -> Price
Design can improve on any of these and become a differentiating factor. But all else equal, aesthetic design is near the last rung and is becoming more important.
Similar differentiating design aspects include storytelling and experience (human-emotive).
I believe that these last two aspects when combined with good aesthetics and a reasonable price-point make a compelling reason to purchase/come back/tell-a-friend.
Everyone is quite correct that design has always been important in marketing communications, I think the point is here that design has often been seen as a “service”, ie. marketing writes the brief and designers make something pretty. Some people when they say “design” they mean styling. When you get into what I like to call big D design, ie. design that is serving some kind of strategic imperative, the scope changes dramatically. Many companies now treat design as a strategic resource and in face are design led companies. Apple for instance or Mini where design permeates the entire experience, when design is performed at this level the experience truly is the marketing and advertising… although notice that Apple and Mini both have extraordinarily good advertising as well
I agree that design can be a critical way to differentiate your product. Managing design (and designers) is much different than managing fellow marketers. Expanding the marketing team to include strategic, creative, and execution talent (regardless of art degree or MBA!) requires finesse in terms of human resource management. Too often, designers are brought in too late in the process and just handed off the creative brief vs. being an active component of the marketing team. In my experience, great brainstorms involved both right and left brain thinkers – marketers and designers. I’d be curious to hear of teams which do this well.
@Karl: Thank you for (correctly) elaborating on and offering a deeper explanation of the point I was trying to make.
I would propose that the reason apple and mini have such good advertising is because the design of the product is something that gives the creatives a hook.
there is true personality with those brands, personality that lives in their products, not personality that an ad agency has to falsely layer on over something mediocre.
it shows
Great post, Toad. One of the things that I find interesting about design is that, when it is done well, it permeates the whole brand/organisation. This often means that the brand takes the customer experience seriously. How does this impact advertising/marketing?
It changes itcompletely. It is not as simple as providing a creative hook — good design can invite participation, and as Karl says, it becomes strategic.
I like your article…good design matters alot..in such a competitive world until and unless the design has a stopping power, it will be easily missed in the clutter!
@Toad – in our visual world graphics and graphic cues matter and influence perception. great post.
@Karl – i agree design should be strategic. but if it’s not then what do call it ‘creatives gone wild?’ or ‘art?’
I completely agree,
)) Yes apple have done a fabulous job in redefining how consumer electronics should look and function but wait; There is nothing new in this.
Just look back through history and you will see that innovative design has always been a major driver of success.
VW Beetle, the mini (both now iconic) the first Nokia Cellphones (humans don’t have corners campaign).
Tangerine Toad’s idea that design is the new advertising is ridiculous.
product designers design and make products (some good some bad) The job of the advertiser is to find the UVP (if there is one) and get out in the market and make some noise.
Let’s face it, we have all had to try to sell products that frankly are crap at some point in our careers but hey! that is the job of advertising. If the products sold themselves, we wouldn’t need to crowd every possible available inch of public space with advertising and most of us would be out of a job.
If this is the quality of thinking that we can expect from Marketing Prof’s so called ‘experts’ then I better cancel my subscription and transfer to Sherpa.
In he mean time, ‘Toad boy’ had better go back to school.
Hmmm – most products do not “sell themselves,” although hopefully most of us do not have to spend the bulk of our time “selling crap.”
A better way to expand on Toad’s point might be to refer back to the estimable Peter Morville, in his seminal work about marketing for the information age, ‘Ambient Findability’
Morville: “As the pendulum swings from push to pull, the effectiveness of advertising diminishes relative to the importance of product design and quality and price. No longer forced to trust the promotional spin of television advertisements and predatory salespeople, we now have the ability to find the best products and the best deals.”