Creating tools for doing.
Image via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eliazar/
Regular readers may know that I have a huge fondness for tools and models, however, in my experience, this has been a somewhat unpopular position to hold in the planning and strategy community. Many planners I know run screaming from anything vaguely model-like because it, “limits creativity” or “binds you to some rigid inflexible process” that “always leads to the same answers.”
I must admit, I used to say the same things but over time I realised that NOT using tools is a much surer way to limit creativity or deliver the same answers and that the right tools will ensure that you ALWAYS end up in a more interesting place than you were before.
For me, tools are ways to turn philosophy into action. A great example of this is the tool Brad uses for identity design.
The idea of this is that a great identity is a visual story about the brand. That it brings together essential and important ideas about the brand into a holistic and visually appealing way. That it tells a story. In the above example, this was the model he used for one of our early clients ImmunoViva. On each axis are the ideas that we had decided were important parts of the brand. The idea is to work through the various iterations and combinations of ideas, drop + shield, drop + seed, human + IV, etc. The important part of this is that this isn’t just a tool that’s used to develop the identity, it’s also a tool that’s used to explain the identity to clients. So rather than telling clients we want their identity to tell a story we simply work through this exercise with them and avoid the philosophical discussion and focus, instead, on the work.
I tried a similar thing on an Audi pitch that I worked on in my last days at Fallon.
The goal was to turn Audi into a modern brand, a brand that brings its values to life in unexpected and surprising ways, rather than simply making everything it does build to one simple idea. The last thing I wanted to do was to have a philosophical discussion about modern brands with anyone so I created this magnetic poetry-like brand model that could be taken apart and recombined in different ways. The idea was we could express performance + craftmanship + sophistication in one area and maybe design + progress + authenticity in another area. These would lead you in very different places yet could still be reconciled to the larger idea of Audi.
Some tools are more successful than others and it’s important (I think) to continually evaluate the tools one uses to see if they’re still relevant and productive but I think the absence of tools is even more damaging. In today’s world where there are so many opinions and philosophies about how to develop great marketing and great brands, the need for tools is even greater. I think we as strategists and new marketing thinkers need to translate our lofty ideas and thinking into practical tools that anyone and everyone can use. It is much more difficult to describe hammering in a nail than it is to pick up a hammer. I believe the same is true for how to market and brand your company in today’s confusing and high-tech world.
What are your thoughts?
Ross Popoff-Walker Says:
May 12th, 2009 at 11:22 pmThat identity chart is awesome… I've got to repost it. While they haven't made their way into the world of branding yet, I think design persons are invaluable tools, both for digital work, product design — and for traditional advertising as well. Knowing a detailed profile of the person you're trying to communicate or design for helps focus the creative process. And what I like about personas is that it's not the archaic lifeless world of customer segmentation — but they're designed to be real people with real lives.
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adrianho Says:
May 13th, 2009 at 11:35 amI agree, personas can be really useful, I think people don't like them because they can often be so badly constructed and written. Often, I've found, they're works opf fiction more than useful profiles.
Ricardo Amaral Says:
May 13th, 2009 at 4:30 pmI had a very good experience with a fashion brand, in which the use of a simple DNA of values managed to focus all the client's efforts into one direction and that was enough for the brand to completely reposition itself on the market, even without touching communication at all.
adrianho Says:
May 13th, 2009 at 4:58 pmThat sounds interesting! Care to share it?
Ricardo Amaral Says:
May 13th, 2009 at 6:23 pmI´ll do it later on… Gotta rush now…
Jeffre Jackson Says:
May 14th, 2009 at 10:37 amI believe in tools for planning and matrices like the one for Immuno-Viva are a simple but powerful way to generate new ideas that are still consistent with the brand. I made a similar table when I was working on Nike which is here: http://www.pinkair.com/2006/09/planning_engine….
adrianho Says:
May 14th, 2009 at 1:55 pmHey Jeffre,
That Nike chart is awesome, a much better version of what I was trying to do on Audi. It looks like they're still using that today – I may steal that for some of my projects
Thanks!
Lachlan Says:
May 15th, 2009 at 12:46 pmso true.
Reminds me that getting to interesting and new creative stimulus is what a good 'tool' does… either in brainstorms sessions (real ones not just people standing round a flipchart) or creative thinking in general, you need stimulus. And tools can help you get it, often much faster (if nothing else) than without.
Sure bad ones limit your answers, but good oines give you a way to provoke your thinking and stimulate new ideas.
adrianho Says:
May 15th, 2009 at 2:55 pmHey Lachlan!
I know you agree, we still use that cool semiotics tool you taught me. In fact it's become a favourite tactic here, we've used it on pretty much every single project we've done.
Julie Says:
May 18th, 2009 at 5:15 pmHey there – the nike brief-o-matic link is dead and now I'm wondering about the semiotics tool. Would you be willing to share hints on either?
adrianho Says:
May 19th, 2009 at 2:24 pmJeffre's site is back up and while Lachlan is the semiotics master, I did write about the tool a while ago: http://www.zeusjones.com/blog/2008/the-semiotic...
Josh Chambers Says:
May 30th, 2009 at 2:46 pmI find tools incredibly underrated. I like to think of them as “structured freedom.” Within a democracy, (most of) the laws exist not to inhibit, but to provide the structure needed for freedom. Brand tools are similar. Done well, they remove the barriers needed to think freely, and provide the guidelines to have a focused conversation. I can't tell you how many unstructured, unproductive “brainstorming” sessions I've been in.
Great post.
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