STEFANO MARZANO
CEO & Chief Creative Director, Philips Design
Today, at least in the richer parts of the world, we, as consumers, are royalty. Like kings or queens (or dot.com billionaires), we can choose from an incredible array of options. We can have almost anything we want. And yet, despite our apparent freedom, we're also lost and disorientated.
We're adrift in a sea of choice: everything looks the same - equally good or equally bad. Like the donkey that died of hunger because it couldn't decide which pile of hay to eat first, or like the spoiled child with too many toys, paradoxically, we can choose, but... we can't. Despite all appearances, we're not in control. We need some landmark, some fixed reference point, a pole star or a lighthouse to help us steer our ship in the right direction. This, in essence, is the problem facing today's consumers.
A question of balance
Ideally, brands would be our reference points in this sea of choice. But what are brands? They are an identification, rather like the name we all carry to identify us and differentiate us from other people. More precisely, they are ultimately a community of people, the many people who together develop, make and market the product or service that bears the brand name. This community, in the nature of things, changes constantly. People come, people go. And in order that there should be continuity despite all these changes, most brand communities establish a set of values that allow them to maintain a sense of constancy and continuity, despite the fact that the actual personnel expressing these values changes all the time.
Today, in a globalizing world, making a product or service that incorporates sophisticated, converging technologies and then trying to sell it to complex and ever-changing customers, all in such a way that your goal of delivering value to the customer is achieved - that's a very difficult task. It's not surprising, therefore, that it calls for complex organizations with many disciplines that need to be orchestrated into a harmonious and productive whole - product management, R&D, marketing & sales, finance & accounting, and so on... all working together to achieve that goal. But it's also not surprising that sometimes one or more of these disciplines, each of which has its own sub-objectives, may lose sight of the overall goal, as it pursues those sub-objectives. In other words, brands are very often not the bright lighthouses they should be (and could be), because they become, as it were, “unbalanced”.
Roberto Assagiolo and Psychosynthesis
We're used to thinking of brands as having a personality, so let me introduce at this point the theory of pyschosynthesis. This theory was developed by the Italian psychiatrist Roberto Assagiolo in the early part of the last century. It assumes that the personality consists of many sub-personalities, and these are governed and kept in balance by the Self. For instance, we have it in us to be courageous, ambitious, selfish, generous, lazy, industrious, caring, careless, and so on. Sometimes, one of these qualities or sub-personalities will dominate our behavior, at other times, another will dominate, depending on the circumstances we find ourselves in. We know somehow deep inside us how we would like to behave in those circumstances. It is, in Assagioli's view, the Self that tells us that; our ethical core, if you like; our ideals. When we are behaving as the Self wishes us to behave, we are “in balance”; all the sub-personalities have then been synthesised into a balanced whole. At other times, when we behave in a way that is against our better nature, the Self has essentially lost control, and needs to get it back.
In therapy
So if we now come back to our brand community, and see it as a collection of sub-personalities, we can see that some brands may be acting in tune with their circumstances, providing people with what they want, but are perhaps less than perfect when it comes to the environment or employment conditions; whereas other brands are so concerned with cutting costs that their products become unreliable; while still other brands provide good products but bad after-sales service; or are very good in marketing but poor in research and development... and so on.
Those brands that do manage to achieve the right balance are those that succeed. But those that lose touch with society and consumers' needs and desires, or that sacrifice long-term reliability for short-term gain, or in any way have disciplines that have lost sight of the overall goal – all these are, if we keep the psychiatric model, in need of psychotherapy! And actually, most brands, like most people, could benefit from such therapy to help them perform even better than they are doing already, even if they are not what we would call unbalanced.
Getting the brand back on track
How does that brand therapy work? Its main task, of course, is to try to get the sub-personalities back into balance. Trying to get the brand as a whole back on track, so that it can see which way it should be going and what it should be doing. Just as in the case of normal psychotherapy, brand psychotherapy isn't something that can work miracles overnight. Bad habits that have crept in over many years cannot be eliminated immediately. You have to work at clarifying your long-term goal, while in the meantime working for small, step-by-step improvements every day.
Some examples
Let me give some examples of how I see this sort of psychosynthesis therapy applying to brands and how we, at Philips Design, have carried out some of these “therapeutic treatments” over the past few years, both for internal and for external clients.
Broad view
First of all, I should explain that, at Philips Design, we take a broad view of design, seeing it as made up of four main building blocks. First, the human sciences: sociology, psychology, anthropology and cultural ethnology; in other words, how people relate to themselves, each other and their surroundings. Second, technology and materials science: dealing with how we make tools and objects for people. Third, the aesthetic disciplines, pure and applied art, dealing with form, colour, and the artistic tradition. And finally, the communications sciences, about conveying meaning through signs, symbols and other sensory codes.
Bridging the gap
Drawing on these four areas, we do what design has always traditionally done, namely, try to bridge the gap between people's needs (as revealed by trends in society and culture) and the possibilities offered by technology, finding the right “fit” between them, and giving visible shape to the points where these otherwise autonomous developments come together. This is, as I say, by no means a new goal. But we believe that our broad view allows us to pursue it in the complex world of today's business more effectively and efficiently than we would otherwise be able to do.
Specifically, we conduct research into social, cultural and visual trends, and match them with technology roadmaps. Some of the tangible solutions are more useful as ways of helping to map out directions for the longer term - defining where the brand should be in five to ten years' time. Other tangible solutions are more like the step-by-step practical improvements that can be made straightaway, small concrete steps that take the brand from the reality of today towards achieving the vision of the brand in the future.
Long term: Future scenarios
As I said, the long-term scenarios look ahead a number of years. We take research carried out by institutes and universities in various countries, and combine it with our own research, extrapolating trends into the future in order to generate new possibilities. We then use these to create scenarios of realistic life situations and experiences, and define roadmaps to help us get there. This exploration of future possibilities allows us to spot the signs of where things are going as soon as possible, so that we can anticipate them, identifying - and even triggering - new aspirations and needs. An example of our long-term scenario development is our ongoing Vision of the Future project, the most recent part of this being La Casa Prossima Futura, which has so far been exhibited in New York, Milan, Paris, Hamburg, Vienna and Tel Aviv, and will probably also go to China.
We normally share our scenarios with the public in the form of visualizations of potential products. This creates two sorts of benefit. First, we get feedback on the suitability of our scenarios. And second, we plant in people's minds what the Swedish neuroscientist David Ingvar called “memories of the future”. Thinking about potential future developments opens your mind, so that you're ready to see the signs relevant to those developments if and when they occur. Ingvar found that the brain registers plans and ideas in a similar way to memories of actual events, using them like real memories and experiences to filter information and guide decisions later. In effect, they potentially lead to new aspirations and wants.
Although we're the first in our specific field to undertake this sort of scenario work, it's long been common practice in the automotive and fashion worlds, with their concept cars and their provocative collections, probing public reactions to futuristic or extreme ideas in order to understand them better.
Short term: Highly practical solutions for today
Our short-term solutions (or therapies) ensure that products reflect the qualities valued by consumers. They are corrective steps that start with where the brand is today, with its existing products and services. We devise relatively small, highly practical changes that can nonetheless make a big difference, and get the brand closer to where it should really be.
Often, it may be a question of finding what colours, shapes, finishes or user-interface styles will be relevant to consumers between now and 24 months' time. The process of finding these visual codes - at Philips Design we call it “Cultural Scanning” - involves looking at what's happening out on the streets around the world. It enables us to say with considerable accuracy what's going to be “hot” in terms of sensory appeal in the very near future. We then apply these codes to existing products, to express brand qualities like “young”, “fashionable”, or “dynamic”, and get them to market very quickly.
Recent examples of this are the Philips Portable Audio range, with their masculine, muscular look; the Cool Green TV, an interior-furnishing TV; and the Billy blender, a lively character who helps out in the kitchen. All these were produced within the present Philips product creation process and business model - practical solutions that could be implemented immediately.
Dealing with complexity
What I've described so far have been relatively simple instances of making sure that the brand is in tune with the wishes of consumers. Not surprisingly, perhaps, I have limited myself to the sorts of products that are sold in advanced industrialized countries. But we should not forget that consumers in this part of the world, with their vast range of choices and their material comforts, are not the only consumers. As globalisation increases, we shall want to take others more into account. And of course, consumers in the advanced industrialized countries themselves no longer fall into a few well-defined categories. They are increasingly expecting customized products. So the complexity of our problem is growing all the time. And we haven't even mentioned the lightning speed at which technological developments are taking place.
Mass customization
Let me now just sketch some ways in which I think we might tackle this problem. It is in part a problem of mass customization. For instance, one way in which we could be sensitive to people's needs around the world is to take the same technology and adapt its use to the various markets.
Take web-based education, for instance. In the advanced industrialized world, this is an interesting alternative to bricks-and-mortar education, but is not really vital, given the generally excellent and quite dense physical infrastructure of schools and colleges that is already in place. But in the remoter parts of Brazil or Africa, for instance, where schools are relatively few and students live far apart, the introduction of web-based education could be a relatively inexpensive way of raising educational standards quickly.
The same technology could be adapted to provide a service in the industrialized world to older people in the form of online health monitoring or home diagnostics, perhaps combined with a shopping ordering and delivery service. In the case of web-based education, we can overcome the distances of the students from schools. In the case of old people here, we can solve another distance problem – the distance of the consumer from the hospital or shop, and the inconvenience of trying to bridge it. The technology is the same, but the group served is quite different.
In these cases, the maker of the technology would certainly have to link with partners - the educational authorities, such as the government or universities in one case, and healthcare providers in the other. The complexity of the operation in either case would be so great that no one organization could deal with it easily alone. I'll come back to this point in a moment.
Another type of gap between the technology of the product and the needs of the society in which it is being marketed concerns the business model, including the manner of distribution. What has proven an appropriate way of selling products in one part of the world may be quite inappropriate in another. For example, in countries like China, where the old telephone technological infrastructure is being replaced by one that leapfrogs over that of the industrialized world, it will not be wise to assume automatically that selling phones there will be the same as selling phones in the West. New situations will require new solutions.
Experience and transformation
It's worth remembering, as well, that consumers in different parts of the world are in different phases of the evolution of economic value, as described by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore in their recent book, The Experience Economy. In the industrialized countries people have had many of their physical needs satisfied and are increasingly interested in buying experiences. People in the developing world, on the other hand, are more interested in enjoying the practical benefits and comforts that products bring. That is another area where design can help brands to tune their products to the requirements of the market.
As you may recall, the final stage of Pine's evolutionary sequence is Transformation, in which the most valued characteristic of brand will be its ability to bring about a transformation in the consumer. I wonder whether in fact it is correct to see Transformation as necessarily the follow-up to Experience. Because a brand can transform its customers at any phase, surely, by providing education, training or advice along with the product or service. A brand that provides the possibility of transformation in this way - whether or not it actually sells experiences - will certainly be more highly valued than one that does not offer the possibility of such transformation.
Power-partnering
Sometimes a brand may be able to see a need or fulfill a wish in society that it cannot meet or fulfill alone, because it does not possess the required expertise. After all, the world is getting more and more complex. To survive as a business in a complex future, companies will need to join forces with others from time to time, in flexible configurations that can easily form or dissolve as required, so that they can produce the best solutions. A company that lacks a particular expertise may join with a partner who does have that expertise, for example, so that, together, they can form a two-tiered brand, a super-brand. Design can often be the integrator, the marriage broker if you like, that facilitates this coming-together.
A case close at hand for me is the Philishave Coolskin. We joined together with Nivea to combine the speed and safety benefits of dry shaving with the refreshing benefits of wet shaving. The result of this partnering is a new landmark for the consumer - one that is more attractive and reliable than others, one that stands out from the crowd, and therefore helps to guide consumers in making their decisions. By building on reciprocal equity, the two brands achieve more than they do separately. Another project of the same type was the Philips-Alessi line of appliances. This collaboration enabled Philips to establish its image as a design innovator, while Alessi learned how to expand into the field of electrical equipment. Most recently, Philips and Levi's have joined forces to produce the first electronic jacket.
Fascinating ideology
In all the various ways that I've described in this talk - and no doubt many more - we, as designers, can help companies and brands bridge the gap between their technological and product-oriented competence on the one hand and the needs and desires of the many different groups of consumers around the world on the other. Performing a sort of therapy to bring brands back into harmony with themselves and their ultimate goal of creating value for people.
In fact, I suggest that it is precisely this bridging ideology or ethic that the “Self” of the brand could usefully adopt as its own. Operating in line with such an ethic, the Self, seen in terms of psychosynthesis, will be able to keep its various sub-personalities well-adjusted and healthy, and will be able to act appropriately in all the different circumstances in which it finds itself. I'm not suggesting in any way that design can replace all the other disciplines, but I do think that they could benefit from adopting a similar ethic.
A brand that is governed like this will become a trustworthy and attractive reference point for consumers, a lighthouse they can rely on as they sail through the vast oceans of choice that surround them. Balanced and in tune with people's needs and desires, such a landmark-brand will achieve its own self-fulfillment, improving the quality of people's lives by helping them live in harmony with their environment – in any country, culture or community. At last, the sailor will know where he is, the donkey will be able to choose, and the consumer, as king, will be truly in control.
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