“Design thinking” and the brand team
Going forward, brand teams will need a whole new set of processes. They’ll be creating and growing customers to produce strategic value. That’s a non-trivial challenge. Strategy as Design (pdf) by Jeanne Liedtka addresses some of the key process issues from a general business perspective.
A quote:
Design offers a different approach and suggests processes that are more widely participative, more dialogue-based, issue-rather-than-calendar-driven, conflict-using rather than conflict-avoiding, all aimed at invention and learning, rather than control.
If we were to take design’s lead,we would involve more members of the organization in two-way strategic conversations.We would view the process as one of iteration and experimentation, and pay sequential attention to idea generation and evaluation in a way that attends first to possibilities before moving onto constraints. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we would recognize that good designs succeed by persuading, and great designs by inspiring.
Since one of the first tasks of the brand team is to “design a customer,” all of these elements (and many more) will come into play.
