About the author:

Bill Capers describes himself as a VP of Innovative Necessities, someone that puts passion behind everything he does. With a different but positive attitude, he has directed large programs internationally for Fortune 500 companies, management consultants, government and non-profit organizations. He delivers powerful insights and awe-inspiring, sometimes off-the-wall, but honest advice on business, branding and management issues.

With twenty years of experience in the field of design management, he is the Managing Director of Business Marketing and Branding at Red Brick Design Inc. and has worked with the some of the largest agencies in the world. He has been presented awards by Business Week, Boston Art Directors Club, Typographers International Association, and IDSA. He also received a quality award from the leader in the high tech industry for the application of TQM (Total Quality Management) and Benchmarking of five design processes.

Bill is on the board of a public television station and a non-profit cultural organization. He taught design, business and basic engineering classes for 12 years. A graduate of the Museum School and Lesley University, he also attended the Program of Management and Leadership at Babson College and a series of programs at MIT's Visual Language Workshop. Bill is a long-standing member of the Design Management Institute.

A Note From Linda Fisher:

I don't expect my readers to know who Bill Capers is. But in the search for writers for my "Design Business" articles and Marketing + Public Relations TIPS e-newsletter, I have come to know this man. And, because my passion is all about bringing REALITY to principals who struggle with management and business issues, I will call Bill an "unsung hero." Sure he's won awards. But the strategic vision and strengths he provides in his communication is a bright light for us all, particularly at this time in our world history. Thank you, Bill, for your support of the Design Management Resources mission to bring free information and education to the international design community.

Branding, Marketing & Design:
Survive, Prosper or Die …
The choice is yours!

By Bill Capers

In this article we will examine the activities of the current business environment and how the branding, marketing and design professions can survive and prosper. We will review the current circumstances of the economy, and detail how businesses must adapt and develop solutions for themselves first so they can then achieve industry recognition. We will look at what is involved for a company to build a credible list of prospects and campaigns that work in good times and in a recession as well as evaluate why customer satisfaction is so important for a business's survival during this down economy.

Current Circumstances

Over the past eighteen months our country has been attacked, major corporate leaders and icons have betrayed us, some religious leaders have been molesting our children, layoffs are at a near record high, our local and national politicians serve in a self-fulfilling role for their party and personal gain, 401ks and retirement programs have depleted, taxes keep increasing, divorce is at an all time high, we are in the middle of a war on terror, we have a split country and the threat of terrorism at home is ominous. Hollywood couldn't make up a more bizarre set of circumstances.

With all the mental anguish and doubt that is going on in our world today, and with corporate finances and ethics under the magnifying glass, there is a lot of opportunity before businesses today to forge strong bonds between senior management and marketing. Ethics is at the heart of many of the hottest debates in the economy and the news today. No matter how legal issues are resolved, the issues surrounding Arthur Andersen, Enron, WorldCom, Quest, AOL, politicians, the Catholic Church and others are raising ethical concerns about the public's perceptions of trust with large and small businesses, investment firms and leadership authority.

Soon, it will be inevitable that many organizations will be emphasizing ethics, trust and solid financials. Many of these questionable activities will also spill over and affect a company's perception, and will also give cause for the public to be suspicious. What once was a given is now going to have to be articulated and backed up by the company's leadership for the privilege of becoming a viable contender for investments and purchases. This is all due to serious questions justifiably being raised. The trust behind many brands will be shaken by the actions of a few; this effect has already been seen in the stock market and in consumer confidence.

There is a significant opportunity for company leaders and marketing professionals to ameliorate any questionable issues through planning for the future. If you want to succeed in business today, you leave nothing to chance or to misinterpretation. Just from a pure marketing point of view, the Enrons and that kind had, I am sure, copious marketing budgets with cutting-edge design and wonderful marketing pieces. So what happened? The brand failed. It is clear that the leaders did not follow and live the mission statement. The mission and values of the company should be used as the foundation around which to build the company, and a benchmark against which to check the company's performance.

This is where we can measure the effects of success or failure. When you match these elements of truth against market needs, they either match or do not match. There are many companies that just need a corporate folder and some other small pieces of work and have great expectations for these pieces, and rightfully so. It is money invested and it needs to work to achieve something positive for the company. However, even if your campaign is small, there needs to be consistency in the messaging because in a world of thousands of messages and business communications, your company needs to be heard in a distinct voice.

Working It Out

One way that we at Red Brick Design chose to take on the current economy, control our own destiny and help build the perception of marketing agencies was to develop a pro-active strategy for ourselves as we do for our clients. This involved looking at our own SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats). This approach brings the honesty of your organization's capabilities and core competencies to the surface for decision-makers to understand and control.

Instituting "SWOT" challenges the very core of your company. It evokes questions like: What do we really stand for? What makes our agency different from other marketing, design or branding agencies? What is our point of differentiation? And who, besides us, will confirm any of what we feel or say? At Red Brick Design, we felt if we could not answer those questions, or our answer was just "design," then we were willing to close our doors because, design is design and even though good design is a key factor in our business, among professionals it's subjective.

So what does a company do? It needs to expose critical skill sets, core competencies and the essence of the company to itself first. Face the hard realities (good and bad) and modify. Trust and honesty are the keys. Then, whatever you find must be understood, internalized and accepted--both the positive and the negative. If a company cannot do this for itself, how does it expect to resolve problems at client companies? You need to live who you are. Live your brand.

In my experience through the years, every company's claim is "They are a: world leader in . . . has the best product or service . . . is the fastest . . . on and on…. " A sense of pride is definitely a key to success; however, this pride must be grounded in reality and based on the needs of the actual consumers of your product or service. If you step back and look at the run-away commoditization today in many products and services offered, how does one differ from the other? Just due to the sheer amount of the products and services on the market today, many more products and services are becoming the same. So, asking the question "What do we really stand for?" is the road to raising the bar for your company, as well as the industry.

So what can you do to assure that you make your company stand out? How can you identify who needs your product or service? This all begins by understanding your core. You need to really dissect your offerings. Many companies have people performing jobs they have been performing the same way for years in the same fashion. There is nothing worse when profits are tight to be paying someone for a job they are performing well, but the work is not really necessary to your core competency or your offerings based on your customers. The government breaks this down accurately by classifying workers into two categories; essential and non-essential employees, and we all know how efficient the government is.

Businesses fail for many reasons. However, it always comes down to "no clients, no sales." At Red Brick Design, we understand this and have built the company around our clients. For every business out there, big and small, it will come down to this essence: without any clients and sales; there is no company. What I just said about "building Red Brick Design around the client" is certainly an easy thing to say. Many organizations communicate this in various ways. But really, are you going to say, "we are not concerned about our customers needs?" That would be a great selling point, wouldn't it?

But customer satisfaction is almost a given, it's expected. The time of real customer service is when the pressure is on, tempers are hot, funds are limited and the client is either not understanding or asking for many changes, or the schedule has been compromised for a number of reasons. This is when it's hard to keep that customer service / bedside manner in mind. But it is essential! If you say it, you do it. If you don't like working with a customer, don't! Your business would be best served by breaking ties with a customer you don't want to work with, than to leave a poor impression with that client, who is then in a position to possibly malign you and your company. Part ways gracefully.

Referring back to the self-evaluation through SWOT and practicing great customer service, discussing it and doing it are two different things. It is very hard to pull together, even in small companies. It requires the ability to have all aspects of the company moving in the same direction. Attitudes, pride, egos and power plays cannot impede getting key items accomplished.

In the business of design, my belief is that the strengths of some people can be the block to good customer service. Take a good designer, for example. A designer is expected to be open-minded to develop concepts that are very different to break through the clutter of advertising bombarding consumers on radio, television and in print. Something dramatic and innovative.

What makes them strong in design by seeing the possibilities also makes them weak in the area of choosing a concept, making a decision and sticking to it. Creative people tend to see the possibilities in everything, sometimes clouding their ability to make a decision. They tend to be fence sitters, for designers see the value in one design and also see the value in another design and typically don't want to be offensive to the process of creativity. Not all designs are equal when laid over the problem to be solved.

For a company to achieve success on a project, a colleague's point of view on a marketing campaign is helpful, but there still needs to be someone to make a decision. It is good to make a decision even if it is not one hundred percent on the mark. I suggest the eighty-percent law. If you have eighty percent of good information, go with it. Chances are you will never make everyone happy, and if you should succeed at making everyone happy the product is probably going to reflect as such, making your end result less than one hundred percent effective in its message or impact.

Building a Credible List

Building a credible list of prospects takes time. First, you need to understand what industry segments your company will focus on. That can either be determined by what you have to offer or what parts of the economy are thriving. Once you have focused on your industry segments, then you need to determine what services you have that those particular companies would be interested in purchasing from your company.

The important core in the business of marketing is to be able to completely understand and help sell another company's products or services through communications. In order to do this, you would need to determine which target markets your company or your client's company can best serve and then identify the needs of those customers. Develop, design and produce an appropriate communication piece for that particular product or service to serve those markets.

But today, people see marketing as a disposable profession, the first budget to be cut when times get tight. There seems to be a prevailing attitude that marketing thinks up clever ways to sell products and services, some of which may be false claims just to get attention. Other perceptions of marketing pieces is they are well designed efforts that are expensive to produce and win awards, but they don't necessarily work. They do not do their intended job, which is to sell. In the industry of branding, marketing communications and design, we just can't tolerate this view, especially in today's climate of ethics and honesty.

Developing Solutions

This takes a lot of concentration and effort on the part of all involved. It takes the understanding of people, process, business technology, all aspects of your business, our profession, the economy and the ability to lead. To many of you, this may sound like excerpts from a business book. You're correct. This is business. Our clients don't want to buy an art masterpiece; rather, they want an elegant solution that articulates what problems they are having within their company and specifies how to repair them. If a corporate identity is an issue of concern, then that is the place to start. However, it may involve the psychology of color or shape. It may involve understanding and analyzing a supply chain, but it will surely involve a business solution.

This is our business, it is our profession and it is as serious as any profession is. There is a huge opportunity for everyone in the field of branding, marketing, and design, in that order, to make some drastic changes to your own business and the overall profession.

Think of what we really do. We are the image-makers of business. The communicators of perceptions, whether they are as involved as the opening up of a franchise or as simple as a corporate folder for a start-up. We are working with ideas, feelings, and people's senses via sight, sound, smell, touch and hearing, so we must create a clear perception or experience for the receiver. These experiences must be focused on the market segments and work to stimulate and provoke an action towards a well-thought-out series of events for the client company.

Following this path of logic will give rise to marketing pieces that are not just visually stimulating. Beautiful designed pieces that do not work are one of the reasons marketing, design and branding are often felt to be expendable and are the first to be cut. I would do the same thing, especially if my very expensive pieces did nothing to increase my sales, have impact, or change an intended perception. We are all in the profession of marketing, design, branding, product development and strategy development, etc.

There are many other types of industries and businesses out there other than marketing and design firms where customers are not buying their products or services. So how come when I'm networking I hear that many organizations are all not having the doors knocked down by potential customers needing solutions?

This is what we do for a living! Could it be that some of our colleague companies can't market themselves? If this is the case, how can you expect other businesses to hire your company to do their marketing when most of the marketing firms I know don't market themselves? In a slow economy, when people are not buying, there is an obvious opportunity for our industry to shine and do what we do best.

Achieving a Stellar Organization and Customer Satisfaction

Listen! Keep your mouth shut when it comes to talking about yourself, when your customer or prospects want you to listen. Don't be arrogant, or you will lose both clients and respect. Be understanding of your customer's concerns. If you don't understand, ask lots of questions.

The other important activity is having a creative brief or a planned approach. A creative brief is a tool to test opinions against, and acts as a common foundation on which everyone is grounded. Another point critical to keeping people on track is generating a controlled discussion, whether it is on a concept, design or some other issue. There is a human tendency in conversations to go off on tangents, which tends to hinder, confuse and cloud the decision-making process. What contributes to this type of behavior is the way we live, the media and having an accepted reality that everything is all right. While some would argue that this type of environment is good for some things, it has confused communications; therefore we have lost the art and the ability to have good discussions and debates.

The art of discussion is focused around the ability to make a point and counter-point, but to keep the agenda proceeding so a decision can be made based on exploring all aspects of any given subject. The Socratic method of using questions and answers to challenge assumptions exposes contradictions and lead to new knowledge and wisdom is an undeniably powerful tool to use when trying to reach a decision. And decisions do need to be reached in the business of branding marketing and design, because time is money.

My feelings are that in good design and marketing, as well as branding programs, it is imperative to control the process of dialogue and discovery because a company's perception or product and business model is at stake. This is where the phase "garbage in / garbage out" could apply. Diagnosing and solving the initial problem is important; to that end, this logical Socratic approach needs to be carried over to discussions when developing communication pieces.

Everything you do must be reflective of what the buyer of the product or service needs and wants to hear. If you do not achieve the optimum solution based on what the buyer needs to hear, you've lost and will ultimately fail. Your ideas must work successfully for your clients, that's why they pay you. There is no reason your solutions should not work. We are all professionals at communicating, and doing your research and getting your facts in order are essential. That is our business. This is why the logical process of sifting through information and drawing out your client in such a way that you can compile answers for them and their company's issues is so critical.

So What's Wrong?

My experiences of listening to past horror stories from many of our new clients would indicate that many companies and individuals within our industry need to reinvent and transform themselves into companies and people that care about their solutions, clients and the future of the branding, marketing and design. The ability to listen and understand what is really bothering your customer is key.

Some of the largest companies have gone by the wayside because they lost focus. There are enough obstacles to overcome that we do not need to create our own. We are in business because we help other businesses solve communication problems. Stand up and transform yourself and your company into a place that bellows "I am distinct and committed to making my customers successful no matter what it takes."

This strategy, along with solid innovative solutions that work, will get results and will assure your continued existence and prosperity. As long as you have a purpose, perceived value and determination to lead and not accept mediocrity, you will survive. The odds are in your favor.

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We'll be adding new articles on an ongoing basis. Read past articles in our archive:

• Top 10 Tips for Growing Your Graphic Design Studio with Direct Mail Postcards by Martha Retallick
• Do You Have What it Takes to Survive the Dot-Com Bomb? by Martha Francis
• Don't Knock Opportunity: Go Grasp It! A Good Press Success Story by Doug Fuller
• Warming Up to Cold Calls by Doug Fox
• Know Your Rights: Intellectual Property Basics by Jean Perwin
• The Path to the Podium: An Insider Shares Her Secrets for Scoring Prime Speaking Slots on the Competitive Conference Circuit by Lynn Wolff
• Growing Your Business: The Most Exciting Event in Your Life by Herbert M. Meyers
• Are Consultants in Your Future? by Emily Cohen
• Public Relations: The Soul of Your Firm by Elinor Selame
• Dealing with Change and Uncertainty by Jeffry Corbin and Danae Loran Willson
• Referrals: A Valuable Part of
  Your Marketing Process by Stew Mosberg
• Level the Playing Field with Technology by Allison Cheston
• Building Leadership Through Association by Jaye Donaldson
• Write Your Message; Reach Your Clients by Marc Gobé
• A Crash Course in PR for Design Firms By Steven Morris
• Design Business: A Survivor's Story By Lee Sucharda, Jr.
• Practicing What We Preach: "Branding & Promoting Your Design Firm" By Rob Wallace
• Strategic Public Relations:
  The Ultimate Return On Investment By By Jerry Kathman & Ann Keeling

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