Branding is like any relationship between human beings, the good ones are symbiotic and supportive, bound by promises made and kept, loyalty earned and sustained over time and trust that is nurtured and occasionally rejuvenated. 

When brands are strong they can withstand the inevitable misunderstandings that occur in any relationship. Remember the horrible Tylenol cyanide poisonings in the 1980s? Tylenol’s parent company Johnson & Johnson displayed great leadership and weathered that tragedy, and over time the Tylenol brand came back even stronger.

Brand relationships last as long as both parties actively participate. If the institution’s promises are articulated and reinforced consistently through actions, language and images at every point of contact, it is reasonable for the institutions to expect that a lasting relationship will be the result.

Brand relationships can connect across generations, cultures and nationalities. If your parents were Democrats, drove Fords or drank Cokes rather than Pepsi, more than likely those products will be your default choices, until those brands stop measuring up for you.

At some level this is a mechanical process: if we do this, we should get that. But it’s also an unconscious emotional experience, communicating at a visceral level. It takes real expertise to keep a brand fresh and vibrant for the long haul.

Because we understand and embrace the concept of Brands as Relationships, we will always be prepared to create, position and implement communication initiatives that will make a difference and leave a strategic mark.

Joseph and Nancy

Graduates, like a key fitting a lock that opens a specific door, your answers to these questions will tell potential employers why they should hire you. Remember, in the beginning you are an unknown and inexperienced commodity. Even your good grades and competent portfolio only represent a student working for teachers, not an employee working for clients.

It’s not just experience you lack but a context for where and how to apply what you have learned in school. Resumes and cover letters that express how your skills and/or talents will support this or that design office may sound naive, even arrogant. You don’t know what you don’t know yet.

Treat your job search like a job. Do the research. Know who you are talking to, what they do best, who their clients are and how they differ from other design offices. And, please, proofread everything you send. If you do sloppy work for yourself, why should anyone hire you to work for them?

The questions you need to ask yourself will be about your motivation. Why do you want to be a designer in the first place? Can you articulate what a designer does? Can you explain to your parents or potential employers how you work? Rather than listing the things you design, can you say how and why design can make a difference? How much of what you do is strategic and how much is esthetic? Do you want a job or do you have a vision for your career?

These are difficult questions but if you have even half of the answers you will be closer to achieving your goals than most. You will have something to say that will be meaningful to potential employers, and they might have a reason to choose you.

While managing creative people is a challenge to be embraced with courage, the concept is akin to the contemporary definition of an oxymoron, ideas working at cross purposes.

Part of that challenge is to recognize that creativity is just as much a natural resource as oil, gold and sunlight. Businesses that embrace this concept and learn how best to protect and strengthen this resource can stimulate exponential growth and initiate a culture of innovation throughout their entire organization.

First, artistic ability and creativity are not necessarily the same things. One needn’t be an artist to be creative, just as great composers don’t have to be great musicians. While creative thinking isn’t always as obvious to us as when it is manifested as something tangible, it is no less valuable.

Most management philosophies can be reduced to either the carrot and stick technique or the currently more popular nature and nurture approach. Neither of these strategies is significantly effective in stimulating imaginative and innovative thinking that produces results.

There are several core tenets about creativity that need to be fully understood and incorporated into a manager’s methodology. The first tenet is that all of us have the ability to be creative — we are born that way. The capacity to see things in new ways or to imagine relationships between combinations not previously considered is fundamental to creativity. To children, everything is new, so they see without the limitations of previous experiences. The older we get, the more likely we are to depend on our experiences and assumptions rather than consider new possibilities. As Al Gore famously said, if we only do what we’ve always done, we only get what we’ve always gotten.

The second tenet is that some people are naturals: they are simply born with more skill than others. Exceptionally creative individuals, like great athletes, musicians and mathematicians, are born with particular abilities they can’t turn off. For many, these abilities are like an addiction — uncontrollable urges without governors. Being able to manage, shape, and focus such abilities is in itself a creative effort on the part of the individual and those responsible for guiding the gifted toward a productive outcome. In the same way continuously falling water can become a virtually limitless supply of electricity, properly coached talent can produce predictably meaningful, even monumental results.

In addition, contrary to yet unchallenged assumptions, most truly creative people are highly disciplined, just not necessarily in conventional ways. Dates, times and schedules are important but not more important than producing ideas and images that meet, even exceed individual standards of excellence. Doing the right thing is more important than doing it right now. Deadlines for the sake of deadlines only produce missed deadlines. Creative people understand the need to produce on a schedule, but if they collaborate in determining that schedule, everybody will be happier with the results.

Like any addiction or obsession, creativity provides the individual with pleasure and satisfaction beyond conventional rewards. While money, perks and recognition are meaningful, they don’t sustain or stimulate greater creative exploration. Self-satisfaction and the personal pride of accomplishment can only be stimulated by achieving an individual’s standard of performance. If, somehow, external objectives can be managed to coincide with personal goals success can be shared by everyone.

After 40 plus years and more than 90 hires in four countries for five different businesses, a few truths become evident. Creativity in all of its forms requires freedom, energy, discipline, patience and a propensity for challenging the habits of convention and the fear of initial failure. Those who produce innovation are always willing to let go of one vine before they have hold of the next. Those responsible for managing creative people need to identify and remove the dead trees that may impede their progress.

This excerpt is from Design is a Verb, by Joseph Michael Essex, scheduled for completion in 2012.

Premise: Think of content as a noun and context as a verb, one an object, the other the action. They are dependent on one another for meaning and direction. Position: There is no real, measurable or meaningful content without a complete appreciation and understanding of its context.

Marshall McLuhan stated that how information (content) was delivered (context) was as important as its content, maybe more. Walter Cronkite, TV anchorman, delivered (context) news stories (content) so well he became the Most Trusted Man in America.

George Nelson suggested that the more complete a design problem is articulated the more obvious the solution becomes. George believed design problems could only be solved in context. All parameters must be included because esthetic choices alone will always be perilous ones.

Noted: If the issue is content would you buy a book printed on Post-It Notes™? Do the means and methods of presentation enhance, diminish or in any way change the value of the contents for the reader? Some would say a well-designed, well-made hardbound book adds volumes to the content.

Coca Cola’s misstep with its “sip test” brought us New Coke. In the context of consuming a whole can, it became too sweet for Coke lovers. Millions were lost and a spotless reputation became pockmarked.

Xerox Alto/Star broke ground in personal computing but couldn’t break through the public’s perception that Xerox was a mechanical copier company, not an innovative computer company. By ignoring its past, Xerox compromised it’s future.

A Wall Street Journal study documented that almost 80% of all mergers and acquisitions failed to deliver on expectations — a compelling indictment. However, the significant unasked question was, Whose expectations were not met? Could it have been the Journal’s?

Design is a Verb: A brand’s identity is its content. The application of the brand’s identity is its context. Applying the identity in all of its forms across all media is its continuity. How an organization presents itself is as important as it’s character.

Organizations that appreciate the interdependence of content and context connect with their constituencies. Through these connections, organizations begin to establish stable, long-term relationships with their audiences.

Successful relationships build trust and share loyalty, defining, delivering and sometimes exceeding expectations. There is no content without context, no value without delivery, no meaning without method.

Would you ever give a present that wasn’t wrapped?

*No Content without Context was excerpted from the keynote speech at this year’s conference of the Society of Typographic Arts.

These are facts that become more acceptable as we age. Not acceptable to the point that we stop attempting to pursue them, but we do come to accept their inevitability. So why does anyone seek to control events, implement detailed plans and strive for perfection?

Our experience tell us it’s impossible to have much control over anything, but still we try. Maybe it’s because we all want to be remembered; to register our existence on the planet. It’s kind of selfish really, but not necessarily.

Of course we do our best to achieve success and receive the rewards that follow. However, education, preparation and training are no guarantee of a memorable outcome. One can be memorable through clever schemes, crime, martyrdom or with the sometimes dubious achievements recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records.

To be remembered at all is to achieve immortality. To have one’s efforts and energies recounted by those we love and respect is, to some degree, everlasting. Achieving this lofty status is available to all of us if we will accept an unexpected gift.

Unexpected, because the gift can come at anytime with anyone. The gift is accepted when we share ourselves with others. By actively participating, our lives are enriched by as much as we contribute to others. Birthday parties, vacations and holidays are only memorable when we live in the moment and are fully a part of the experience.

Working with clients, collaborating on projects, cleaning a house, paying the bills and sharing a trip to the store can also be memorable experiences. Accepting each shared opportunity as a gift is all that is required to gain a perch in memory. Once we appreciate the value of jumping in with both feet, the ability to share the gift of experience with friends, colleagues, associates and admirers is easy.

Have you experienced an unexpected gift that influenced your life?

Joseph and Nancy

The same condition can be seen among individuals. While there are no absolutes, some tend to see things as they are and others tend see things as they wish them to be. Half of the time one is surprised, the other disappointed and vice-versa. Another symptom of the same virus is not consumption but assumption.

The phrase “Common Knowledge” represents the actual virus. The concept of “Knowledge” — awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact — is not in question. The assumption is that the knowledge in question is common to all. There’s the rub.

There are several distinct kinds of knowledge. Problems, misunderstandings and even disasters occur when we fail to recognize that the different kinds of knowledge have very little in common. “Common” means shared by or coming from a community or the public. Without specific and shared experiences assumptions replace real knowledge.

Successful enterprises get good at what they do over time by earning the knowledge that helps make them better than others. They just know more. So much so, they forget how much they know that their customers, suppliers and even their employees and shareholders don’t know about what they do that makes them special.

The use of vernacular and colloquial language is inevitable among colleagues that work closely with one another. Dialects, idioms, slang and jargon become unconscious substitutes for more explanatory speech. This is to say nothing of the acronyms and abbreviations served up in an alphabet soup by every government and institution worldwide.

We lose the essence of sharing knowledge when we forget to connect with our audiences. Businesses and organizations that prepare, package and present what they do in ways that can be accepted and appreciated demonstrate respect and consideration for their audiences. With this extra effort to connect, customers learn what they need to know to choose one brand instead of another and to offer loyalty to one before another.

Who knows what will happen if you say YES? Nobody. Who knows what will happen if you say NO? Everybody, because nothing different will happen. Every opportunity, new concept or big idea has been dismissed with several NOs before it found a home with a single YES. Someone didn’t listen to their lawyer, the pundits, the odds markers, the focus groups or the actuarial tables. They listened to their heads and hearts.

It is easy to say NO. What is not easy is to hear that voice inside that tells you to trust your instincts and go for it. We do what that voice says when it means little — getting in the faster line of traffic, knowing the butler did it on page fifteen or ordering the pasta of the day instead of the scallops from Ohio.

Of course, it’s scary to think you know when others don’t. There comes a point in everyone’s life when you turn pro and trust that your life experiences have prepared you to lead.

Chairman emeritus of Burson-Marsteller Jim Dowling once said, “You can’t save your way to success. You have to make something, try something, stand for something, take a risk.” Saying YES can make all the difference.

Joseph and Nancy

Design is process-driven and that process, much like the proportions of the eleven herbs and spices in the Colonel’s secret recipe, is unique. Creativity, imagination and observation are all elements of a process that contribute to making things work better and smarter, adding joy and enjoyment in hundreds of ways because I thought of it. Connecting the conscious to the unconscious, emotions to motivation as well as appreciation to application are only a few of the ways I add value through enhanced awareness.

What I’m really producing are experiences, better experiences than if I wasn’t designing them. Because I’m doing this, that or something else, presentations become information, planning becomes products and ideas become innovation. I want the credit and the blame for doing what I do. Others might apply their experience and expertise to enrich lives and contribute to understanding but they don’t own my experience and expertise. All this is true because I am a designer.

Tell us how you see design.   Joseph and Nancy

Photography / Mark Joseph

Knowing is about collective agreement: it’s obvious to everyone what should be done. Heroism in battle, a rescue from a burning building or overcoming insurmountable odds are all examples of big “C” Courage. These acts are worthy of recognition and reward. There’s history to show us a path of behavior, ways of responding to situations and circumstances, reinforced over time, that have been identified as courageous.

Small “c” courage is all about doing what we think is right even when we know it may not appear right to others, and even when it’s not easy. Correcting rumors, pointing out an injustice and speaking truth to power are also acts of courage.

These examples represent standing up for individual values, providing your personal imprimatur, risking reputation and respect. This kind of courage is even more admirable when personal and professional challenges are consuming our confidence. When money is tight, it’s human nature to keep our heads down, our mouths shut and not make any waves. However, in these tough times when what was no longer works, we have an opportunity to think and act in new ways. We become worthy of serious rewards when we let our fears go, trust our instincts and act courageously.

Have you had an opportunity to practice your courage?

These same economists explain that Cadillac Plans are designed to support a worst-case scenario, where the majority of the benefits go unused. They further believe that if employers paid less for health care benefits they would pay more in wages — a win / win for everyone. Those now holding these chrome-plated plans insist they would have fewer benefits and employers would never raise salaries — a lose / lose for everyone.

Who’s right? The arguments for and against are futile because neither side is hearing what the other is saying. Both fail to recognize what the other really wants. This conflict is less an issue of economics and more one of communication.

Think about the satellite navigation system that comes with Cadillac, the car. The system doesn’t need to know why we want to go to a particular destination to direct us there. The only thing it needs to know is where we are now. To effectively communicate the reasons behind wants and needs are critical to knowing where we’re starting from, maybe even how we got there. If we don’t truly understand the reasons behind each other’s point of view, it will be impossible to get to where we want to go.

By identifying the “whys” we can recommend methods for reconciling conflicts, and help clients achieve their ultimate goals. With commitment, experience and talent, ideas are stimulated, solutions designed and the seemingly unresolvable get resolved.

Have you had an experience where the unresolvable became solvable?   Joseph and Nancy