FutureBrand news, views & insights: March 2022
It’s a topsy-turvy world
If there was ever a date that summed up the topsy-turvy world in which we now live, it happened last Tuesday, 22 February.
Not only was that date a palindrome but also an ambigram, perhaps the perfect encapsulation of a world that often feels as though everything has been thrown back-to-front and upside-down (although not necessarily with such perfect symmetry).
Design quirks aside, our reshaped world has made for a fast-and-furious start to the new year at FutureBrand as we tackle new projects and help clients grow across a range of diverse sectors spanning sports, entertainment, finance, professional services, property and technology.
While the team have their heads buried in those projects, I thought it might be helpful to surface three highlights that are informing and inspiring the work we do.
How design transforms business
It was only a few months ago that I hung up my boots as the virtual CMO of global sports start-up MyFavorito and found myself tackling a couple of new challenges on the side.
One was a 3-month gig to establish the brand for a political candidate and their campaign to contest a high-profile seat in the upcoming federal election campaign. Front page news stories followed, and that’s about as much as I can say for now – suffice to say it served as a timely reminder of the power of storytelling and design.
Timely in so far as it overlapped with my involvement in the Australian Design Council’s National Design Challenge.
This inaugural program – facilitated over 12 weeks and focused on the Bega Valley Circular Economy Cooperative – was launched to explore how ‘design’ might be embedded into Australia’s Nation Building Programs to maximise the impact for society, environment and the economy.
Big ambitions, and deservedly so.
In the words of the Australian Design Council, “We know design adds significant value to products, services, systems and businesses” and so this program is designed to demonstrate just how much…
For me, it was genuine privilege to be involved and equally enlightening to be exposed to so many different facets of design in the one project. You can read the inaugural National Design Challenge report here.
Why are the two most popular words in branding, lorem ipsum?
This is the stark question I posed in my latest contribution to CMO.
While design is helping businesses and brands to shape the future, using lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit for your brand’s guidelines is the equivalent of putting your hand over your mouth and staring awkwardly at your shoes as you mumble your way through the features and benefits of your business, product or service.
On the contrary, it is essential that you give your brand a distinctive voice and use the power of language to unlock its full potential. For a sneak peak and a practical tip, try this…
Take your competitors’ website or piece of communication and rewrite it using your own brand. How would it sound different? What would you change, and why? Every language choice you make will help hone your brand to be yours, truly.
Click here to read more and help me kill lorem ipsum for once and for all.
Are we solving the right problem? Or, solving the problem right?
I’m a firm believer that a brand is what a brand does, and that means that your brand needs to show up in your customer’s experience. However, that can sometimes be easier said than done, especially when faced with the drive to remove friction at all costs – and sometimes at the cost of a distinctive brand and experience.
A strategic approach we find useful when tackling this very challenge is to identify the right ‘altitude’ at which to review the customer experience. Go too low, for example, and things might not always seem as they appear, as this pair of images so neatly encapsulates.
However, at the right ‘altitude’ your brand can provide a high-level perspective to identify those all-important moments-that-matter where your brand can meaningfully elevate the experience, for example. Or alternatively, you can zoom into the detail if you want your brand to be used as a hands-on tool for your people to incorporate into their existing processes in any given moment.
One is not better than the other, different altitudes deliver different objectives, so we find it’s always important to agree the right altitude before we launch into a new project.
That’s it for another month! Hope you enjoy reading and find some useful insights for your own brands – plus don’t forget this deep-dive into Guide Dogs Australia's brand transformation in case you find that insightful too. Please subscribe, comment and share – and, as ever, happy to hear all and any feedback.