business / technology / design

Elektroniker

Tim Leberecht

Digital lifestyle at the intersection of attention, beauty, productivity, and the social web.

Design Thinking and Marketing

By Tim Leberecht - October 31, 2008

I was interviewed by BrandWeek the other day for a story on the recent hype around “Design Thinking” in marketing. They were looking for a skeptic and found me. First of all, it is worth noting that the term “design thinking” is of course a clever marketing buzzword. It’s ironic that marketers themselves embrace it as the next big thing as it doesn’t create a new marketing paradigm so much as it proves that marketers are prone to being persuaded by their very own tricks. “Design Thinking” has become a brand, and brands are all the more powerful when they present themselves as memes.

But what does “design thinking” actually mean? Let’s rely on the wisdom of crowds and see how Wikipedia defines it: “Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result.” Wow. Isn’t that what every single task in business is about? Or, for that matter, every single action in life? The rest of the paragraph adds some more specifics: “Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a creative process based around the ‘building up’ of ideas. There are no judgments in design thinking. This eliminates the fear of failure and encourages maximum input and participation. Outside the box thinking is encouraged in this process since this can often lead to creative solutions.” Hmm…ok.

Some Design Thinkers herald Design Thinking as the ultimate problem solver for business, social, and political challenges. The current financial meltdown? A lack of design thinking. Our health care sytem? Design Thinking can fix it. The HIV crisis in Africa? Make sure to apply Design Thinking. Granted, design is a fundamental responsibility for organizations in all sectors of our society, and it is absolutely critical in addressing problems of all kinds. But the quest that everybody should think like a designer is not the non plus ultra formula. Or, as Raymond Loewy, the famous industrial designer, pointed out wryly: “Design is too important to be left to designers.”

Today’s marketers need to be experts in what Design Thinkers may define as “a creative process based around the ‘building up’ of ideas.” But the trend towards more participatory product development, consumer engagement, crowdsourcing, etc. goes far beyond just a trendy label – it marks a significant shift in consumer culture and in the way we do business. Good marketers know that and are masters in outside-the-box thinking by definition. In this respect, marketing was design thinking long before Design Thinking was even thought of. As a marketer, you need an in-depth understanding of your audiences, their needs, habits, and desires; you need to develop a storyline and a conversation that engages them; and then you need to establish the channels of interaction. Ultimately, it’s all about desiging interactions between brands and consumers. It has become much more complicated in a highly fragmented, digitized, and fast-paced world of social media, but that’s what it’s still about. Yes, as a marketer you benefit from a holistic, cross-disciplinary view. And you better be creative. The big idea is still big, no matter what.

For marketing is an art, not a science. It is a multi-dimensional, dialogic (or even multi-logic), multi-lateral activity that, at its best, encompasses all touch points with external audiences across all business functions. Marketing is the big integrator, a diplomat within the organiziation but the partisan friend of customers. Marketing needs to innovate or it is just manufacturing. It needs to put customers front and center and give them a say. They hold the truth about your brand so let them design it. You might call this Design Thinking. I call it Marketing 101.

Comments (7)

Yup

Mario Vellandi - November 1, 2008

I had a good chuckle at your first couple paragraphs. Indeed, design thinking has become a buzzword in itself within the marketing community. Yet its essence has been around for ages - understanding customer needs, wants, desires and translating them into product concepts that are market, technically, and financially feasible. Then testing them before final launch to make improvements. On a similar vein lie the brand communications. Now all of this has been a standard defacto process for CPG, cars, and industrial products for decades.

So why has design thinking taken hold seemingly recently? While we can attribute some of it to a lack of qualified personnel with creative thinking skills and deep-customer orientations - industrial designers or not - in many small to medium-sized firms, I have to also consider the growth of the IT and related industries in HCI over the past 30 years. Many marketers have come in to support the communication and sales aspect of this business, but the product dev has largely been left to engineers. Individuals like usability professionals that can effectively act as a conduit between both realms are not seeked out enough.

Innovation, design, and trend agencies have become ever more popular. Their books and articles in the last 10 years have brought their consultative thinking to larger audiences which are eating all the ethnography and usability insights they can chew, believing it's all magical wonder. In many respects this is great. Much traditional marketing has been limited to portfolio management, growth-share matrices, SWOT and five forces analyses, advertising, and more. Concept development and psychology are often neglected areas of NPD when taught in business schools.

But of course there is a lot of hype, and marketing has effectively branded design thinking as a savior to the business world. While I admit there has been an overglorification to some extents, I believe also that it has helped build an increasing awareness of what design management brings to the business table, when for many companies there's been an empty neglected seat sitting there the whole time.

DT needs a better definition

Michael - November 1, 2008

Tim, I agree with most of your frustrations around the design thinking buzz. For me, most of that frustration comes from a poor definition that is too broad or sometimes totally wrong. Case in point: Wikipedia confuses the definiton of design thinking for the definition of the product development process.

However, I do think that most designers are equipped with some thinking skills that separate them from most of their marketing and engineering counterparts. Need a design but have no research to create a design brief? Designers are perfectly comfortable working when there is incomplete information. Need a product but don't know whether it should be a car or a phone? I bet designers would be okay to start sketching. In my mind, it's this ability to work with incomplete or abstract pieces of information that makes them useful to the business world.

Do you agree with Wikipedia's definition, or do you have a different idea of what design thinking is?

Design Thinking

Daniel Montano - November 4, 2008

Design thinking deserves a name that classifies it as a "design methodology".

I want to invite you and your readers to help us find and organize different thought processes in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_thought_...). If you don't know how to edit Wikipedia you can post your idea on my blog and I will add it to Wikipedia when I have a chance.)

My personal wish is for this Wikipedia page to become a public "toolbox" for everyone to use.

Thanks. - Daniel Montano

Validation

Bryan Zmijewski - November 5, 2008

"Good marketers know that and are masters in outside-the-box thinking by definition. In this respect, marketing was design thinking long before Design Thinking was even thought of."

So by this logic, if designers figured out how to sell a concept that marketers we're already doing, doesn't this validate the concept of "design thinking" and show that designers are business strategists? You might even say that Designers stole the thunder from Marketers with marketing?

I agree with Michael- the word is poorly defined.

There's design thinking and "DESIGN THINKING!"

Matthew Simpson - December 2, 2008

Hello. Im a student of Product design at Dundee university in Scoltand. Im currently finishing my dissertation which, wouldnt you know relates to this very discussion.

I am very interested in the value of designer's, (to narrow that down abit lets say those with a background in the traditional design disciplines eg: Industrial, graphic, architecture...) skills and knowledge being applied in new roles to solve problems other than those concerned with the creation of the physical and often commercial outputs.

I would agree about design thinking being a buzz word and that it, if we take the leading advocates opinions on the skills and knowledge of design thinking, then they are much like those in marketing.
However if we talk about the generalised and public image of design thinking then lets talk of Marketing as a discipline, area, act, process of problem solving? similarly. Marketing is by nature focused on selling things to people, it is there to make more money for a company, keeping customers and find new ones. This may be done with all the skills that are of design thinking but in my research and own experience there are distinct differences between the design thinking of Marketing and that of design. Myself and others I know have design thinking skills that are not driven by a want to make money, improve growth or drive consumerism. Marketing in big buisness today is concerned with exactly that when strip away the complexities of the skills and knowledge invloved.
I have come to understand, (I recognise im rather naive in experience and knowledge of work and life to the other people who have discussed so far) designers who truly value design are driven by wanting to make things better for people. This is not the case with all desidners or design as a practice. But it seems many are.
The arguments on design thinking going on in relation to business are never really about its true value and comparing it to marketing is a nasty by product of this. In my opinion, the design thinking to which you refer, that which is talked of in public and bigged up and seen as the tool for everyhting, is not the design thinking i have come to discuss in my dissertation.
Marketing is a product of commercial business and the marketing of today is extremely sophisticated, but becaue of the values driving it, the culture it grew up in and is apart of, it does not compare with the design thinking that I have discovered in my dissertation. Design thinking is not just a mode of thought and set of skills, its about induvidual vlaues, ethics and morals, as it it these that shade every aspect of a solution that we create.

Thank you.

Mechanizing Design

C. Vinay Kumar - December 2, 2008

Buzz word becomes booze earning for some time and then becomes a hangover and people try to push it out of their minds. This happens when we dilute the very original concept. Some time down, people write technical theses on what the buzz word is talking about, try to incorporate the education in it, justify their sayings using a brand management school name to support them it. It then follows a series of case studies, black words are jotted down, enhancements are made and it becomes a subject to be taught in B s-cools. Then we get an army of managers practicing "Design Thinking" with a different name with less creativity and more page numbers to reference books.
Then the results starts mattering. And thats totally against --"This eliminates the fear of failure and encourages maximum input and participation." -- the classical definition.
I think what earns you vitamin $ is new everytime. Headbanging in an Indian classical concert is totally out of what people try to do. But no wonder, one may develop a minority in the alien space too. Thats marketting. Connecting people of same genre.
Design Thinking is totally I believe Design Thin-king with a lot of power that does not requires a brand behind the name.
Its shear creativity-recreated.
We actively need Disign Thinking to save Design Thinking from fading out.
Ya?

Design Thinking and Marketing

Share

Trackback

Email

Comments (7)

Post new comment

Blogs

Recent Comments on Elektroniker

design mind Newsletter Subscription

Categories on Elektroniker

RSS Feeds