After having delivered my first five marketing columns on this design blog, I’m trying to put some knowledge to the test. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been questioning some designers and marketeers about the overall feelings they’ve got about each other professions. How much do they both think themselves contribute to the final product and how much they think the others contribute to the final product. Although there hasn’t been any statistical test or proof, with this column I’m going to try to put some lines between marketing and design.

During this column I’m not going to say what is good or what is bad, I purely insist on trying to find some comparisons between the two professions. I do understand that there are some fundamental differences between both, because they originate from a different perspective, but they can’t deny they ain’t in the same game. It’s like comparing attackers to defenders when talking about footballers. But that’s where the best midfielders come from. And they form the solid basis of a successful team.

But before we start I would like to shortly specify marketing and design to overcome some definition myopia. Design is the art of innovating, shaping a product/service to new desirable standards. Marketing is the art of selling, building a desirable product/service’s image. I’m going to describe four scenarios with additional real life cases. The variables used in these scenarios are off course marketing and design. Which both could be high or low. These scenarios will be put in a matrix to clarify the whole story. Please remind that high and low are totally different of good and bad.
The first scenario to be discussed is when there is low design and low marketing. This means that there design efforts don’t generate the desirable new standards, while the marketing efforts don’t lead to the desired brand image. For example you could think about the car brand Lada. The originally Russian manufactured cars have never been known for their outrageous design. Neither has their marketing approved to be building some brand image. Of course this could be easily explained by the fact that it was created in a communistic Russia, where there was no need for high design or marketing, because it was all owned by the government.
This scenario is likely to take place when the brand or the product are already in a certain market. Their inertia will eventually kill themselves. At the time they entered the market they at least got one of the things right. But when time flew by they refused to put some effort in their future. Slowly and slowly they turn into the firm they never wanted to be. Although firms in this stadium can make a good profit, their position is threatened all the time. Competitors that dare to take some risks could easily blow them out of the market.
It’s more like the Britney Spears of the car world. The intentions were good, however the way it all worked out was worthless.

The second scenario to be discussed is when there is high design in combination with low marketing. So the design department is able of putting some good new standards to the market. However the marketing department can’t fix the total market empowerment. For example we could mention the car manufacturer, Weismann. Probably not all of you know about these cars, but I can tell you they do look very good. Their marketing efforts are pretty low, because they want to stay exclusive.
As a consequence we can see that this scenario is most likely to take place when well designed products enter a new market. They form some kind of a niche. They start competing on their design. Extensive use of different marketing tools would damage the image of the product and would therefore work against the product. However when this product wants to gain more market share it could increase marketing to get a bigger part of the pie to be shared.
When we go back to Wiesmann, you could ask yourself why aren’t they trying to enter the whole sports car market. But please realize when they leave the ‘underground’, they leave the mystery that surrounds the brand behind them. The brand can’t anymore allow himself to make any mistakes. It is very hard to say, when it is the right time to leave this part and do the next step. Only remember that your internal processes should be more than 110% reliable.
Spyker, for example, has been in this scenario for quite a long time. They had an equal position to what Wiesmann can offer you now, however, when they finally got everything right to go big, they went straight to it. With as a result, they currently posses a Formula 1 team. With as a result, before the end of the season, all car interested persons, know about Spyker. However the main difference between Spyker and Wiesmann is that Spyker is able to handle the extra demand created by the Formula 1 sponsoring. Currently we cannot expect Wiesmann to be able to handle such demand fluctuations. Wiesmann should therefore never intend to grow faster than their production enables them to. To compare this scenario to girls, you’d probably end up with the girl-next-door. Although she is pretty as hell, only you and your local mates know about her existence.

Half way this theory I come to the conclusion, that there will be a pretty long story to put in this column at once. Specially because it’s quite theoretic. Therefore I decide to cut the story in two halves and dedicate my next column to the design vs. marketing phenomena again. In the meanwhile I’m very curious about your opinions so far, on the relationships between marketing and design. Is there a way to put it all together or will we remain each others opposites?

This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 10:00 and is filed under Column. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.