In troubled times don't stick to what you know

I had expected irate designers to be beating a path to my door for publishing this piece in the DBA Insight magazine. It can't be out yet or perhaps they are more sanguine than I give them credit for.

Even without the credit crunch, oil price rises and global economic gloom, business is in the midst of huge upheaval. The internet is forcing change at a relentless pace and it is disrupting just about about every business type, sector and model one can think of, regardless of organisational size, reputation or brand. Any business that is being run the same way today as it was before the spread of broadband either has it’s head in the sand or is heading for a crash. This is as true for the creative industries as it is for our clients.

Challenges and opportunities

The disruption is such that I confidently predict the creative landscape you think of as familiar now will be almost unrecognisable within two years. Some of the biggest names in the business will disappear before then and as yet unheard of upstarts will become the new stars. How will they do this? By being smarter, faster and more agile than their peers.

Small is big

Big business has sometimes levelled criticism at the design sector for being a ‘cottage industry’. With so many agencies having less than 10 staff and operating largely as lifestyle businesses, there may be some justification in this. In the current mixed up media scramble however, small can be a distinct advantage because it allows you to be nimble, highly specialised and to collaborate with complementary agencies. Some small businesses are exerting disproportionate influence on major organisations by exploiting a high value niche and delivering the services that clients really need.

Think again

The internet cannot be thought of as simply another medium that needs to be factored in to the marketing mix. Digital communication is unlike anything else, it creates an entirely different ecology and its influence is so profound that it enables new ways of operating for business and customers alike. Succeeding in this territory is not simply a matter of developing a new skill set for design businesses - it requires a new mind set.

Jump in

New enterprises emerge almost weekly that are not just variations to the existing order but are a fundamental rethink of a business sector or product category. What characterises those that succeed is an ability to see things differently, the will to defy convention and the gumption to take risks. They can do this because they have understood and embraced the new ecology. They know that people’s expectations and relationships to products, services and brands, has changed forever. They also know how to exploit the gaps left open by those that are too big or too slow to adapt.
Sink or swim

Digital communication technology reduces the cost of experimentation. The barriers to entry for any product, service or system delivered online is therefore also reduced. As this realisation permeates further and further into the business world it will accelerate the pace at which ‘business as usual’ becomes a thing of the past.

What is brand experience?

The implication for the UK’s creative industries are significant. Clients are already demanding solutions that challenge the norm. Understanding that something big is happening, clients are moving marketing communication budgets away from traditional media in favour of online. Advertising budgets are heading that way too at the expense of big ticket media such as TV and press. And what will happen to the practice of branding when value is controlled entirely by customer experience?

Get it

If the UK design industry is to really help clients in uncertain times, adapting to this shifting landscape is a must. UK design agencies need to know how changing client and consumer habits affect their specialism and ability to add value. This is true whatever sub-category of the sector you’re in, from packaging to POS and from Flash game development to intranet design.

Get on

Great designers are problem solvers that create elegant solutions to the toughest challenges. To ensure you can thrive through the bumpy times ahead and come out stronger for it, the challenge is to see things differently, defy convention and take risks.

O2, oh no

The o2 handling of iPhone continues this week with the botched launch of the th iPhone 3G. I, like tens of thousands of other iPhone users received a text early on Monaday about the imminent availability of the the 3G model. So I'm excited, it's a bargain, it's a faster and some of those annoying imperfections will now be ironed out. Excellent news. Then I read on

'You cannot upgrade from your iPhone, so you'll need to go onto your Mac or PC and log on to....'

This is supremely irritating for 3 key reasons.

1. I am forced to go to the O2 website where the user experience is so awful I try to avoid it.

2. I am reminded that O2 have done absolutely nothing to enable iPhone users.

3. Apple could/should have put in place safeguards against this disregard for user experience before awarding the contract to O2.

Why can't it be another way? Here's a free user experience solution for O2.

1. Create a version of youir webiste that WORKS ON THE DEVICE. It's easy, quick and will stop people like me complaining about you.

2. Allow iPhone users to conduct all transactions with you, including upgrades ON THE DEVICE!

3. Don't force customners to use your website until you have built one that actually MEETS THEIR NEEDS.

4. Here's the toppest tip of all. Ask people OUTSIDE YOUR BUSINESS to help develop your products, services and communications.

Apologies for the uncharacteristic use of CAPITALS.

Mind the gap

Too many businesses are letting people down. The gap between how they want to appear and what they actually deliver is growing. Yes there are exceptions - Apple, Toyota, Waitrose and a host of web businesses - but so many huge organisations are being left behind because they fail to notice that customers have wised up and are already looking elsewhere.

We are all pretty smart consumers these days. We will not be fobbed off by big brand promises that fail to follow through, poor customer service or processes and procedures that favour machines rather than humans. And when we (in my day job on the communications business) think about this in relation to our own work, it seems clear that a new relationship between business and brand advisors is becoming imperative.

The future work of brand consultancy and client is about getting close to what customers want, and ensuring the business or brand owner adapts to deliver just that. It's an exciting space where the rule book needs to be ditched in favour of common sense built around the human needs of customers and staff. If they get it right there will be no gap between promise and delivery, no customers left feeling they were hoodwinked by canny advertising or staff feeling disengaged and restless.

Brand consultancies are ill equipped to deal with this. In an unholy (if sometimes unwitting) alliance with ad agencies, they depend on artifice and hyperbole for their existence. Both of these 'disciplines' focus too much on the show instead of tackling the thornier, structural issues of their clients' business.

The brand consultancies of the future will be business designers, content strategists and meaningful work advisors backed by rock solid ethics and a balanced view of the world.

I'm so proud that my business has never advised banks, mortgage companies, hedge funds, political parties or estate agents.

Off the rails

My teenage son again. He travels to school by train and was caught (twice) by Revenue Protection Officers without his season ticket. On the first occasion he'd left it somewhere in his teenage boy life. On the second, which happened to be the last day of term (brilliant strategic planning by the swat team don't you think) he was without it because it was stolen the night before, along with his phone and wallet. As a penalty for this I have just paid the two fines totalling £43 despite having a valid season ticket, which was paid for in advance, covering the days he failed to present it.

Is it just me or this staggering contempt for the customer? What other business would treat a loyal and fully subscribed customer in this way? Will penalising my son (or me) make him less forgetful or less of a target for thugs? Can First Capital Connect not discern the difference between a fare dodger and a season ticket holder?

The customer experience of the average rail user is pretty miserable at the best of times. This is because the customer experience is so low down the list of priorities of the people in charge of the business. Train companies are, without exception, among the most impervious to modern business methods and incapable of adapting to the times. They are opaque, difficult to contact, hard to understand, over priced, deliver a poor quality product and deliberately keep a distance from customers.

At the station where my son leaves the train to go to school they have just installed automatic ticket barriers. This helps First Capital Connect by capturing useful data on passengers and reduces fare dodging. But how does it improve the customer experience? By creating a 100 metre queue of passengers trying to get through the newly installed machines. Brilliant!

Fewer rules

OK, so I've been too busy thinking about stuff to write but there will be much more here from now on.

On holiday with my family for the last three weeks the unencumbered time together opened new conversations. My 14 yr old son was interested to know what I would do if I were Mayor of London. Undo some of the endless and needless rules we are forced to live with was my reply. We talked about what these might be and he seemed less than convinced.

Then, out of nowhere, a road gang appeared on the road to the house we hired. Without any fuss at all they dug up all the pot holes, coordinated big diggers and tarmac laying plant. Road users simply slowed down and went round them. The whole thing was done in two days. And my 14 yr old commented on how different it would be back in the UK if any road works needed to be carried out. And then he got it.

e-tendering shame

In the frenetic passage between 07 and 08 I forgot to close this sorry tale. I did get a visit from the Office for Government Commerce . A very nice lady made the day trip to London and tried to use the online system here in my office, in my seat. And guess what? She was lost after two seconds. Two seconds!! I kid you not. She was confused, flustered, lost for words and a little shame faced. She could neither navigate forwards or backwards and the more she tried to find her way round the more painful the whole thing became.

I thought I had scored a victory for those of us interested in usability. How wrong I was. After a number of weeks of so called investigation, I received a follow up so weak, so lacking in responsibility or understanding of the issues I had to give up the fight lest I develop a hernia. And most of it cut and pasted from the contractor's defence of their own system.

So if you have the misfortune to ever have to use the e-tendering system from bravo solution, or hold out any hope that the UK government will ever invest in user experience, then God you help you.

Web 3.0, enterprise 2.0, head swimming 1.0

With almost 2 year old twins among my 4 kids my home life is like running a second business. Justifiably, to my mind, I am resolutely tuned out when I'm not at work. So returning on Jan 2 was a bit of a shock to the system. I had forgotten how busy we were. Preparing for the first off plan sales at springside and developing the online PR plan to re-launch sanoodi (when it goes beta in Feb) were distant concepts in the fun/food/wine- fuelled haze of christmas at O'Halloran Towers.

Having flown by the seat of my pants into the end of 2007 I had also not really stopped to take stock of where we were, nor considered what would be occupying our thoughts in 2008. Since being back I've been reading great posts on Enterprise 2.0, widgets and Web 3.0. It's only Jan 14 and already my head is spinning with all that potential. Get in a spin too - check out:
Trampoline
RWW
e-gineer

And then lie down