The business book sellers, readers and writers at 800-CEO-Read want to get the best ideas in business into the hands of people to improve the way business is done—and even improve the lives of the people who conduct it. They do so by working with authors, publishers and organizations in a variety of interesting ways.

The Everything We Do brochure was developed to provide a tabloid-sized review of… yes… everything they do for the various audiences they work with. The piece codified a visual language for the brand that has been extended and adapted to many other materials over the years, including In The Books, an annual look back at the year in business publishing, and their very own book, The 100 Best Business Books of All Time.

Sometimes brands are literally people (Martha, The Donald). Sometimes, a brand is a start-up launched by friends (people) with a shared philosophy. And at other times, brands are specific products launched by corporate divisions (headed by people who conduct research on customer people). In all cases, on some level, brands are people too.

Brands are made by people.

Once the decision is made to develop a brand, more and more people become involved. Marketing VPs, product managers, and communications consultants talk about the brand’s potential. What it is, how it’s different, and what they need to do in order to tell people what it is and how it’s different.

The communications team begins to collect, prioritize and edit the essentials of the brand. They articulate its distinct attributes and how it can make a connection with the customer. Then they give it tangible form by way of an identity system—a comprehensive visual and verbal language that defines specific elements such as logo standards, color palettes, imagery, typography guidelines, and language.

As they shepherd the brand’s development, people act as the brand’s heart, head, eyes, hands, ears and voice.

Given the right tools, a brand is like a person with good communication and adaptation skills.

With its identity system (as described above) in place, a brand has what it needs to connect with people and the world. It has a personality and vocabulary that reflect its values and provide ways for it to communicate understandably and relevantly.

This also allows the brand to adapt and evolve. Elements of the identity system can be applied in different ways to create basically anything—print advertising, a corporate website, a retail environment, a press release, and new materials that come up as communication needs grow. Each of these applications has unique requirements and takes different forms, but they are all clearly coming from the same place and infused with the same values. Brand experiences are consistent whether a customer is on the phone with a service rep. or using a website. The brand has the ability to evolve or surprise, but it still feels “right” and familiar to its constituents—like a person they have come to know in different situations over time.

Everyone is the brand.

Again, it comes back to people. Everyone who plans, writes, designs, or thinks about the brand is responsible for making sure that its values remain intact and understandable to its constituents. All communications (printed, online, PR) and experiences (retail, tradeshow, customer support) must manifest brand values.

A group of people with a clear understanding of the brand, can create great work—easily. Decisions are made and materials come together readily when everyone on the team internalizes the brand (drinks the Kool-aid) and collaborates to give it form. The process itself energizes and inspires people and in doing so, insures excellent results.  So, power to the people (sorry, I couldn’t resist)… and thus to the brand!

~ JPS

A slightly-expanded version of this essay was published as a ChangeThis manifesto in December 2009. ChangeThis publishes manifestos full of great ideas every month. The website is well worth a visit. You can also download my manifesto as a PDF: 65.04.BrandsArePeople

800-CEO-READ’s Big Brain Business Book Club needed an identity and enrollment website. The overall brand’s visual language was adapted to work for the project. Brightly colored squares with big letters provide bold and simple identifiers for Left, Right, and Whole Brain categories that are applied to the website, book club shipping boxes, and other communications.

800-CEO-READ’s corporate website was developed to more comprehensively represent the company as being “in the business of moving ideas” via selling books, sharing ideas and expertise (via blogs, interviews and reviews), and creating content, tools, and events for their different business audiences.

SDS collaborated with 8CR’s in-house team to establish a clear structure for information and navigation, a flexible area for featured projects, a simpler book purchasing process, and templates for main page types that incorporated ad space—all within a new interface designed to fit with the visual language of other brand communications.

When developing a new marketing campaign, it’s good to remind yourself of an obvious fact: Your target audience is not you.

Why? Because sometimes it’s easy to kick off a project based on knowledge you have and unintentionally forget that, while your audience/consumer understands their own needs, they most likely do not know everything that you know about your organization, product, or service. You need to put yourself in their shoes—in their situation, inside their head. Sometimes, it’s helpful to pretend you know absolutely nothing about your brand/product/service and what makes it special. And start communicating from that point. Not from some midpoint that assumes a level of knowledge that you and your organization have. Avoid what Chip Heath and Dan Heath call “the curse of knowledge” in their must-read book Made To Stick.

Your internal POV may or may not be relevant. What is definitely relevant is where your target market is—what their day is like, and how what you offer fits in and makes something better for them. Your job (and ours too) is to connect those dots for them. How does your website support a parent researching a school online at 10pm? Does the site navigation reflect your organization’s internal structure (which is probably not so relevant to them), or does it reflect the questions your prospects have, the process they are immersed in, and support them in that activity (at 10pm when your offices are closed, if needed)?

It’s about building a relationship. Demonstrate that you understand your audience and how your offering fits a real need that they have. Create a dialog, with good branding and customer experience from points A to Z. They will appreciate it, and they’ll probably tell others too.

~ JPS

CCHIT’s mission is to accelerate the adoption of Health Information Technology in the US healthcare system. Their communications need to help a range of audiences (physicians, healthcare providers, consumers, and others) understand the benefits of HIT and know that CCHIT is a knowledgeable and trustworthy organization.

Since it helps make HIT more understandable, reliable, and trustworthy, CCHIT is in the business of providing clarity. CCHIT materials are designed to support their constituents needs. Information in printed and online communications has a hierarchy that supports easy access. Printed or online pages contain focused content and tangible examples of the benefits of HIT. People understand where to go to find what they need on the website and how they can contribute. Materials clarify the benefits of certification to HIT vendors as well (e.g. software developers) who can apply and submit their products for testing to become “CCHIT Certified.”

When James W. McLamore and David Edgerton founded Burger King in 1962, they knew they were going to sell a lot of Whoppers in Miami, but they never planned on selling scrambled eggs. Even today after spending a gazillion dollars on advertising, Burger King holds no place in our breakfast imagination. It doesn’t take an Einstein to figure out burgers and eggs do not correlate like champagne and caviar. The same is true for Kentucky Fried Chicken and red meat or Burlington Coat Factory and swimsuits. Yet, executives still choose names and designs that limit their business potential. They may own burgers, chicken or coats, but in the long term, investors want growth and that means marketing managers need to think about the elasticity of their brands.

While names need room to grow, designs require the same long term strategy. The insurance company, CIGNA, overcame its meaningless nomenclature by choosing a tree for its logo. It could then wrap itself around all the symbology of trees (strong roots, a protective canopy, branching leaves, growth buds, even support Arbor Day), whereas AFLAC, an insurer with 40 million customers, uses a quacking duck and stock images of perfectly perfect people to build consumer recognition.

Any design agency worth its salt will help its clients design not just a logo, but an identity system with a bagful of tools that go beyond stationery and brochures. To avoid McBranding (the dilution of intangible assets), companies should consider a large design vocabulary that includes a secondary color palette, a range of original and stock images that supports the company’s design objectives and a voice made up of real words that reflect company values. Applied consistently over time, these images, colors and words, in concert with a company’s name and logo, will create a strong and meaningful organization that has real value in the minds of its constituents. Note: good design equals better revenues. Eureka!

The point is simple. Make sure you choose a name and logo that has depth and breadth to meet the changing needs of any business and build an identity system with a rich vocabulary of secondary images, colors and words. ~

~ David Ray | David was a Senior Consultant at Landor Associates prior to running Marketing Communications at various healthcare start-ups.

ChangeThis publishes manifestos written by inspiring authors and thinkers such as Michael Pollan, Tom Peters and David Meerman Scott. The original idea for ChangeThis came from Seth Godin and a great design team. In 2005, 800-CEO-Read took over, continuing with the monthly e-publication of ideas aimed at changing minds and spreading ideas. In 2007, Stauber Design Studio became involved, updating the manifesto format and implementing a better process for monthly production. In 2011, we evolved the manifesto format once again to make it mobile-friendly.

For the ChangeThis website and blog, SDS designed primary page templates that keep the focus on the individual manifestos—the stars of the show—and creates a user friendly and easy to update site.

This project is a good example of designing a process, rather than simply designing a visual form. SDS recommended that a simplified e-book template be created to give the client much needed control over the editing and publishing process. Individual manifesto covers are designed by SDS. The client populates and edits interior pages of each manifesto in-house, then sends them to SDS for design refinement prior to publication. This collaborative process helps ChangeThis get published more efficiently.

See more covers and read manifestos on the ChangeThis website.

I got an email this morning with this Tom Peters quote: “Design is … an understanding that all the senses were created equal.”

It’s true. And it’s interesting to think about what on earth that might really mean.

I was talking with a marketing colleague this morning about a potential project she has for a website aimed at moms. As a mom, I’m always very suspicious of any kind of “marketing to moms” because it’s often like other marketing to women … lots of pink and cuddly photos, as if that is all it takes to be relevant to me as a female consumer.

What does any of this have to do with “Design is … an understanding that all the sense are created equal.” ?

It is this:

Design is not about making something look cool (or cute, or mom-like, or macho, or techie, or whatever it is you think the audience is).

Design is about making something relevant. It is about making a connection with your audience.

Which means you have to truly understand them, and you have to have a clear communication strategy. The messages need to be relevant to the audience. The way in which they are delivered needs to be relevant. You need to consider which senses to address, and how. (Is the color palette friendly or serious? Is the nomenclature for website sections based on an internal organizational structure or does it truly support the user’s point of view and needs? Does the paperstock feel rough or smooth, heavy or light? How should all of these elements, and more, feel to the user/audience?)

Designing a website for moms, like any website, requires the integration of a site architecture with a communication strategy and a careful prioritizing of messages. (Written and visual messages.) Then the final design and all of the details of its execution (words and images used, color palette, type styles, and so on) supports the higher communication goals, serves the end user well, and tracks back to what you figured out needed to be done in the planning stages.

I wholeheartedly agree with Tom that “Design is … an understanding that all the senses were created equal.” Creators (marketers, designers, writers, technical developers, etc) of websites or any type of communication have to remember that all of the senses truly are involved. The eyes, hands, heart, brain … a website user or brochure reader takes in many elements and processes them via all of their senses. All of the elements require careful attention and need to be considered from a user’s point of view. If the visuals are strong but the naming of website sections isn’t right, the user won’t respond as well as they would otherwise. If the brochure copy is great but the typesetting makes it feel like a chore to read… oh no!

All of the details need to work together in a holistic, integrated way to support each other and the user experience — and thus build a relationship with your brand.

~ JPS

There are times when you forget what made you passionate about pursuing your field in the first place. That’s when I like to remind myself what’s amazing about what we do: Design really works.

Did you scald yourself in the shower this morning? Probably not. Because you know that the blue dot is for cold water and red is for hot. A college professor of mine used to say that simple things like this — things that you forget even are designed — show you exactly how effective design can be. Did you get run over crossing the street? If you’re reading this, probably not. The flashing sign at the intersection helped keep you safe as you ran to catch your train. Likewise, when you needed to transfer money to your checking account, the design of the interface for your online banking allowed you to do so quickly … and let you feel like this was a safe thing to do at all. Design is so woven into the fabric of our everyday lives, it’s easy to forget that it’s working for us all day long.

Good design helps you understand things and improves your life on many levels. It helps you plan your business, your brand architecture, or even the hours of your day. (And of course, bad design can make you miserable. We don’t want to get into that!)

Design really, truly works. May we use these powers for good!

~ JPS

We’ve developed a range of printed and online communications for DePaul’s Kellstadt Graduate School of Business since 2001. Overall, materials address a KGSB prospect or student from a personal, rather than institutional, point of view.

The MBA Viewbook was created to support prospects in the decision-making process by focusing on the individual attention of the Kellstadt experience; connections forged with the Chicago business community; the range of program choices; and real student outcomes.

Consistent brand messaging and visual language were also carried through to a range of related materials, including HTML email templates, a family of program brochures, and more.