A Happy Ending

I like the way these jeans fit. So I decided to order another pair online. Same brand, same fit, waist, length, copied right off of the label. So when the order came… whoa, I was in for a big loose baggy surprise! Does this story sound familiar?

What are these, “Mom jeans” for men? How could it be that a giant in denim, one with 50 years of experience in making jeans was so off the mark? I couldn’t help but see it as a concrete illustration of the market share shrinkage this brand has been experiencing in recent years. 

By focusing on winning back it’s customers through advertising, social media, email promotional campaigns and a parade of celebrity spokespeople, they took their eye off the ball. They forgot about the product.

All truly iconic brands deliver one thing: a consistent product experience. Without that, any other investment you make in winning customers is wasted. Get the product right. Give the story a happy ending.

photo credit: Robert Sheie @ Flickr.com

Going Small

There is this thing called the Ringelmann Effect. Stay with me on this. Maximilien Ringelmann, a French agricultural engineer did an experiment where he asked people to perform a simple task: Pull on a rope. What he learned was that when there is only one person pulling, they give 100% of their effort. The more people you add to the rope the more the effort goes down.

Jeff Bezo’s has a saying, “Any team that can’t be fed by two pizza’s is too large.”. The bigger the team, the more complexity, miscommunication and bureaucracy. The less effort.

There is a trend happening in the branding and design world. Large client companies are divesting themselves of their big agency relationships and hiring much smaller agencies. Like 2-10 people small. I know because I did it myself at Pepsico. And the big agencies are freaking out.

The reason is that the big clients have finally figured out that when you have a tiny agency team pulling on your project rope, they pull really, really hard. They deliver above and beyond.

So as you think about how to handle your next project, consider going small.

Less Is More

In the hallway that leads up to the statue of David by Michelangelo in Florence, there is a row of unfinished sculptures of people. They're called “The Prisoners” because they are half-trapped in marble - they were left in the process of being freed by the sculptor.

I spent the last week cleaning out my father-in-law’s house, as he prepares to move into a retirement community. He needed help shedding stuff. The good news is that he was ready to let go of it. It wasn’t a battle like you see on the show “Hoarders”.

In the process of drastically editing down his possessions, we could see a lightness come back into him. An excitement for new possibilities and beginnings even at this late stage of life. By getting rid of things he was rediscovering something that had been trapped in all the stuff, himself. 

Branding and design are processes of subtraction. You shed all that is unnecessary to express the kernel of the idea. You find the essence. 

By shedding things, we carve a space for new experiences. We free the prisoner. In less, we can find more.