January 2016 | Dunk Design

Digital, as a traditional product.

Why?

For us, we always start and end with the following question: What do you want and need your digital presence to do?

We like to help people to make the digital space more useful. It needs to work for them and their objectives. Those objectives might be linked to revenue growth, retention and loyalty, awareness or simply qualification to support a business development process.

Unlike Berners-Lee, who is quoted as saying: “Web users ultimately want to get at data quickly and easily. They don’t care as much about attractive sites and pretty design”, we believe design thinking is crucial to making functionality come alive. Only then do we achieve a truly great user-experience and a great product.

In the world of traditional product design, take Dyson. The assembly and the daily use of all those little coloured connections are pleasing moments for customers. They’re the intuitive little ‘Ah yes’ moments. The physical clicks mirror the mental clicks, as everything slots into place nicely. These are the moments which always accompany the use of pleasurable things, even though the task it is designed to do may not be that pleasurable. Dyson has created a best-in-class user experience through their product design, aesthetics, functionality and ultimately desirability. The holy grail.

We believe digital is no different, whether that’s an app, a website, or whatever the UI; so we try to ask ourselves ‘how are we able to build our clients the perfect digital product?’.

There is an abundance of digital themes with often excellent pre-defined user journeys, iconography and design styles. Tempting, but will they deliver the product our client requires? Yes and no.

Customisation of existing themes and modules – or designing and coding new ones to deliver specific client functionality – allows us to take the best-in-class and make them better whilst not having to compromise the end product. Ultimately, we are able to save our clients time, and get them the product they need.

And if we get it right we hope to have a few users saying to themselves ‘…ah yes’.

Brand tie-ups … to make cents, they should never make sense.

It didn’t make sense until I saw the #BFF reference (for those over 40, that’s Best Friends Forever). The brand values work together – meeting with friends, relaxing with friends and rewarding friends – so a weak link perhaps?

Or is this campaign about something else, in marketing terms?

Too often we hear about the challenges of media fragmentation, when in fact it’s starting to give us new media heroes?

Our friends at Benefit Cosmetics have driven all the PR activity surrounding the campaign, which of course Starbucks has supported with quotes and their obvious involvement. As a result I am now wondering if we’re looking at a brand tie-up, or actually a media planning phenomena for our age of social commerce?

Back in 2012, a study by JWT Intelligence found that over 40% of men and over a third of women are more likely to purchase something if a friend has recommended it on a social network. Could we argue Starbucks is now a social channel?

With close to 850 outlets Starbucks is arguably more effective in connecting with UK consumers through daily footfall than most mainstream news outlets.

So even if you agree with my observation, and we could be looking at a brave new approach to media planning, I have to say the best brand tie-ups have never made sense…to make cents.

Here’s my favourite from the early 90’s (for those under 40, that was the Fosters Lager & Haagen Daz campaign).

Provocative or Thought Provoking?

A recent blog by Lucy Mann, a DBA Expert Advisor, got me thinking. It talks about making friends with your inner sales person, which as she rightly explains, fills most people with dread. http://bit.ly/1SQj8N3

What she ultimately talks about is staying in contact with people, considering everyone as interesting and how even small businesses can be thought leaders with authentic content. In the office, we’ve used the term “thought provoking”.

All this is good advice but the thing that struck me most is the term “thought provoking”.

We’re about to launch a new website, showing some of what we think is our best work. You may find this interesting, you may not, but what we’re really trying to do is stay in contact with our network by sharing what we like to call Dunk’s Brain. This is all the thought provoking content we generate, curate or simply see.

Sure, there’s LinkedIn, email and the good old telephone. But you don’t want to pester people with waffle or even what they might consider “crap”.

So with our own marketing plans including email, events, networking etc – timed to perfection we hope – we’ve decided the website platform is as good as any for all our clients, friends, partners and prospects to decide exactly what is “thought provoking” for them, at their pace.

And it’s not all about us. We’re just looking to share what we think is “thought provoking”, whether that’s an opinion, good work, or our own experiences.

So yes, we’re looking to grow our business with “thought provoking” work. And we’d love to talk to you about what we think is provocative, but we’re also interested in what you find authentic content.

Maybe even asking yourself what’s “thought provoking” for your brand is food for thought in itself?

Watch out for our new site launch later this month. We hope you’ll find it…..?

Digital, as a traditional product.

Brand tie-ups … to make cents, they should never make sense.

Provocative or Thought Provoking?

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