Future brands are design-led. This is how you become one!

The future is a transparent, globalized world where Google exposes every vulnerable little part of your brand, products and services. Basically there's no room for errors in the future. And you know what!? - The future is now!Now matter if you develop services or products. Whatever you do it's all about how your potential customers experience your products. Are they better than the competition? Are the more beautiful? Do they fulfill my needs in a better way? Are they made for humans?Brands all over the world drive to become relevant to their target audience. The tools they use a mostly advertising. But hey! If you can't innovate your products enough so that your customers can identify with your positioning through your product, then neither should you dress up like something you’re not. This is why out brands out there would benefit more from moving budgets from media to product development. This is why most brands should move from being a numbers-led brand to a creative-led brand. What I and some people out there would call a design-led brand.My definition of a design-led brand is a brand that puts human beings first. Both in terms of customers using their products and services. But also in terms of their organisation and their partners - how they work and collaborate in order to develop the best products and services out there. A design-led brand is a brand where no single process or department is isolated from one another but instead develops one single vision that all activities ties into. Basically a design-led company or organisation always puts the brand promise and its core values first lets those shape its products and services.Design-led companies innovates their business and therefor grow faster, attract better people and in the long run become stronger brands.

So how do you turn your brand into a design-led brand? Here are my 10 pointers on what you need to do!

1. Let the brand steer the product development process!2. Never advertise shit.3. Etnographic studies should be at the core of your customer understanding. Customer surveys should not!But don't ask people what they want. Fill gaps in their life instead.4. Move media budget vs business development budgets5. Think human beingsNeurosciense.5. Create a creative led culture.However the big challenge is to get the management team to understand the important parts of a design led brand. After all - if you shift focus from running a company by the numbers and instead running a company by design then your probably need to rebuild your organization. The transition from a numbers led company to a design led offers many challenges. Suddenly you have treat your employees the same way you treat your customers. You can't expect to recruit the hottest creatives in town if you don't understand that they are your strongest resource in the journey towards a modernized sexy brand.The reason behind this if mostly the fact that the ceo of the company hand out budgets for product development that doesn't not meet the needs of the brand.6. Get the best people on board. This is what you have to think about:I’m a creative. If I would happen to look for a job and you wanted to hire me, then these are the rules you have to live by!Your office is my playground.”people are here to work” - Have your heard that one before? Or even worse, have you said that before? Well it's time for a change. In the old times you had access to technologies so expensive that I as a entrepreneurial person couldn't dream of doing what you did unless I was your employee. Today the technology I need to make my dreams come alive doesn't cost a thing. Therefor you have no real powers over me. You can do but one thing if you want access to the best creatives in the world. Make sure we get a big piece of the pie. Both financially and the celebrity side of it. Think about it - what do you really contribute to in a big company? Management skills, keeping the financials under control, reorganizing every now and then? Well - those services can be easily replaced. The ideas and the creative control of it all on the other hand, that’s really really hard to find and even harder to replace. Treat your creators of your products and services like the most expensive machines you've ever invested in. Serve them. Oil them. Support them. Give them all the energy they need. Only then will they deliver what you paid for over and over and over again!Turning me into the hero of the company.Look at Steve Jobs. What did he do with Jonathan Ive? He turned him into a hero. Why? Cause Steve understood Jonathan was a key component in building the future Apple.I'm a creative and I can jump ship whenever I want.If you’re good at what you do then you can always find a new job. If you good at what you create, then people constantly try offer you a new job. If you're super good at what you create, then you don't need a job. If you're lucky enough to have one of those creative guys on board, never take him or her for granted.Don't force processes onto me. Create processes that supports me.Just like we all like different sports or maybe not like them at all, we also don't like to be forced to think and work all in the same way.Give me the right tools. In fact - give me any tools I want.Let me present my ideas any way I want. Don't ask me to do it your way.It's not up to me to teach you. It's up to you to learn from me.Trust me or fire me.Advertising vs product developmentManagement consultants vs creative consultantsFocus groups vs prototypingProfit thinking vs design thinkingMediocre design vs world class designLet the brand steer the product development process!