The current issue of Fast Company has several great articles about the importance of great design in today's business world. I've included an excerpt from their interview with A.G. Lafley, CEO of P & G. Love what he has to say about the role of value in business today! And check out the great article about Brian Collins and the Brand Integration Group at Ogilvy, Blowing Out Advertising's Walls.
We have to create a great experience every time you touch the brand, and the design is a really big part of creating the experience and the emotion. We try to make [a customer's experience] better, but better in her terms. If you stay focused on experiences, I think you will have a lower risk of designing something that may measure well in a lab but may not do well with the consumer.
So where does design go? We want to design the purchasing experience -- what we call the "first moment of truth"; we want to design every component of the product; and we want to design the communication experience and the user experience. I mean, it's all design. And I think that's been hard for people to come to grips with.
How do you respond to the notion, popularized by Wal-Mart and others, that price rules the world?
I think it's value that rules the world. There's an awful lot of evidence across an awful lot of categories that consumers will pay more for better design, better performance, better quality, better value, and better experiences. Our biggest discussion item with a lot of retailers is getting them to understand that price is part of it, but in many cases not the deciding factor.
What we keep reminding them is that the real key to driving same-store sales is innovation. The beauty of the Crest SpinBrush was that we could sell an electric toothbrush for $3 and it was reasonably well-designed. We went from nowhere to a 15% to 20% market share. It's little things like the purple Prilosec package. It's amazing how the little purple pill in the purple package stood out.
How do you measure success?
We've won a few [design awards], and I really feel great when we've won on products the consumer loves. So yes, I occasionally put the design awards out here. But I don't care if we never win a design award.
I care if consumers think our brands and products create a better experience and they buy us more regularly. Design is part of brand equity. We stand for election every day, and design's an important part of it.