Can
Design make offensive things acceptable?
As a
branding and design practitioner for consumer brands, I have had the privilege
to work on over 500 brands in the last one decade. My involvement or participation
has mostly been in the packaging design solutions for such brands.
By
the way, this article is not about my record or experience. It is about how
some projects cause discomfort when dealing with the brand design objective,
noticed especially within my team of project managers, creative &
strategists.
There
are many categories or consumer products which are difficult to handle in brand
design because of the enormity of the size of the market for such products.
Difficulty also arises when there are more generics and unbranded than the
branded counterparts, and information on such SKU’s (former) is difficult to
gather and analyze. India has vast small scale sector manufacturing consumer
products which we all use knowingly or unknowingly and some of these companies
have far more loyal customers than their superior branded counterparts.
Such
discomfort is a macro issue and not my subject in this piece.
Another
problem is the import of cheaper foreign made (substitutes) consumer products.
They add to the grief because they sell phenomenally well without much or any
marketing or branding design thought. They are successful in distribution and
make availability (SCM strategy) almost look like a joke. You may not get
branded products (advertised products) as readily as these products which are
often available as replacements for your regular purchase products.
Such
discomfort is still manageable for popular brands with Innovation & Design
thinking.
Having
set the background let’s see which micro issues and products can cause greater discomfort
as a brand design practitioner (in places where position is that of a non user). There have been more than three
occasions, in which I was involved, when we were briefed on brand design
solutions requirement for sanitary pads. In India it is considered as a dark
category (only to speak) because advertising is all over the place for sanitary
napkins. But I feel for sure that it is a category where men generally lack
both basic & critical knowledge (unless you are a brand manager or
marketing manager or production manager at the R&D facility or the likes).
As a brand design solutions provider there were couple of unavoidable problems
which I noticed on my face.
- · First of all was the presentation of information for briefing or discussion purposes as a non user to the design team which included actual consumers of the product. While sharing information was a piece of the problem, the other bigger problem was sharing insights, making inferences and devising strategy,
- · Second was the demonstration of the new product and its key benefits (NPD) as non user & detailing the USP and differentiation as provided in the brief to a set of consumers,
- · Third was reviewing the design and the supporting logic of the designer who was a user.
Once
the project was over I realized that the problems in our head were typical to some
product categories. However, during the course of the project I did not find
any designer (user or non user) being embarrassed or uncomfortable being
present in the meeting room for briefing, discussions, development and reviews.
I had my fears of course but they were all vanquished once we set the ball
rolling and kept a single point focus – DESIGN Management.
I
think the credit goes to DESIGN MANAGEMENT THINKING rather than individual
notions, stance or linkages, approach or attempt. During the entire project we
were always thinking of ‘what difference are we going to bring about in the
lives of the millions of customers and how they are going to benefit from what
we did for them’. Everybody had put on the attitude of doing it for someone,
and ignoring their own dilemmas.
Recently
we were commissioned a project on brand design for a male contraceptive
(condoms) brand. Having felt the discomfort in my team on earlier occasions, I
was wondering how my team (uesers and non users) would handle this more overt category where brand
design is driven by erotic and provocative visuals (especially in India).
Three
major discomforts were noticed in my team
- How to open the screen or webpage of sexually erotic pictures of models and couples (termed pornographic) for situation analysis during office hours
- How to brief and discuss with the team on the existing trends and design vocabulary used by several brands having direct competition (internationally the design vocabulary is very different, almost perpendicular)
- How to review the new design that was developed and explaining why someone had used a particular style/pose/gesture/body/ body language or something like that
My
team dealt with the situation very boldly and did not let the nature of the
project disturb the rhythm of the job. Everyone took the task at hand in a very
mature way and again something was like déjà vu – we are doing it for someone
outside our space hoping that the end customer will like it and accept the
brand design. The spirit in the design wing was more upbeat and humorous rather
than embarrassing and one of guilt. The team was so indifferent yet involved
that for few moments porn had become a perspective of life, a way of good life,
performance oriented and not taboo. Many a times it was difficult to say when a
person was watching porn literally or doing homework for brand design.
Hilarious isn’t it.
One
lesson I learnt from these few experiences is that DESIGN has the power to
overcome all inhibitions or can lend the power to mitigate all inhibitions. It
is not always about good looks in design; it is about what is behind the
DESIGN, the motive, the essence and the spirit of the creator and the user
thereafter.
DESIGN
makes you forget who you are and why are you there. It only makes you feel, Oh
God what wonder have I done.
