Design: The silver bullet in a crowded global marketplace
While the rise of the internet has created great opportunities for businesses to tap into global markets, it has also created a big challenge – consumers are now over-run with millions of products competing for attention from anywhere in the world. Throw in a credit crunch and the financial woes, and many businesses are finding it harder to compete.
There is a silver bullet. Companies that are succeeding on a global level are putting design – whether it is design of their products, their branding, their communications or their website – at the centre of everything they do.
But many businesses make a crucial mistake. First they see design as part of marketing, an activity to improve the look of a product.
As, Nick Leon, who heads up Design London, says: “In a world where you can get good enough products from absolutely anywhere, for small to medium-sized businesses to compete effectively, even in local markets, let alone global markets, they have to make sure that their products and services delight customers.”
Second, they do not see the strategic importance of design. Design can help you transform the cost-effectiveness of your product, Leon says. It can help transform the value you deliver customers, and your own business and brand position, so you’re able to punch above your weight in global markets.
A design-led approach can help identify gaps in product and service portfolios, leading the company in wholly new directions. Design elements should be broken down (colours, shapes, logos, communications) and reanalysed, not just through overseas “eyes” but also through the globally affluent demographic, which includes a rapidly changing younger generation.
“It’s about using design in a much more strategic and holistic sense, than simply using it to do a quick styling job on a product,” he says.
Build your products for the world
It’s a concept that Lachlan Donald, general manager of website 99designs, understands only too well. 99designs is part of the new crowdsourcing craze. The Melbourne-based company is basically a giant marketplace based around a website, where customers offer cash prizes to entice designers from around the world to design everything from logos and t-shirts to websites and promotional material.
The global nature of the business is its strength. “At last count we had designers from over 134 countries and contest holders from over 70,” Donald says.
“99designs lets designers reach an audience of prospective clients that they would never before have been able to reach and it lets them compete on equal ground, based only on the quality of their work. Add to that the fact that our global community makes for a round-the-clock work force and it stacks up as a pretty compelling alternative.”
Donald and founder Mark Harbottle has seen 99designs as a global company from day one and have been careful to build the website in a way that can be quickly understood and navigated by users from anywhere around the world. Despite the spread of users, the site has not even been translated into multiple languages – simplicity and functionality is key here.
“The advantage of a business around design is that it's a largely visual medium, which means that while quite a few of our designers speak very little English, they can still deliver high quality designs,” Donald says. The competition aspect of the site, where designers see how the contest holder has responded to other designs, means communication is relatively smooth, despite language barriers that may exist.
Design the key to new markets
Of course, the one-size-fits-all approach won’t work with every product, and many will need to be modified to suit specific markets. This is a challenge faced by Tobi Skovron, co-founder of Australian company Pup-Pee, makers of The Pet Loo toilet for pets.
The US market – home to around 153 million dogs and cats – is a one of great promise for the company, and while the pet loo is usually sold through specialist retailers, Skovron is examining plans for a smaller mass-market version that could be sold through one of the major US retail chains like Wal-Mart. But it’s not as simple as just drawing up a scaled-down version. Everything from packaging to the amount of shelf space the product will receive must be considered. “There are so many things to take into account. It’s amazing,” Skovron says.
He’s currently wrestling with the challenge of how to redesign the company’s product to fit more Pet Loos into a shipping container.
“We may just have to modify things here and there to maximise the amount we can get into a container, but at the same time our changes can’t impede on functionality,” Skovron says.
The delicate balance between functionality, quality, style and the customers who pay the bills is one Skovron and his co-founder and wife Simone have become used to. “Life is never one straight path, is it?” he says.
Too Australian won’t work
Another challenge for any company that exports is taking their branding – including company name, logo, slogan and promotion materials – to another market. Sometimes the transition is seamless, but often there can be complications.
The Australian-ness of a brand can be a particular challenge, as Tobi Skovron has learnt in his US push – Americans simply don’t have a clue what the word “loo” means.
Sean Adams’s branding and marketing company The Seed says making sure your brand “translates” to overseas markets is a key part of any export push. The first step should be some thorough research and what Adams calls a “disaster check”.
“Before taking a brand into a market you should make sure there is nothing in it that has a very different or inapposite meaning in another culture,” Adams says.
Check that symbols used in your design do not have another meaning in your target market, and particularly check words used in your branding will translate without problems.
And don’t just check the dictionary definition – if possible, check with a local and find out if any of the words in your branding and communication have slang meanings or are used as local colloquialisms.
Adams says: “It doesn’t mean you re-invent your brand, but you just want to make sure you are not going to be making a faux pas. It’s almost like due diligence before you go into a new market,” he says.
But Adams warns against toning down the Australian elements of a brand without careful thought. In many markets, consumers place an automatic premium on imported goods, and Australia’s image in the international marketplace may add extra cache.
Besides, changing your brand too much can dilute its effectiveness. “You end up standing for nothing,” Adams says.
Skovron agrees. He’s decided changing the word “loo” would do more harm than good to the brand equity he has built. “What I am prepared to do is educate the US consumer and then hopefully the word loo will come to signify something exotic from Australia.”
Pup-Pee considers one of its strongest branding tools is its website, which has been translated into five languages.
Australian technology company Aconex has taken its global online communication strategy to another level. The company, which operates its document management system across 66 countries and has offices in 37 countries around the world, has developed its marketing and communications in a way so that it features regionalised content for visitors.
The website for example, detects where the visitor has come from based on their IP address, and then automatically features all content related to that region. Co-founder Leigh Jasper says: “This means that any latest news, case studies or project updates for the region are featured on the homepage – positioning us as local in every region we operate in.”
Be aware of cross cultural aesthetics; design for the future
But there can be a trap marketing globally. Julien Cayla from UNSW’s Australian School of Business warns that often when companies design and market for a global marketplace they use traditional images that don’t appeal to a modern outlook.
He says if you are marketing at Asians, don’t use mystical Oriental images of silken outfits and opium dens in designs and communications. He warns that Western consumers still embrace the idea of an exotic, feminine Asia, whereas Asian consumers prefer a more contemporary vision with an emphasis on youth and innovation.
Brand managers in Asia are also seeking to shed territorial associations from brands and instead create a “mosaic” Asian culture. Rather than emphasising cultural coherence, they invoke an “assortment of cultural references” to create an imaginary Asia, he says.
“People really have to think about which audience they are talking to and what is the image that the majority see,” he says. “Take someone selling watches with Mao’s face on it. That might appeal to tourists. But there is no use selling the Asia that Asians would like to forget.”
Global design tips:
- Put design at the centre of your business. The web has made the global market extremely crowded and good design will help you stand out from the crowd.
- Simple, functional design is crucial for global products. Don’t just think of the Australian market when you start creating.
- If you do need to make modifications for certain markets, be sure to protect the quality and usability of your design.
- Complete a disaster check on your branding before entering a foreign market. Do the symbols or words used in your branding have an inappropriate local meaning?
- The Australian-ness of your branding can be an advantage in certain markets – play to your strengths.
- Think carefully about your online communication strategy. Translate your website into other languages if possible and consider regionalising content.
More
Click here to read the Aconex case study.
Related Links
Design London article — www.smartcompany.com.au
99designs — 99designs.com
The Seed — www.theseed.com.au
The Pet Loo — www.thepetloo.com
26 May 2009