Today I received an email from an old friend who is a beverage marketing consultant who has been working on a beer brand identity with a design firm in Kelowna. I’d not heard of them, but their online portfolio contains some good work and they claim to “design outside the box” using the “latest and most advanced technologies” so I was intrigued.
I clicked on the link and immediately noticed they had posted six versions of concept progress work for my friend’s beer project to their blog, asking for the public’s input and running an opinion poll on people’s favourite. Wow, that is outside of the box I’m used to working within.
I like the idea of being open and transparent with creative process—especially if they have a network of experienced creative professionals to elicit input from—but I’m surprised their client allowed them to do this publicly, exposing their new brand—pre-launch mind you—in this ad hoc online focus group.
There’s no mention of brand attributes, positioning, demographics, messaging or really anything other than “beer” to base a judgment on, so I have to wonder what real value there is in this exercise. Are the comments and votes being registered even from beer drinkers in the tartget audience? And doesn’t posting six early concepts imply this firm is struggling to make an informed recommendation based on an effective design methodology? Isn’t that what they were hired to provide? Yikes.
What do you think? Do you show your unfinished work publicly and poll friends as a way of selecting the most appropriate design solution?
Posted by Mark Busse
Nancy Wu (February 4th, 2009)
Peer review at place of business or with trusted associates in confidence, yes. This method is being a bit TOO transparent and leaves it as a free-for-all.
George Parker (February 4th, 2009)
No… No… Fucking no…No, not you… These douchenozzles who throw shit on a wall and ask clients and any unfortunates who stumble across their Web site to fucking vote on what they like!!!
Dumb, fucking dumb. Yeah, I like the type on #3… I like the colors on #5… But I love the way you run the type sideways on #2… So can you do a clusterfuck on all of them and give me a fucking dogs dinner.
Don’t these people realize that all this does is reinforce in the clients mind that they don’t have a clue… They are too terrified to actually make a recommendation. Aaaarrggh!!! These people deserve to be out of business, and they will soon be.
Besides which “Organic Malt” is such a poseur claim. Malt isn’t organic… The Barley they use to make the malt might be organic. But who gives a fuck… Does it taste good and get you pissed.
Deep marketing questions.
Cheers/George
Marga (February 4th, 2009)
I don’t think there is anything interesting about this so called process. If they gave some rationale or brief of who their targeting and what is the communication objectives, I might give them the benefit of the doubt. This public poll is not a focus group… and I don’t even think focus groups work!
my ¢2
Brad Marshall (February 4th, 2009)
Hi Mark,
Thanks for sharing your perspective. By the way, I enjoyed your demo reel.
Let me start by saying this, I do agree a little backstory, positioning and target market detail would have been helpful for our viewers to present their perspectives with greater gusto. Sure, not everyone who commented was a world famous designer waaaaay back in the 80′s like George Parker (who commented on your blog). But we believe it’s great fun, and we take what we can and learn from it.
Before posting the concepts on our site we had already presented our ideas (and our “reasonings”) to our client. Oh, and yes of course we had permission to post conceptual work!
Rest assured, our design process did involve that… What do you call it… Oh, “thought”. We cased out beer stores, looked at labels and packaging. We read the company’s business goals, strategies, mission statements and tag lines. We experimented with fonts and colours until our eyes crossed and eventually put it all together into the initial conceptual directions you viewed on our blog. Short of holding hands in a circle and asking our clients how they felt inside – I feel we did a pretty good job. And what you saw on our blog is just the beginning of our process.
So what’s the value? As primarily a web based studio, this blog post presented us with the opportunity to showcase some of our other skills to our client base. Namely graphic design & identity services. In fact already we potentially have another “Beer” related project coming down the line from it.
The post was also an opportunity to experiment and draw attention to our new blog. Previous daily traffic had ranged from 5 to 15 visits a day. But this participatory posting attracted nearly 300 visitors in a single day. At the time of writing this response we’ve received a whopping 35 comments! It’s no TechCrunch, but it’s not bad either.
Not only that, we were interested in seeing what kind of viral response we received. How far the post spread. This also worked – otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing on your blog! Another positive side effect? Each time our site/blog is mentioned on another website, there is an opportunity for external search engine optimization value to be passed back. You may or may have not have known you’ve passed a little SEO “Juice” back at us by adding a link to our site. Thanks!
In other words, I consider the blog post to be successful, even if it did have a few minor flaws.
As for the George Parker’s comment “These people deserve to be out of business, and they will soon be.” Artistech has grown to be the 2nd largest Full Service Internet Marketing company in the interior of BC in less than 5 years. The 23rd largest in the province. Call me for a site re-design! http://www.parkerads.com. I could do a new logo for you too!
Thanks All,
Brad Marshall
Owner, Artistech Newmedia Inc.
douchenozzles? really?
Mark Busse (February 5th, 2009)
Brad,
A well-considered and thoughtfully expressed response, thanks for chiming in.
I still disagree with your choices and find it curious that you list the benefits to you instead of your client as the rationale for your decision.
Personally, I love the word douchenozzle (one of George’s favourite words besides fuck), though it wasn’t deserved.
If you’re ever in Vancouver, let’s go for an organic malt lager!
Pete Soos (February 5th, 2009)
Nice post Mark.
As a non-designer I too am a bit amazed that this firm would use a web poll. First thought, laziness.
But then reading Brad Marshall’s post is when it got good. There was that buzzword , viral. God I hate that word. Did they think is was going to be another Dove. It all comes off very weak.
Also his back handed slag of George Parker was also amusing. People who post anything on the internets and then get pissy because they don’t like what they read is good humour.
By the way I have no idea who George Parker is. But I like his post!
Clayton Misura (February 6th, 2009)
I also found myself wondering, ‘what real value’ is embodied by this type of process. Apparently, this particular brand of ‘value’, is denoted by a purely self-serving paradigm: it benefits Artistech Newmedia.
Here’s some good news Brad: feel free to operate your business in any manner you chose. I’m almost certain – actually, I’m positive – running a web poll, accords to the regulations of Canadian law and governance. So keep it up, and don’t worry about any moral obligation you might have to your peers and profession. It’s just good fun.