The Fearless at FUSE

PSFK was kindly invited the latest FUSE Conference to have a peak into what the design leaders of Brand Identity and Package Design had to say.  The event was hosted by the charismatic Debbie Millman of Sterling brands and Design Matters fame and Cheryl Swanson of Toniq.

I attended the Tuesday session and noticed one subtle theme that appeared during the main topic sessions and again later during the small group sessions, the importance of being a Design Bodyguard.  The success of a new idea or brand is very much dependant on a designer or strategists ability to subtly convinced others around them that their idea is the right one while still protecting the integrity of the design.

During the bad boys of brand design the panel, a who’s who in the design world spoke of their frustration and time tested tactics in convincing corporations entrenched in safe design that risks bring rewards.

Rembrandt’s new packaging was conceived with the help of Mother and only took a relatively short time to create.  The remaining time Chris Hacker the Vice President of Global design and Strategy of Johnston and Johnson spent protecting the product from being changed or “tweaked” by upper management.

Stanley Hainsworth the Vice President of Global Creative for Starbucks spoke of his tactics to convince product managers to just step away from the muffin, thus enabling the photographer the ability to do his job in capturing a real food product instead of a plastic muffin.

Keynote speaker Claudia Kotchka of Procter and Gamble spoke of her recruitment of the finance department when showing the cost effective nature of eliminating expensive cubicles from her divisions work area to Upper Management.

All these leaders spoke of the decorum used in presenting new ideas, it turns out the bad boys and girls are not that bad.

Why this is so vital became all the more apparent later on when I sat in a group session about Unilever Bestfoods newest marinade offering.  On stage was a group so enthralled with their latest redesign of Lawry’s.  it was apparent that the group had been swimming in marinade for far too long, as the redesign left the audience lets just say, less than breathless.

Marty Neumeier an earlier speaker and author of the Brand Gap and Zag put it best,

"when everybody zigs, zag"

His book and speech talk about the vital importance of being not only different but good, does your product test poorly and go to market difficulty?  These are just some of the subtle traits that run through the success of great revolutionary brands.

It’s in the journey of trying to push a new idea forward that great brands are made.  We need brand bodyguards, champions of design and diplomacy more then we need another bottle of marinade.