The Ascendancy of Collaboration

Successful design is the crowning achievement of collaboration. Not because it's slick and looks good, but because it creates a relationship between a brand and its audience.

Ted Hope said, "the change from analogue culture to a digital one reminds us that nothing is ever finished . . . we can produce numerous iterations, customized for different audiences, platforms and preferences."(1) The best design today is taken from us and used, transformed and built upon by others. 

Collaboration extends the traditional borders of design. The customer experience is so fluid that today we create tools with the idea that someone else, many someone elses, will manipulate them and transform them into a campaign, into a movement. And that's true customer engagement: loving them enough to let go. It's wild—a complex process of becoming. (2)


1) see

2) Wild, the poet Gary Snyder's definition.

Why Search is Not Smart

Let's start with a cliché, an update on a supposedly old chinese proverb (1): What You Value Shows.

If you're in finance, then co-opting the faddish alure of algorithms (2) or preying on people's fear of retiring (3) can be a successful marketing strategies. in both these instances clearly the companies value sales, not helping individual people achieve their investment goals.

In the Sunday, April 19 version of the New York Times, Margaret Sullivan, the Public Editor, discusses how they are transitioning to using keywords in headlines because their current "lyrical — or even just elegantly spare"(4) qualities are not ranking high enough in search results. The article presents a different headlines for different platforms solution to journalism. 

While Ms. Sullivan, and by extension the New York Times, values information and inspiring thought, search values selling — either to you or collecting data about you to sell. That's why search does not have to learn how to decipher a linguistically beautiful headline, because it doesn't value your question, it's purpose is to inspire you to purchase things. 

Ok. These are examples illustrating how you present your company, from your strategy to your marketing materials to the language you choose, reveals what it's like to do business with you, what you value. Maybe it's time to take stock and see if your business design is aligned with who you are now and where you want to go?


1) The proverb is "The soul has no secrets that conduct does not reveal"

2) Charles Schwab is (our second cliche) 'Changing Investing Forever.' The Fort Conkrite tunnel in murky blue hues means that 50s sci-fi remains the visual trope of forever-type changes

3) Fisher Investments scare tactics to alert you to the dangers of annuities


Compounding TPG's Image Problem (Not Interest)

Recently we looked at TPG's "image problem" and today from the New York Times Dealbook section comes a great column about financial firms, the importance of image and celebrity 'advisors'.

The best quote happens to be about TPG:

Bono may do better this time around, but one wonders what value he brings to TPG other than that 1980s-era hipness.

The article goes on to say how a firm's profile is key to getting deals and that celebrity stardust can help create an patina of import. 

The second best quote is: 

Celebrity investing may really be about the thing that drives Silicon Valley—networking.

But wait, there's more—and it's good. Read it.