Designing in Uncertain times --
It is uncertainty that makes the process of design so darn difficult.
What do you #design for?😧
1. Do you design for:
Continuous innovation to your existing business model and core capabilities in the short-term.
2. Do you design for:
Extending your existing business model and core capabilities to new customers, markets, or targets.
3. Do you design for:
Creation of new capabilities and new business model to take advantage of, or respond to disruptive opportunities or to counter disruption
We do not know what the right answer is for you. 🙄
😌 However, we do know:
In times of rapid change, we encounter erratic customer behavior, increased social anxiety, unexpected disruption, or recession that is yet to happen. We are unsure how to market ourselves because relevancy is what matters. Everything else is noise.
Now is the time to focus on strategic design relevant to your customers as you carve out your competitive edge. The bottom line, your exhibit design should inspire your customers and empower them with a creative strength that is hard to copy.
Marketing, at its core, consists of three facets: reach, engagement, and conversion.
Your exhibit is the perfect backdrop for all that to happen in one go. So, make strategic choices. You may thank us later!😍
In this article, we have used eight marketing convictions, as our crutch in driving insightful design during disruptive times.
It is uncertainty that makes the process of design so darn difficult.
What do you #design for?😧
1. Do you design for:
Continuous innovation to your existing business model and core capabilities in the short-term.
2. Do you design for:
Extending your existing business model and core capabilities to new customers, markets, or targets.
3. Do you design for:
Creation of new capabilities and new business model to take advantage of, or respond to disruptive opportunities or to counter disruption
We do not know what the right answer is for you. 🙄
😌 However, we do know:
In times of rapid change, we encounter erratic customer behavior, increased social anxiety, unexpected disruption, or recession that is yet to happen. We are unsure how to market ourselves because relevancy is what matters. Everything else is noise.
Now is the time to focus on strategic design relevant to your customers as you carve out your competitive edge. The bottom line, your exhibit design should inspire your customers and empower them with a creative strength that is hard to copy.
Marketing, at its core, consists of three facets: reach, engagement, and conversion.
Your exhibit is the perfect backdrop for all that to happen in one go. So, make strategic choices. You may thank us later!😍
In this article, we have used eight marketing convictions, as our crutch in driving insightful design during disruptive times.
8 EXHIBIT DESIGN MANIFESTATIONS BASED ON 8 MARKETING PRECEPTS EXHIBIT DESIGN TO CREATE A COLLABORATIVE FUTURE
EXHIBIT DESIGN FOR INEQUITABLE EXCHANGE
EXHIBIT DESIGN PROJECTING AN OVERALL PROMISE
EXHIBIT DESIGN THAT POWERS COMMITMENT
EXHIBIT DESIGN TO SEEK OUT SOCIAL PURPOSE EXHIBIT DESIGN IN THE ERA OF DEGLOBALIZATION
EXHIBIT DESIGN BUILT FOR FASCINATION EXHIBIT DESIGN FOUNDED ON TRUST
“Marketing is the process by which companies create customer interest in products or services. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business development. It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and create value for their customers and for themselves.” — Wikipedia
Here, the word customer is in it three times, more than any other word!
— 🤔 Think, how will you design your exhibit highlighting customer achievement perhaps, making them your partner in creating a future together.
Here, the word customer is in it three times, more than any other word!
— 🤔 Think, how will you design your exhibit highlighting customer achievement perhaps, making them your partner in creating a future together.
Above: Peninsula booth design that brings the customer in the journey towards creating a future together.
“Sometimes stakeholders who aren’t as close to the process need direction but can’t directly ask for it. Skyline consultants have degrees in industrial and graphic design and tons of knowledge about what attendees want. So we can explain reasons behind the design, not just say that it looks “cool.” Executives appreciate that kind of credibility.”
“Sometimes stakeholders who aren’t as close to the process need direction but can’t directly ask for it. Skyline consultants have degrees in industrial and graphic design and tons of knowledge about what attendees want. So we can explain reasons behind the design, not just say that it looks “cool.” Executives appreciate that kind of credibility.”
“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”
— American Marketing Association
This definition took the AMA years of debate to create. It is comprehensive, yet concise definition, encompassing product development, marketing communications, pricing, and strategic aspects of marketing.
— 🤔 Think, how will you design your offering based on delivering and exchanging.
— American Marketing Association
This definition took the AMA years of debate to create. It is comprehensive, yet concise definition, encompassing product development, marketing communications, pricing, and strategic aspects of marketing.
— 🤔 Think, how will you design your offering based on delivering and exchanging.
Above: Two 4' fabric towers reaching for the sky, on either side of a running track. Superimposed, is the stage set for exchange with a pop up backwall.
You ask why inequitable exchange?
Simple answer: It turn heads. It gets press. It is a test of your abundant mindset.
“Marketing is everything.” — Regis McKenna
Regis McKenna’s bold statement exemplifies the school of thought that everything you do – not just your products, pricing, promotion, and distribution, but even your billing, how you answer the phone, your speed of handling problems – it all affects how your customer perceives your company, so everything is marketing.
— 🤔 Think, how will you design your trade show booth based on an overall promise.
Regis McKenna’s bold statement exemplifies the school of thought that everything you do – not just your products, pricing, promotion, and distribution, but even your billing, how you answer the phone, your speed of handling problems – it all affects how your customer perceives your company, so everything is marketing.
— 🤔 Think, how will you design your trade show booth based on an overall promise.
Above: A big island booth design encompassing 150’ x 50’ space with 20’ high perimeter walls directing attention towards "We've got you covered Head to Toe' — a stylistic way of saying 'we are everything': while providing a backdrop for LED lit product displays!
“Marketing is not only much broader than selling; it is not a specialized activity at all. It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of the final result, that is, from the customer’s point of view. Concern and responsibility for marketing must therefore permeate all areas of the enterprise.”
– Peter Drucker
Management guru Drucker also advocates that marketing is everything. Again, he emphasizes the importance from the view point of customers. Hence, he proclaims,“unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.”
— 🤔 Think, how will you design your trade show booth based on a certain aspect of your enterprise that is destined to drive traction.
Above: A 10’ x 30’ linear booth, highlighting one aspect of their enterprise manufacturing system - 'One Week Delivery' - A boring brand summons the attention of the industry by staying true to its commitment.
“Marketing is the social process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others.”
— Philip Kotler
Here, marketing is a“social process". Social process can only be enhanced if there is an overarching social purpose. Your clients want you to traverse beyond the realms of product benefits into the land brand purpose. Brands use social purpose to guide marketing communications, inform product innovation, and steer investments toward social cause programs.
— 🤔 Think how will you design your trade show booth based on enahcnes social interaction to drive social purpose. Some brands have integrated social purpose into their business models from the start: Think of Patagonia, TOMS, Warby Parker, and Seventh Generation. The societal benefit these “social purpose natives” offer is so deeply entwined with the product or service that it’s hard to see the brands’ surviving intact without it.
— Philip Kotler
Here, marketing is a“social process". Social process can only be enhanced if there is an overarching social purpose. Your clients want you to traverse beyond the realms of product benefits into the land brand purpose. Brands use social purpose to guide marketing communications, inform product innovation, and steer investments toward social cause programs.
— 🤔 Think how will you design your trade show booth based on enahcnes social interaction to drive social purpose. Some brands have integrated social purpose into their business models from the start: Think of Patagonia, TOMS, Warby Parker, and Seventh Generation. The societal benefit these “social purpose natives” offer is so deeply entwined with the product or service that it’s hard to see the brands’ surviving intact without it.
Above: 20' x 20' island booth space dedicated to comfortable sitting all in the pursuit of finding out the product relevant to a social purpose.
“Marketing is the process whereby society, to supply its consumption needs, evolves distributive systems composed of participants, who, interacting under constraints – technical (economic) and ethical (social) – create the transactions or flows which resolve market separations and result in exchange and consumption.”
– Bartles
Harnessing the idea of society's evolving distributive systems in an age of de-globalization.
— 🤔 Think, how will you design your trade show booth that highlights your distributed participation, or, an ethical code, or establish your technical prowess in the midst of supplychain chaos.
– Bartles
Harnessing the idea of society's evolving distributive systems in an age of de-globalization.
— 🤔 Think, how will you design your trade show booth that highlights your distributed participation, or, an ethical code, or establish your technical prowess in the midst of supplychain chaos.
Above: A 20'x40' island exhibit with hanging backlit picture cube signs displaying their conveyor system in food manufacturing.
The last 50 years of doing business is coming to an end. Experts concur that de-globalization will hurt the U.S. economy and cripple many others. The U.S. manufacturing sector is deeply linked into the global economy and reliant on international trade for both production inputs and sales. The value of trade conducted by the manufacturing sector amounts to 119% of U.S. manufacturing GDP.
If you are a manufacturer, your distribution system in on the path of radical change. How flexible are you to embrace different ideas in dimensional creativity?
The last 50 years of doing business is coming to an end. Experts concur that de-globalization will hurt the U.S. economy and cripple many others. The U.S. manufacturing sector is deeply linked into the global economy and reliant on international trade for both production inputs and sales. The value of trade conducted by the manufacturing sector amounts to 119% of U.S. manufacturing GDP.
If you are a manufacturer, your distribution system in on the path of radical change. How flexible are you to embrace different ideas in dimensional creativity?
“Marketing is any contact that your business has with anyone who isn’t a part of your business. Marketing is also the truth made fascinating. Marketing is the art of getting people to change their minds. Marketing is an opportunity for you to earn profits with your business, a chance to cooperate with other businesses in your community or your industry and a process of building lasting relationships.”
— Jay Conrad Levinson
Marketing is an exploration on persuasion —
— 🤔 Think, how will you design your trade show booth with persuasive tools of enchantment.
— Jay Conrad Levinson
Marketing is an exploration on persuasion —
— 🤔 Think, how will you design your trade show booth with persuasive tools of enchantment.
Above: A 20'x20' island booth design with a backwall supporting a bar set-up, conducive to face-to-face interactions.
The case for face-to-face-persuasion:
Every time we purchase a product we want to gain deeper understanding about it. This learning mainly depends on our experience, knowledge, and skills.
This learning can either be cognitive or conditional. While in cognitive learning, we use our knowledge for fulfilling our needs with the item we purchase, conditional learning is where we get constantly exposed to a situation, enabling us to respond towards it.
The case for face-to-face-persuasion:
Every time we purchase a product we want to gain deeper understanding about it. This learning mainly depends on our experience, knowledge, and skills.
This learning can either be cognitive or conditional. While in cognitive learning, we use our knowledge for fulfilling our needs with the item we purchase, conditional learning is where we get constantly exposed to a situation, enabling us to respond towards it.
“Marketing is getting someone who has a need to know, like and trust you.”
— Jon Jantsch (Duct Tape Marketing)
Jantsch’s definition also picks up on Levinson’s theme of persuasion, at an even more personal level than Levinson.
Trust is a very tricky concept. How does trust happen? We say trust happens with transparency. A 2016 study by The Engagement Institute identified trust and integrity as the most valued qualities from engaging leaders. However, it is also said “Consistency is the true foundation of trust. Either keep your promises or do not make them.”
You could say, trust is the adhesion that holds together your design. If you are true to your mission statement, the way you act, the way you talk, the way you be, should reflect that.
— Jon Jantsch (Duct Tape Marketing)
Jantsch’s definition also picks up on Levinson’s theme of persuasion, at an even more personal level than Levinson.
Trust is a very tricky concept. How does trust happen? We say trust happens with transparency. A 2016 study by The Engagement Institute identified trust and integrity as the most valued qualities from engaging leaders. However, it is also said “Consistency is the true foundation of trust. Either keep your promises or do not make them.”
You could say, trust is the adhesion that holds together your design. If you are true to your mission statement, the way you act, the way you talk, the way you be, should reflect that.
Above: A 20'x20' island booth with a 12' high glass conference room in the center. The square and rectangular backlit cubes form a ceiling above. If trust is indeed being transparent, then the above design is a steadfast representation it.
Key Takeaway
The underlying thread in many of these definitions points to one resounding fact: understand what the customer needs and then provide it – and that the job of marketing goes beyond the marketing department.
So if you want to have a greater role in brand marketing, then focus on how the entire experience your customers have in your trade show exhibits and displays creates more impetus for them to buy from you, rather than just the logistics of shipping your exhibit properties. At that point you’ve shifted your mindset into the realm of marketing.
The underlying thread in many of these definitions points to one resounding fact: understand what the customer needs and then provide it – and that the job of marketing goes beyond the marketing department.
So if you want to have a greater role in brand marketing, then focus on how the entire experience your customers have in your trade show exhibits and displays creates more impetus for them to buy from you, rather than just the logistics of shipping your exhibit properties. At that point you’ve shifted your mindset into the realm of marketing.