A: When I’m shopping at my local Kroger.

No, not the “Post” as in Raisin Bran; I’m referring to the physical post, or column, that is in the cereal aisle at my store.

The scene is this: my wife asks me to go get the Multi-Grain Cheerios so she can shop in peace for 10 minutes. She says, “Get the big box, unless the smaller box is on sale,” adding, “The Cheerios are close to the post about half-way down the aisle.”

If she wouldn’t have given me that navigational pointer, she probably would have bought herself 15 minutes of peace. The merchandise presentation in the cereal aisle is such a mess, so lacking in organization, I could easily have squandered more time, forced to scan every package, not finding what I was looking for. But since she gave me the post as my pole star, I managed to navigate past the lions and tigers and bears to the Cheerios. After a moment of anxiety while I scan the shelf for validation—Ta-dah!—I find the Mutli-Grain big box not on sale! 

Contrast this with my second mission, during which my wife gets only a few minutes of peace. I go to get a 12 pack of Pepsi. No need for her directional advice in the beverage aisle. I masterfully scan the 40 feet of shelf as I walk. “Nope, nope, nope… bingo!” I find the big blue block of Pepsi products.

The folks at Pepsi understand that the central color brand block draws shoppers down the aisle, and makes de-selection faster and easier; quantity comparisons are simpler to make. If only the breakfast aisle followed this example. There’s got to be a way to orchestrate the shelves that allows shoppers to navigate and deselect with greater ease. I can’t imagine the flakes-makers are driving much trial and category growth with shelf principles like these, or the lack of them.

Yes, a better aisle experience would cause me to return to my wife and the shopping cart in record time. But she can always send me over to wait in line behind the elderly persons at the deli counter.

Stay ahead of rapid expansion
Singapore, Seoul, and Mumbai are cutting edge markets and this means high expectations. Going into a project as a designer in these cities is intimidating. Shoppers live in aesthetic cultures where every imaginable design has been popularized. These cities are changing organically. It almost seems instantaneous. Within 3 months of being away from Singapore three new malls have opened. It’s all about knowing past/ present memes and looking toward ways of either (1) creating a new twist or (2) breaking the boundaries all together.

Stand out
In most cases Western design tends to fit in with its surroundings. Success in Asia is all about being bold. Whether it be a silly chewing gum commercial or neon signage that puts Times Square to shame, there is always something screaming for your attention. When you consider how busy people are in cities like Beijing and Tokyo, getting someone’s attention takes a strong effort. In my opinion, the solution to this is a simple design that allows for a detox from all the noise.

Design practical and durable
In South East Asia dirt is a big issue. Visual identity systems are often colorful with no white. In places like the Philippines, hot weather and dirty streets make the use of that modern pure white seem like a silly idea. From a culture perspective, the European black and grey palette, that we strive so hard to achieve, is irrelevant amongst cities like Bangkok where the taxis are hot pink and golden palaces litter the cityscape.  

Be Flexible
Living in a “Cultural Salad” means tackling different issues than when in a “Melting Pot.”  Building retail experiences that resonate amongst different segments and cultures means being able to truly understand the differences of the people that make up the cultures. The smart way to approach this is to design a system of parts that can live in any scenario rather then focusing on the actual shell of a location. A clever use of universal imagery and messaging proves very effective. Just look at Wegamama’s (Japanese for “selfish”) in the UK. Their iconic image of a boy eating from a bowl is genius. You understand right away what the image is saying and without a specific identity to the subject, the photo has the ability to be relevant in any region.

    
Respect superstition
Each culture has its own specific set of rules. Going into a meeting with a clear respect and understanding for these rules can mean life or death of a project. I have been in meetings where the general feeling of a downward slopping logo mark was interpreted as negative and almost was shot down. Feng Shui in Chinese culture plays a major role in the designing of brands. I have heard of projects that needed to be reworked after a Feng Shui master came in and commented on how the shape of the logo was sucking out the wealth and positive energy of the organization. Buildings in Singapore have been publicly exiled for being too sharp and therefore allowing the positive energy to flow out of the city into the ocean. The same mood and feelings towards a store plays toward shopper habits as well. Lots of these rules may appear silly but if you really investigate some of the findings do lead to great solutions. It’s like Chinese medicine, no one really knows what goes into them, but somehow it works.

While I was listening to WNYC Radiolab the other day I came across an interesting episode centered on choice and decision making influencers. Being a designer, I am always searching for new ideas and concepts to weave into my work, so I clicked on the link. In an hour the host took me through a whirlwind of studies examining the variations of why we choose the way we do and what factors can influence our decisions. And what does it all boil down too? 

Stress has a tremendous affect on our ability to make appropriate selection.

To quote my mother, this over-simplified answer is an “astute observation of the obvious.” However, when broken apart, the program’s individual experiments struck me as simple learning blocks that could easily be applied to a retail environment. 

Basically, if a person is over-stimulated in an environment a simple decision of what apple to buy can become ridiculously hard because there is too much information for them to just make a choice. They start to tune out their fast moving intuition to make a more educated selection on an item that they could really care less about. In the end, those who were over-stimulated tend to be disappointed.

Thinking back on several “happy purchases” I have made in my life, I can say with certainty that they were at my favorite stores. They were bought out of instant inspiration or times when I felt confident and in control. These purchases put me on a pedestal and made me feel better about myself.

In retail design, we need to understand what creates stressful environments and craft spaces that destroy those barriers. We should champion the customer by creating awareness without overload and give them a purchase they can feel rewarded about.

So I’m sitting in a Starbucks in Sacramento CA waiting to meet with the city planner regarding a new building design and notice the building across the street has an HVAC unit mounted at the peak of a bowstring truss roof. You’ve got to be kidding me! As they say on “Modern Family,” What the face! Where is the enforcement?

You would think they were trying to make a mechanical engineering cupola statement as part of the design concept or something. Wow, who does that and what city planner or inspector approved that?

As design professionals, we go through great pains to design buildings that screen ugly mechanical equipment to improve the look of the street scape at every juncture. We work with the cities and their planners to provide multiple renderings and diagrams to show that this type of equipment won’t be visible from the street level.

I would love to know how contractors and owners get by with this stuff and get it approved. Bottles of Scotch maybe? Who are the inspectors? Did they not notice this? Sometimes it seems that there is a double standard when it comes to design and approvals. Take heed, fellow retail architects. With all the cuts within the city departments, it tells me that structures are getting built without any review or inspection. It’s all on you.

When I see this type of debacle it reinforces to me why we are so critical of our designs, and why we look at the project in its entirety from a big picture view. It helps me sleep at night knowing that we care when we deliver our work.

There wasn’t an Evolutionary War for a reason. In the pre-dawn of U.S. history, the new settlers wanted more than to just evolve the British rule, it had to be overthrown. A new start, a clean slate. Imagine the pressure that those founding fathers must have felt when deciding that enough was enough, let’s try something new. Today, many brands find themselves in the same place. The status quo isn’t working. It’s time to differentiate. But I wonder if the ideas of “revolution” and “evolution” aren’t being confused.

It’s easy to tell yourself that your brand needs something revolutionary, something that breaks paradigms and reveals new ways of talking to your customers. But all too often, companies follow the evolutionary path—a new coat of paint, a few new fixtures and a new sign on the storefront. A quick win here, a quick win there.

Starting your own revolution isn’t easy and that first step can be scary. One of the most important things to do once you’ve determined to change is deciding how far you can and are willing to go. Look at every facet of your brand, from the most obvious things to the very subtle.  Deep unbiased introspection will uncover opportunity for a new attitude, a new set of guiding principles, a new market space.

In retail, change is life. So overthrow the old paradigms.  Delve into your brand and find that crazy idea, the one that’s worth fighting for.

Design Forum has changed its name… sort of.

When we became part of Interbrand in 2002, we kept the name of the company that I founded in 1978. Since then, we’ve evolved from a pure design entity into a multi-disciplined consultancy with a deep pool of talent, including a lot of brand expertise.

“Design Forum” contains valuable branding in its own right. Our name has touched hundreds of success stories and a lot of people who’ve become our friends during thirty years in business.

Anyone who’s been through a company name change is aware of all the ramifications, from switching the sign on the front door to an updated logo on the coffee cups. And the risk, of course, that customers will assume there’s been a change in leader-ship—in our case there has not.

The time has come to take on the new Interbrand Design Forum identity in order to focus more precisely on what our business does—global retail store design that incorporates business brand strategy, shopper analytics, retail architecture, retail-sensitive implementation—and to stress our ability to draw on resources from around the world: 1,249 creative minds in 36 offices and 22 countries.

This month, Interbrand publishes the annual Best Global Brands in conjunction with
BusinessWeek. It’s one of the top three published business rankings in the world. If you think your business is a potential leader, here’s where you can find out what it takes. And of these 100 brands, you’ll see who the top riser and faller were this year. (Spoiler alert: Google and Merrill Lynch.)

Brand value is a simple idea. If retail brands play a role in choice, and shoppers must choose between competing products, then brands must contribute to earnings and profit. It then follows that brands must be quantifiable and valuable to its owner.

By using brand valuation as a diagnostic tool, we understand the precise economic benefit that brand has on every aspect of business. Insights into which brand attributes are relevant at each step in the customer journey tell us exactly what must be changed to make the brand perform better. You can then invest in the touchpoints that generate the most demand.

The topic of brand management has been generating more interest every year in the face of proof that strong brands, consistently managed, are more resilient in shifting economic climates. A study of Best Global Brands versus the S&P 500 conducted by Harvard and USC showed they outperform the market.

Yet, business pundits say we’re living in a post-branded world and that traditional branding is outdated. Perhaps that shouldn’t surprise me. Although the concept of brand value has been evolving since the ‘80s, it’s still misunderstood.

Brand is not an advertising gimmick. It’s a set of attributes and a promise: the attributes consumers have ascribed to store or product, and a promise made by the company to deliver those attributes through the way it does business. Ideally, the brand idea shapes the company and directs the behavior of everyone in it. That’s why we believe brands have the power to change the world.

There are some interesting new names on the list this year. BlackBerry makes its way onto the global brand stage. We’ll see if it can outperform the iPhone. Luxury brand Ferrari zooms onto list. The debut of H&M is a great example of a retailer understanding consumer demands, as is the entrance of Marriott.

Our longtime client Honda still ranks high; also new to Best Global Brands is our client FedEx, whose promise we’re bringing to life in the FedEx Office stores (formerly Kinkos). Like all the leaders, they have managed to strike a clear note of differentiation that we have translated into retail environments.

Although we can understand nervousness in a results-oriented world, we’re hoping the current slowdown will push retailers to change. The world is becoming one global economy. Competing in it demands a connected and holistic approach to brand management, not siloed 20th century corporate habits. In order to stand out from the crowd and engage our associates and customers, our businesses must become branding communities, resilient and flexible. Because—particularly in retail—there are always new and unknown challenges ahead. Thoughtfully,
D. Lee Carpenter