NOBELINKS

Links to People, Places, Ideas: Branding

Business Of Design Branding

BY BARBARA THAU for ASID i+D Magazine

Introspection and brainstorming are in order when determining one’s authentic brand.

Those questions are fundamental to building a design business, says Axle Davids, CEO of Toronto-based brand strategy firm Distility, and Stephen Nobel, who runs design consultancy NOBELINKS and authors the online "Business Strategy Solutions" courses for the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID).  Both subscribe to the belief that the answer is within you.

Getting to the Heart of the (Brand) Matter

By definition, brand essence is embodied unwittingly, Nobel explains. "In my view, the brand almost precedes the business, knowingly or not," be it an individual or a company. "Design professionals or even musicians, artists, or athletes are brands before they are business[es] that create. A brand is what others and clients perceive it to be."

Building a successful brand, however, should be a strategic endeavor, he advises.

Interior designers need only tap their everyday skills when building their own brand. For one, "‘design thinking’ helps to design a brand through somewhat the same problem-solving or creative process designers employ to design interiors," says Nobel. So, "designers are rather qualified to create a brand using some of their design skills."

But, not before doing some soul-searching first. "Successful brands are first and foremost authentic," Nobel cautions. "Some serious introspection is in order."

The critical questions to get at one’s authentic brand proposition are:

What do I/we stand for?

How do my/our personal values align with respect to other people?

How do I/we stay true to those values when tested?

What matters to my/our clients?

 

Akin to Distility’s philosophy, Nobel says "deep exploration of our clients" is critical to the brand-building process. "How do we empathize with what matters to them? I admire brands that position the designer’s empathy for their clients’ needs and the processes they go through to satisfy those needs."

Too frequently, adds Nobel, interior designers position "great portfolios and prideful résumés" as their brand, rather than as simply benchmarks of their work. They also confuse a style or look with their brand promise.

A truly effective brand, he explains, will "deliver on the brand promise with surprise and delight every time a client interacts with it. Interior design is experiential for the client. And, I might add, more profitable when the designer aims high."

After defining an interior designer’s brand, spreading the message "is a matter of precision," Nobel explains. As successful brands focus on specific customers, "it’s important to determine where current and prospective clients are and through what channels they will be exposed to the brand message. Online, in print, in person are all channels through which pointed messages can be delivered."

Note: this article was shortened from the original

BARBARA THAU is a business journalist specializing in the retail industry and consumer news and trends. She currently is a contributing writer for Forbes.com for which she writes the weekly column, "Minding The Stores." She has been cited as a retail expert for media outlets, including USA Today, National Public Radio, and CNN Money.

Links to People, Places and Ideas: Speaking Engagements

Steve Nobel specializes in the markets for interior design. He counsels his clients in their efforts to build distinguished brands, and to advance the market for interior design and decoration worldwide. In addition to his consulting work, he speaks frequently on the business of design for ASID Chapters, Design Centers, Trade Showrooms and for design professionals in venues throughout North America. His audiences include, students, emerging professionals as well as professionals at every level of their career. During his presentations, he mixes just the right amount of deeply informed content, splendid visuals and his pleasing sense of humor.

Steve developed and recorded ASID’s online “Small Business Strategies Courses” titled “Interior Design: Your Business. Your Success”.  He is co-author of the online books series “Touchpoints of Interior Design.” 

His speaking topics listed below include an inspiring keynote (0.1 CEU), a practical workshop (0.2 CEU) and a postlude call to action (not yet CEU).

Keynote:“Design Entrepreneurship: Money and Mojo Matter” (0.1 CEU) sets forth principles and practices that enable interior designers to do just as well in the business of their chosen profession as they do in the creative aspects of it. This program features Steve’s Top Ten Tenets for Taking Charge that gives students and established practitioners at all levels of their careers the inspiration necessary and the tools to equip them to lead the business through ups and downs, realize its fullest potential and even take it to the next level of professionalism and profitability.

Workshop:

Contracts and Fees: How leading designers earn what they deserve” (0.2 CEU) addresses some of the most vexing questions facing interior design professionals - contracts and compensation. Various models are presented in this workshop format, including fixed fees, charges for time and materials, markup on merchandise and others. The workshop will also survey provisions typically found within a client agreement that spells-out compensation. We wrap-up with methods to propose the approach to clients. The workshop includes samples of contract templates that can be evaluated for use now.

Postlude:

To the Trade 2020: Predictions (not yet CEU accredited) predicts where the design profession is now, and where will it be in the not too distant future. Steve Nobel, industry leader and consulting sage brings from his decades of advising the interior design marketplace predictions on where ‘to the trade’ is headed and how designers can win along the way. His clear views drawn from experience and data will venture beyond the frustrations and wishful thinking clouding our vision to present realistic trends and business opportunities for designers to exploit to their advantage.

References upon request

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Nobel for DFA and ASID summit in Boston talks marketing, education

Links to People Places Ideas

ASID Accelerate Studio: Business Strategies

Links to People, Places and Ideas: Predictions for 'To-the-Trade' 2020

To the Trade 2020: Predictions

Today’s Age of Disruption

Most business models conceived fifty years ago are ill-suited for meeting the challenges of todays dynamic markets. Residential interior design is similarly challenged. 

Wishful thinking that consumer demand can continue to be channeled through a labyrinth of conventions ‘to the trade’, in an era when consumers are in control and unwilling to abide by most consumption orthodoxy, is perilous to industry incumbents and restrictive to consumer choice. Some ask, “are we about to be Uber-ed?” shocked like so many others in the transportation industry.

The trade resources, distribution channels and media that make up the system of interior furnishings (the design ecosystem) understand the challenge and are beginning to transform a defensive posture in favor of a ‘eyes wide open’ offensive and strategic approach to the future.

That value system depends on each of the subsystems to perform at its best. Just like the ecological health of a natural system, the health and vitality of the design ecosystem depends on the health and vitality of each valuable contributor to designers’ most resourceful clients. A synchronous alignment of supply and demand.

Tomorrow’s Client

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  Actually, tomorrow’s client resembles in many important ways today’s client. Boldly empowered by technology, they are seizing control of the conventional decorum for decorating and going rogue. Beyond the 1 in 5 affluent households that play by the rules, this corps of discovery is agile on line, flirts with digital enablers and recreates by DIY.

They have pulled back the veil on the mystique surrounding decoration, mistrust those who hide behind it and presume the fix is in for intruders. With the genie out of the bottle, though, they circumvent the conventions ‘to the trade’ and deflate the value of interior design. Meet the militants on a mission at home.

A designer’s next best client, however, may be one from the emerging elite aspirational class: educated and cultured HENRYs who are admittedly time constrained, lead complicated lives, prefer to spend on services rather than on material goods (those that anyone can get anyway) and whose confident self image aligns with their economic status.

For them conspicuous consumption is out. Inconspicuous consumption is in. They aspire to being more rather than having more. If designers can show clients that they ‘get me,’ can ’do it for me’ and can explain ‘why its worth it,’ this client's flight to value lands at that designer’s brand.  Probing empathetically into their motives and behavior, becoming advocates for customizing their individual quality of life, is our Job 1, right now.

Interventions at Work

Yet to meet those expectations for luxurious client experiences, interventions are now and will be necessary to earn their trust and then their wallets, no matter how deep. 

To keep up with them, our pace needs to quicken. Think of all the other professions that have become commodities: investment, travel, book buying and other markets that overnight had to earn income based on the value of their advice and judgement, rather than on preserving boundaries for consumers to buy the way they wanted them to.  And think of the professions that are paid for what they know (not just what they do): legal, financial planning, accounting, psychology and many others.

Experiential luxury is the new standard; a higher bar than even functional benefits, emotional appeal, and craft. It’s what keeps executives awake at night, even at the most luxurious brands throughout the world. What this means for interior design is a new way of looking at interior design through the experience of the client. More than imaginative shopping, experiential luxury is the whole journey taken by clients with their designer.  And every ‘touchpoint’ matters. It’s a system dependent on respect and reassurance from the initial client meeting, all the way through the ‘big reveal’ after installation, and everything that matters to the client in between.  Indeed, it all matters.

For experiential luxury to be luxurious, it takes a system to live up to its potential.

It’s a System; designalign

This system of product and service providers (trade resources for the life well-lived) is really a community of entrepreneurs passionate about making, marketing, merchandising and story-telling through its media.

Faced with recession in 2010, some of its leaders shook hands, reorganized as DFA and agreed that “we are all in this together,”  setting out to inspire and engage with these most resourceful consumers by enfranchising the trade and marketing the value of interior design.

This year, DFA’s DoItFor campaign staked that claim by promoting the value of design in language tuned to consumers; it imposed upon itself the responsibility to lead the way.  As of this writing, doitfor.com is about to launch on digital and social media an emotional invitation to consumers to “do it for” … themselves, their friends and families and especially their homes as the background for their lives.

But a consumer-friendly invitation needs shared responsibility by the design ecosystem to perform up to high expectations. And to meet those expectations, each ‘touchpoint’ along the client’s journey within the system needs further review and even some re-engineering.  That system in 2020 could be the industry’s strongest competitive advantage.

 

 

Contact me for your homework assignment, with a smile. 

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Links to People, Places and Ideas: Time Inc Designer Summit

For the Southern Living Designer Network, we presented the "Top Tenets for Taking Charge" of an interior design business.  

   

Misty Chandler provides reference for those who wish to schedule an equally rewarding event.

Links to People, Places and Ideas: Pricing and Profits

Professional fees for professional services (both fixed and hourly) continue to trend upward in designers’ search for the pricing model that outperforms profits from procurement. In a survey conducted by my firm, designers reported that today, pricing models are a mix of revenue sources.  Tomorrow, they say, that mix will be heavily weighted toward fees. 

Clearly, there is no one pricing model that is always profitable for all designers. But many designers have increased or are increasing their income through higher hourly rates and fixed or variable design fees.  In my view, they are earning what they deserve from design, not procurement. Consequently, their reliance on income from sales margin is declining.  Once again, there is no single formula or income mix that serves everyone’s circumstances.  But respondents to the survey now have a clear way to think about what works and how it works for their profit picture. What if your income was earned the new way? Numbers talk. Our next survey on marketing is coming up.

Links to People, Places and Ideas: Affluents for Interior Design

I had an insider's look yesterday at research into Affluent Households in America. There are plenty of them with plenty of wealth for the interior design market to flourish. Just recently the evidence shows, they have shaken pent-up demands and started spending again like never before. They are 'glass-half full' optimistic, 'nesting' in new ways, unburdening from complexity and investing in 'me time.' What that means to me is opportunity for you - new clients for professional interior design

Links to People, Places and Ideas: What Lies Ahead for Luxury in 2017

Recently, I shared a post under this title from the New York Times. Why? Because I believe that all of you are luxury brands, and that we can learn from what the world’s most distinctive luxury brands are doing. They are out to find some equilibrium between the virtues of ‘custom’ (that’s you), technology (that’s online) and understanding their (your) customers’ behavior. We are, too.

As the article suggested, “risk is no longer defined as doing something new,” but rather “doing what was done before,” or repeating the perils of the past. The big idea is to embrace “the soulful economy.” And we do have soul, plenty of soul.

What that means in my view is for us to add soul to our virtual world. We are all online, sure, but could our websites do more than promote professionalism and creativity? I think so, and so do the world’s luxury brands. Now, video content rules. Imagine as I do, seeing you on your website touring visitors through a room, or a vignette within a room. Watch the installation being made or the customization being crafted. If handheld video can go viral, imagine what it can do for you, the soulful you.

Design Is ... links to people, places, ideas

"Design," said Steve Jobs, "is a funny word. Some people think design means how something looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's how something really works."  As Apple's guru, he was hitting on something big. I think many of you are on to something big, too.

We know that interior design is not just about product — it is about how it is experienced. It is about something much bigger than the things your clients think they are buying, and what they cost. It is about how the things in situ make them feel in a life well-lived.  In your hands, that’s design.

As summer becomes fall, my consulting clients are part of design’s evolution from that which is exquisitely and tastefully decorated (not withstanding who judges taste) to the more absolute meta-value of design that is memorable and meaningful.

As we consider new ways of marketing design beyond product and rather as  experience, we evolve your business to the next level that is ‘memorable and meaningful.’

Links to People, Places, Ideas

As we have grown to know each other over the years, I learned that one of the central passions of your life – interior design - empowers you to delight your clients and enrich their lives, creates an excellent body of work, and dependably sustains your livelihood. 

Others want to know how you do it but I am not about to ‘tell all’.  However, I have been asked to present a keynote address on my Top Ten Tenets to Take Charge in September, so as I draft what I am going to say, I thought I would share the drafting process with you.  Chime-in if you like.

The title is “Design Entrepreneurship: Money and Mojo Matter.  It starts with setting your intentions with confidence and taking charge of your future.  That's mojo. Alice in Wonderland said, “If you don’t know where you want to go, you will never know which road to take.”

 

I have asked many of you to write letters to your self describing your vision for yourself and your business as thought it was 2020. A lot of those letters say the same things over and over: 

• “I want to do design: I’m tired of doing administration, and expediting orders.” 
• “I want to have better clients: fewer bigger projects.”
• “I want to make more money.” 
• “I want to be part of a design community, re-energized and restored, not isolated in my studio.”

What would your letter to yourself in 2020 sound like?  

How’s this for a start to the presentation? Post your thoughts, too.  I'll keep drafting until we get it right.

best for the summer

Links to People, Places, Ideas

I am delighted to be writing to you again this summer. These reflections don't come from under a beach umbrella, although I wish I were there. They do come from my reminiscences of when we began this odyssey toward ever-improving business success. And since then, top designers like you, many of them my clients from around the country, have overcome real or perceived limits and achieved what we call 'success beyond success.' 

These firms have already nearly mastered the basics; they are now aiming to take their businesses to ‘the next level,’ what ever that means for them. Many have already made it there, only to find that their vision can still be refined. When I am privileged to work with them one-on-one, we face head-on a full range of issues, including personal and professional balance, money and mojo, contracts and fees, attracting and keeping best clients, responding to the inner voice that keeps you up at night and getting to the heart of the big strategic question: what’s next? Sound familiar? The summer reading list begins later this week.