Far from joining a party after the guests have arrived and tucked in to the good wine, digital is now integral to planning the party from the start (and I’m not talking about flashing banners or a Facebook page). This phase for me is fundamentally about a digital brand partnership with clients, and a large part of that is about what a brand can be in the future, and what the future can be for them.

Creating a Future Brand Vision allows you to imagine the role a brand could occupy without the logistics and concerns of live delivery. I do this regularly for clients, I love doing these, its one of the best challenges available for anyone working in a digital agency right now, it allows me to change and challenge how a client thinks. So, finding some time on my hands, I jotted down these words as an introduction into what works for me.

Why Does A Brand Need A Future?

Future Brand Vision’s (or vision ware, or vision projects, or any other names) are about providing an objective, an opportunity and a direction. Done right, they can re-invigorate, internally inspire, and even re-invent a brand. They can remove the barriers to fresh thinking, and develop new methods and ideas to differentiate in crowded and tired marketplaces.

Once completed, they can become a long-term objective to aim for over time informing all projects or activities to get you to this eventual target, a promise to deliver if you will. Previously, working in a small team, we completed a Vision project that formed the foundation for digital banking five years in the future. Our client was a global UK based bank, and we enabled them to digitally think without the baggage of delivering, to reconnect with how their customer base was increasingly beginning to organise their lives, and even suggesting services that helped them understand these rapidly developing new channels.

Another re-evaluated the way we book travel in the future, our client (an international recognised airline) saw how by being bold and altering their thinking on the objective of travel, rather than the business mechanics of booking, could allow them to own new ground in a very formulaic system.

The point is that they allow you to imagine and be bold. They do not over concern themselves with delivery (that comes in everything you do after), but rather the ideas and thoughts that drive a brand onwards.

Soon I will add more on how I approach creating a Future Brand Vision, how they can drive live project work, and my ten steps…

Late in 2008 I presented a technology theme that I named as Swiss Army Tofu to a pitch audience. The blank expressions that met me before I explained what this meant are probably similar to the thoughts in your mind right now. Put simply Swiss Army Tofu is the future of devices in the digital world, or rather the death of them.

I know that sounds very grand and very pompous (and a sweeping statement), but its valid, not wholly unique and not just me that thinks it. There is plenty of others proposing similar view and will have a variety of titles to explain the same proposition: that technology is advancing so fast and, given Moore’s Law and others, so rapidly that its eventual destination is to probably not exist.

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Some background

The pitch was for a global Telco client, during a busy time it became a three or four man effort. We collectively took the decision to do something different and to provide a digital brand vision, an objective and opportunity for them to be different in a remarkably unremarkable market. By this point, it was a third meeting and they wanted to see our creativity. So we took a risk, threw caution to the wind and set out to define their perception of us and of the digital world. They wanted a strategic partner, and we wanted to be it.

The full story of this pitch is for another time (when I get some time to write the thing up, it will probably be far too long), but the main point I want to write about was the concept I developed of Swiss Army Tofu. We created a series of statements that we believe defined the world we live in and are moving towards. I thought about the way the mobile phone had advanced over time, from a brick sized lump with battery in wheelbarrow, towards smaller and more usable handsets, and to the multi-use iPhone with its applications and plethora of built in features and the dangers of featuritis. Most technology devices follow this development, the camera, the radio, the watch and so on.

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Introducing Swiss Army Tofu

The advent of Cloud Computing has freed up technology from physical objects, the idea of pulling content from the ether and not from a hard drive is with us increasingly. The natural conclusion is for these two themes to converge, for a device to contain nothing, blank and personality free, but to bring content to me and have multiple uses when I ask for it. To become what I want it to be when I need it, whatever that is. Put basically, to become Swiss Army Tofu.

All your contacts, photos, diary, video, music, curtain remote control, pulled through when the user wants it, and for the bland tofu host device to become what is needed based upon this want.

And its not just handsets, computers in offices, the home, in your car, on planes, deep under water, on a dogs collar – they all will become just screens, canvases for whatever your need is, where ever it is. Your profile will bring what you need and what you own, no downloading or buying Photoshop or Office as a cd and box, its loaded up and ready when you need it. An iPhone Apps Store for all parts of your life, shifting, delivering and nudging to meet the needs of its users.

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And White Bicycles?

Take this to another step, if these things are empty until they are recognised and told what to do, they why own them? Why not just borrow one, pick it up and tell it what you want to do, then put it back down and walk away. If they become part of the landscape then why own your own, like the White Bicycles of Amsterdam, use it and leave it for someone else, pick another up later. Yes, we know that human nature is different and we like to own and personalise smaller objects, but for these large screens – why not?

Sharing has become physical, we all see how devices like Microsoft Surface can ‘talk’ to and sync with objects placed on it, so can these devices share by touching and linking, like Lego for content and sharing.

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What happened next?

Lots. We won and are delivering the vision we painted, part of which was the idea of Swiss Army Tofu. Now we are engaged in creating a vision for the future with a very progressive client, and this idea of blank technology is closer to becoming a reality. It’s a phrase that became a symbol for the excitement of our work together. And in a fiercely changing and challenging market, where now corporations such as Google are starting to play, it acts as one of the objectives for the brand and the opportunities before us.

Recently I was working on a digital pitch for an entertainment and media client that asked a few questions of our approach and engagement framework, mainly along the lines of ‘What is it?’. That being one of those questions that you believe you have until you talk to the cast of people involved and realise everyone has a different take, we realised that we had some thinking to do. The challenge was to share our thoughts, then break down and define each stage of this approach. One of these key stages was our ‘Design Principles’, a term we named and adopted one particularly late working night.

Apologies if this is blindingly obvious, this post is not intended for those that may work with them already, more for someone who may hear a term like this and wonder where to start, because they have proved very helpful to me since we did this exercise. This is a term is not really related to the whole ‘Principles of Design’ area, which is more concerned with the organisation and considerations in design: balance, harmony, contrast, keep it simple and so forth. A quick search will bring you plenty of informative returns about these.

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Creating Design Principles

The more I thought about it, the more these Design Principles are fundamental to how you go about solving and measuring a creative solution, and how you challenge, inspire and take care with brands. There may be many titles (and examples) for this particular method, but its essentially its a set of rules or statements to measure creative and technical development against, a yard stick and something to keep referring back to. You can imagine that Apple could have one about not needing an instruction manual, Google’s not being evil and so on.

They should not be confused with brand values, KPI’s, ROI’s and other islands in an endless sea of acronyms, they are quite distinct and separate, and are suited to pitches, Creative Briefs and long brand account relationships. I have a series of them now which I use a selection from, add to, and reshape dependent on who they are for and what we are setting out to achieve. Much like a brief, I revisit them them during and after delivery of a project, often alongside clients, to check the solutions are delivering the right brand experience.

So to come back to our story, some of the ones we created are very much for our entertainment and media client, distilled from their brand and the objective of the pitch. We presented ten in the end, and here are a handful (well I’m not going to put them all up am I now?)…

Let Me Escape: Remember what people are hoping to do, and why they are visiting. Its not about the process, the site they are using, or even the actual thing they are buying — its about the end objective, in our case entertainment, its about having fun, enjoying and rewarding experiences. So write playfully where appropriate, excite people with samples and reward their time.

Launch Satellites: The viewer / user is the centre of the digital experience, bring the right content to them and let it follow them on their journey. As we are increasingly moving away from page-to-page interaction towards more atomised and flexible experiences, we need to build this principle into the heart of what we propose and design.

A Million Pieces: Very much driven from the legendary Coke bottle idea, that shattered into a thousand pieces you would still recognise the iconic Coke bottle, and the brand principle that if you removed your logo from your brand it should still be recognisable. Digitally we promised to ensure each element, word and interaction would be instantly recognisable as our clients brand, that means each button rollover, headline, background shade, photography, indent etc would be a visualisation of the brand and its essence.

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Why use Design Principles?

Of course you may not see the value in a set of Design Principles, but I have found them to be extremely useful. They are a one of those things that clients crave and adopt: a ‘measurement’ towards Creative work. You can almost hear the cogs and gears jar and splutter when you talk to them of emotional design, of design instincts and that perhaps a little bit of space may help things look less like a £1 shop window front. I’ve found including this Design Principles into projects helps them understand what you are setting out to do, and how they the client can measure the creative work presented to them.

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What happened next?

Well we won the pitch, and the Design Principles were a significant part of this success. Now they are used throughout the live project work. Since then I’ve used them on subsequent projects, with lots of positives. The key to them is to understand the brand, excite the client, think deeply about what you want to achieve with the brand and the client team, and importantly define an objective to aim for.

As you may tell, its an informal blog, so for heavy detail — i’d recommend another blog or book, this is more an opportunity for me to pour things out of my head.