If You Believe. by David Lemley

I've seen the best brands of my generation destroyed by madness and greed. Factories and post-war prosperity spawning an era of hyper-choice to the point where we now have 300 choices of toothpaste.

 

Design has become a shroud of sameness, protecting us from the original, the different. Business schools and marketing firms have chased the Four P’s of Marketing into the corner, stripped them naked and stomped them to death.

 

There are 300 choices of toothpaste.

 

My mission is to rid the world of unnecessary products by helping breakthrough ideas dominate so powerfully that the pretenders die. Have you ever killed a brand just to watch it die?

 

300 choices.

 

The experience economy is real conversation helping people to commune. To be different, together. To disrupt consumer driven society and reconnect with other people. Against all business school theory, I believe that people will let brands help define them so long as you, their stewards, understand the following:

• The people have assumed control of your brand.
• They want you, and your brand, to have morals and values. 
• They look to brands to take a stand on issues the way previous generations looked to religion.
  

They will help ideology driven brands to become distinctive markers of human identity.

 

No one is waiting to erect a monument to your excuses. I believe design is a system of arrangement. Design without a voice is futile. Ideology trumps systems.

 

I believe that people look to leaders who are self-aware enough to listen without worrying what they will say in response and that the people will follow, if they believe.

 

300, I say.

 

Now, is your mission to sell more product to 18-34 year olds? To increase shareholder value? Is your mission to line extend in pursuit of 2% share increase, or do you actually believe in something? Are you in the business of selling things, or do you have a higher calling? Because if you believe – if you truly believe – then maybe we can believe, too, and maybe we can help reach others who believe and together build a community of believers. But if your biggest goal is line extension – if share capture or your stock price is keeping you up at night, then perhaps we will have the pleasure of meeting on the battle field.

 

Written from the cottage on the dock, somewhere in Seattle 13 June 2007