The Brand Father
Brand strategist, podcaster, and founder of The Future Academy, Tobias Dahlberg interviews ‘The Brand Father’ Marty Neumeier
Marty Neumeier’s design career took off in the early, heady days of Silicon Valley; he found his niche in retail computer software packaging, designing solutions for tech’s biggest players: Adobe, Apple, HP, and Microsoft. He published design thinking magazine Critique. He’s the author of many design- and brand-focused books: essential reading for every designer. Find his bibliography below.
Never a dull question, and often misunderstood; How is branding actually defined? For Marty Neumeier, a brand is a gut feeling, an impression in the mind of a customer or user. “A brand is a result. It’s a user’s gut feeling about a product, service or company. It’s about what happens in people’s heads and their hearts.” he said in their interview. “A brand is a reputation; it’s in the hands of users. The brand is the user’s story, from their point-of-view. People decide who you are.” He said famously in The Brand Gap, “A brand is not what you say it is. It’s what they say it is.” It’s often easy to define brand by what it’s not: it’s not a logo - a logo is a symbol for a brand; it’s not a product either, or even a promise. We all create our own versions of brands, informed by our interactions and experiences with them; thus, they’re what we say they are. Confusing, yes, but fundamentally important to building a brand.
Experiences build brands; however, those experiences are not the brand itself. Tobias Dahlberg observed in their conversation that “Experience is an put, a means to an end.” Experience though is not enough - there has to be a purpose - to lead people, to offer a benefit, to make life better for users and customers. Every business decision should be based on this fundamental belief: Will this benefit the user? Challenging? Definitely. Building a brand is not easy, mistakes happen. For Marty Neumeier, businesses make mistakes, not users; traditional silos fail to come together, teams remain detached, communication fails. Users don’t need to know everything about a company , but just enough to build trust. The challenge for business is to be crystal clear about their purpose. He said “There’s no business without customers. And customers drive brands.” So, they must be attracted, cultivated, and rewarded. Business must be agile, they must know their relationship to the brand. It must become part of business culture. In fact, Marty Neumeier invented the new title at the boardroom table: chief brand officer, CBO. In their interview, he recalled that Steve Jobs understood this; he knew that everything was part of the brand; product design, operations, everything is guided by the brand vision. Yet still today, business schools fail to even include design and branding in their MBA programs. Creativity and strategy are separated by a void - the brand gap - the logic-driven, analytical marketers versus the visual, intuitive creative people. The rift between ‘logic’ and ‘magic’ is the brand gap, the author says. Marty Neumeier calls out designers to do battle, show business leaders how design can play a mayor role in filling the void.
What’s a small start-up to do? Place value in the brand. Solutions follow strategy. All businesses must focus on how to make users’ lives better. Small businesses are challenged just like big enterprises. They must keep it simple and start with purpose. What are they doing? Who are they doing it for? Marty Neumeier encourages them to take a step forward every day - it will be risky - and in a year great things can be accomplished.
When asked about the book writing experience Marty Neumeier responded by saying it’s daunting and doubtful. Writing is like every creative project; it’s complicated, much like building a business, in fact. He suggested: look for opportunity; know your idea; and do it joyfully. Make connections and little by little it will take shape. Unsurprisingly, brand strategy is like that too. A brand is a construct of connected pieces. You must look at your business from the customer’s perspective. It requires risk-taking, but it will build authenticity. Users read well-designed products and services as caring for the users themselves.
They concluded their online chat with news on Level C. Marty Neumeier and co-founder Andy Star established a professional certification masterclass in branding. It’s a five-tiered certification program based on The Brand Gap with live, deep dive remote workshops lead by Marty Neumeier himself. He guides attendees in mastering the art of branding to drive marketing, advertising, design, and business performance. It looks like a really exciting program.
Interested? Find more:
www.thefutureacademy.com
www.martyneumeier.com
www.levelc.org
Marty Neumeier Bibliography:
The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance Between Business Strategy and Design
Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands
The Designful Company: How to Build a Culture of Nonstop Innovation
Metaskills: Five Talents for the Robotic Age
The 46 Rules of Genius: An Innovator's Guide to Creativity
The Brand Flip: Why Customers Now Run Companies and How to Profit From It
BRAND A-Z: An Interactive Dictionary of 1,000 Essential Brand Terms (ebook)
Scramble: How Agile Strategy Can Build Epic Brands in Record Time
