“Do you matter? That question—asked so often, by so many, in such varied contexts—is bluntly posed by industrial designer Robert Brunner and corporate consultant Stewart Emery in a new book of the same title published this month (FT Press),” Matt Vella reports for BusinessWeek.
“The question, with the subtitle ‘How great design will make people love your company”, amounts to more than designer navel-gazing. For the book’s authors, it heralds a broader manifesto on the importance of design in creating products and services that not only sell well but also endear brands to consumers. Brunner and Emery aim to explain how companies such as Apple, BMW, Ikea, and Target use design to establish lasting (and lucrative) relationships with consumers,” Vella reports.
“Their theory is simple: Successful executives should treat design as more than a finishing discipline that simply improves products’ aesthetics. Instead, design should influence every aspect of customers’ experiences. For Brunner and Emery, design is an infrastructural element that helps define every aspect of a company, including Web site, stores, customer support, packaging, and messaging as well as products. ‘Design…can’t be a veneer,’ they explain,” Vella reports.
“On its face, the argument is not particularly new. What’s more, the book’s strongest example is also the most commonly cited, Apple. That company’s leadership, they argue, has successfully imbued every department in its organization with a coherent design sensibility that carries through all of its efforts. This matters not only because Apple has become the king of cool but also because its emotional hold over customers means it can charge a healthy price premium over competitors,” Vella reports.
“In returning again and again to Apple, the book tacitly admits that company CEO Steve Jobs is the movement’s highest priest. Still, Brunner is well placed to tell the tale: He was the company’s director of industrial design, establishing its pioneering internal design organization, Apple IDg, during the crucial intermezzo between Jobs’ departure and his return to the company in the late-1990s,” Vella reports.
MacDailyNews Take: In other words; Apple’s worst design period ever: the beige box Mac era.
Full article here.
And how to break that relationship by associating with crappy telcos like Telefonca in Spain who, nearly 2 months after its launch still will not sell it to existing customers, only to those with portability from other networks or thos willing to sing up to a new contract (i.e. a new phone number).
Fsck you apple.
@john
Nice verbage, cretin. You must also be very proud of your logic: blaming Apple for Telefonca’s business policies. I’ll bet your mother and father must be barking out your praises all over the kennel right now.
Boy, the Lib-leaning Mac users are pissed off today.
Don’t worry, we thinking Mac users understand.
Sarah took it all away last night. The dream is dead. But, a new, better dream – this time with substance – was born!
“Community organizer” – ROTFLMFAO!
@”Superior Being”
I see that you’re lost again.
Do you need help finding the right website, little boy? Pun intended.
@john “Fsck you apple.”
How do you know it’s Apple’s fault? Please tell us.
“. . . you don’t need to worry about providing any actual substance.”
Like every one of your posts?
Boy, john, that’s a stretch to try to use this article as a lead-in to a rant about iPhone telco contracts. Weirdness abounds. The Gai abides.
It’s the software, stupid
Even if the hardware was plug fugly, I’d still sue OS X.
Of course if OS X was plug fugly, that might be a different story. Or maybe not.
It never fails to amaze me: Anytime and anywhere telephone and cable companies are a part of any discussion, that inevitably “bad” words have to be used to express the actual feelings that real end-users inevitably get when thinking about how they are trapped and subsequently treated by cellular providers.
And by the way John, regarding cellular service providers, until proven wrong I still stand behind my belief that Apple does not simply go around picking who it will do business with. I think there are very few service providers, even still, who will work with Apple, so, to some extent, Apple works with whoever is willing to work with them, and those service providers want some real assurance of success, and one way to do that is to corner every little corner of every little market that can be had.
So if I’m a service provider, and I agree to partner with Apple, and I end up having to send Apple home with its tail between its legs because the iPhone flopped, at least I made some money in the process because I’m the only one who could provide service for the iPhone, which in turn makes me the exclusive provider of the iPhone hardware.
What Telefonica is doing is typical of service providers in all countries including the USA. In the real world the ATT stores in my area will do almost nothing to actually sell the iPhone, that is, when I walk in and hang out by the iPhone display absolutely no one will offer my any help or try and sell me a plan that includes the iPhone. But, as soon as I walk over to an LG or Samsung display, then I’ve got a salesman on me like a leach.
Best Buy is notorious for the same type of thing. Oh yeah, Best Buy sells Apple products, but they will do little to nothing to actually move product. In the case of Best Buy it’s so bad that traditionally Apple has to hire reps to go into Best Buy stores in order to actually sell Macintosh computers. Even though our closest Best Buy sells a full line of iPods and iPod accessories, the Best Buy sales people claim veritable ignorance on anything with an Apple logo on it. But march over to the Zunes and holy cow, every sales person within earshot is an instant genius.
All of this makes Apple look bad, but then I’m pretty sure that every cellular provider that Apple works with is a Microsoft partner. I know Best Buy is… You do the math.
Of course Apple is to blame in that they developed and market the iPhone, but then again, it’s not like LG, Palm, Samsung, MS, Nokia, Sony, et. al., didn’t have time to come to the table with a product that actually grabbed the imaginations of the people who were going to buy it. In my opinion, if Palm had done what some of us were paying it to do Apple would never have even tried to come to market with products like the iPhone or iPod touch.
Again – you do the math.
Tell us about how its Apples fault and tell us about lack of substance, PLEASE.
Who are these people? Are they paid shills for the Windows crowd?
Are they the secret army of the Enderle Group, armed with zunes and malfunctioning Dell laptops, striking out with semi-literate criticism at all things Apple?
@ Mr. Peabody
Thanks for adding an intelligent and thoughtful narrative to the discussion above. Sometimes the you’re an idiot; no, you’re an idiot approach to comments gets a little old.
“Dazzle them with style and then you don’t need to worry about providing any actual substance. That’s the Apple way.”
Reading for comprehension. Get some.
btw, your comment made no sense. Define substance. Tool.
Is anyone else getting sick of the users here who immediately go into politics mode?
“Is anyone else getting sick of the users here who immediately go into politics mode?”
Absolutely. But it does illustrate the vast and troubling insecurity and self-esteem issues from those posters.
Nobody forced Apple to associate with Telefonica – they could have chosen another telco or even better sold a phone that can be used with any network.
Hows that for innovation?
As we know, Apple’s choices of carrier partners are never simple and always bad. This is the nature of mobile business; there simply does not exist a single mobile carrier in the world that actually has a positive image and loyal customers. Virtually all of them are hated by their customers. So, how exactly does Apple sell its products? As we can see from Indian example, where the phone is sold without subsidy, full retail price is simply way too high for consumers to swallow, after years of getting cheap and free phones with contracts. Had Apple chosen to avoid carriers and sell an unlocked device at $700, they’d still be working on selling the first million.
There is no way to sell a cellphone in large numbers without subsidy. There is no way to get a subsidy without making a deal with the devil (a carrier). It’s a catch-22 and Apple is doing the best it can.
Apple sold plenty of iPhones without a subsidy before the 3g was launched. Customers were a lot happier too.
@john
“they could have chosen another telco”
How do you know this? Please provide a credible link.
“Apple sold plenty of iPhones without a subsidy before the 3g was launched. Customers were a lot happier too.”
You’re mistaken. Apple never sold a single iPhone without a subsidy (until India, that is). You may need to google this up, though, but here’s the basics.
Original iPhone cost some $700 or so. AT&T provided between $50 and $150 up-front subsidy upon activation, plus between $5 and $8 per month for two years for every activated iPhone. The remaining $400 (average) was retail price. This was unique, unprecedented revenue-sharing model, which is no longer in place for 3G.
The business model for 3G is different (actually, more-or-less the same as for all other cellphones). Apple receives an up-front subsidy at the time of purchase, in the (estimated) amount of $350 – $450 per device. This means the actual price is an average of $600 (plus taxes/import duties, etc).
The manufacturing costs for 3G are estimated to be about 20% lower than for the original model (around $180 vs. $220), which means roughly same profit margins on both devices.
As for customer happiness, surveys show that there isn’t any noticable difference between the two user groups.
Well clearly the bend over apple and take this subsidy so we can then give it to our customers approach isnt working here in Spain!
If macs were sold with such a subsidy (bribe) in return for the right to fuck over customers how many happy mac users do you think there would be?
John,
You don’t seem to be able to grasp the way that mobile telephony works in the developed world.
Vast majority of carriers in ‘western’ countries sell cellphones at deep discounts (often free) for a two-year contract. Carriers absorb the discount and recover it over the life of that contract (actually, much sooner). IPhone is no different here. And in its category (Nokia N95, Samsung BlackJack and similar devices), its non-subsidised price is roughly the same (if not even lower). Depending on the amount of the subsidy (in some countries in EU, you may buy the iPhone for 1 EUR if you sign for a premium plan for two years), the net retail price that consumer pays up-front may vary. In the US, it is $200. In EU, it varies from country to country, depending on the carriers.
Luckily, Macs don’t need to be sold with any subsidy, since for their proper operation, they don’t depend on another company. As I said earlier, in order to offer iPhone on the global market at prices that consumers would be willing to pay in large numbers, Apple must make deals with the devil (carriers). As simple as that.
I understand how it works perfectly! Its called fuck the consumer and Apple is now in the game….
Well fuck you too Apple and Telefonica!
Don’t waste your time explaining to John how business works. Way over his head. Apple has to deal with the telcos. They don’t own their own network. I doubt that they set out to pick the ones that will provide the worst CS. How does that help them in the long run? Will they all be great? Probably not. They are telcos.
After reading john’s rants I’ve decide to sell my shares of AAPL.
There is absolutely NO way Apple will make its quarterly earnings target if they lose his business.
I just want to say thanks for posting this article. As a designer, I probably would not have come across this book otherwise and it looks to be a very interesting read. Heading off to the bookstore this week now just to find it!