The Prepared Mind Discussion about designing human interaction.

During our time with the ReBrand jury, an interesting concept arose during judging. Niti Bhan, one of the ReBrand judges and design thinker extraordinaire, had made the case for one of the entries that had not made it into our finalists from the day before. It was the feeling of most of the judges that the execution of brand was not up to the level we were looking for.

“Doesn’t strategy count?” Niti countered. Her argument was that while the final execution may have been lacking, the strategy employed by the ReBrand had resulted in more close alignment with the way the target audience shops and increased overall sales. In the end, it was decided that the execution must rise to a certain overall level and while we were dependent on before-and-after sales figures from the contenstants, we had no idea that the increased sales weren’t due to other exterior circumstances such as a competitor going out of business, price-cutting or more favorable shelf space at a major retailer.

But it was a very interesting question. “Does strategy count?” We designers probably have a great deal of experience beginning design projects for which very little direction was provided and few measurable criteria for success were established at the start. And when a sound, well-conceived strategy does exist, more than likely it was hatched and perfected prior to the involvement of the creatives — who are often brought in at the end to “make it pretty”.

And how many times do we designers work up the perfect design brief at the start of a project and then procede to never refer back to it during the course of that project? Should a good strategy be rewarded despite a poor executation? Do we reward a good executation despite a flawed initial strategy?
.chris{}