John Pribble III -- Strategic marketing, branding and design management

A better understanding between designers and marketing managers could result in enhanced corporate performance and greater job satisfaction for those involved. Although design is a special kind of skill when compared to accounting and finance; it is an element of business, to be managed like any other element of business. Is it possible to persuade designers to become managers, or do you train managers to be sympathetic toward design, or do you create a new specialty of management specifically for design? Higher education could provide the means for resolving this difference in ideologies, but it doesn't appear to be doing the job now.

William Callaway (1990) provides the foundation for this line of reasoning. Higher education has perpetuated the lack of mutual understanding between those who emerge from the separate fields of design and management. The problem is twofold. First, there is a lack of information in each group about the technical knowledge and methods of the other; secondly, there is a gap between the collective culture of the two groups. At its baldest, the problem is that in management courses the product is taken for granted or ignored. In design courses, the physical object itself is central but the context of its production and marketing tends to be ignored.

The divide between management education and design education is both a result of different concerns - hence the absence of transfer of technical knowledge between the two fields - and more profoundly a manifestation of two very different cultures.

Management education is much concerned with those business functions associated with controlling -- especially accounting, descriptive statistics and cost analysis - and with analysis of the market and presentation of the product to the customer. The education of designers is essentially concerned with creating. The divisive effect of two parallel, non-convergent educational tracks, one about controlling and one about creating, cannot be ignored. (pp. 414 - 415)

Gorb (1990) outlines the requirements for teaching marketing management to
designers and design to managers. Designers and managers must first adopt a mutual lexicon. This is fundamental to fostering an understanding of the principles and processes of the complementary discipline, an enormously important task if design is to take its proper place in marketing.

Olins (1989) underlines the lack of a substantial body of support in the world's major business schools as a problem and acknowledges that part of the image problem suffered by designers is created by themselves. "Until recently," he says, "many designers seemed frightened to emerge from their own cozy little world, to learn new skills and broaden their horizons by developing non-design disciplines. They wanted to keep as near as possible to their drawing boards" (p. 148).

Design Firm Management reports that the design industry is being pressured to change from a craft-shop approach to that of a multi-disciplined service-oriented professional business. Many of today's design graduates are not prepared to participate, let alone compete, in this environment. Their education has been largely vocational, preparing students to get jobs and not teaching them how to be problem-solvers. Some in the industry complain that too many young designers lack basic business knowledge: budgets, overhead, billing, cash flow, and staffing (Design Firm Management No. 27).

Technical-oriented design programs like those at Stanford or the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) have become more research- and problem-solving oriented, emphasizing the process of design (de Forest, 1986). Some design schools have introduced critical-thinking curricula; information analysis and linguistic theory are offered in conjunction with practical exercises and abstract formal problems (de Forest, 1989).

The Institute of Design has introduced a doctoral program in an attempt to raise the status of design from vocation to profession. In this program students are encouraged to discover practical applications for theoretical studies in cognitive psychology or sociology. Other programs have begun to develop more broad-based curricula. Research has now become a significant part of the master's of science programs at The Ohio State University and the University of Cincinnati. Schools are now offering design history courses at the undergraduate level and graduate level in art history and American studies departments. In 1980, The University of Cincinnati began a master's program in design history but it failed to attract enough students. The Parsons School of Design in New York is the only school in the United States offering a master's of liberal arts in architecture and design criticism. The design field's search for credibility in the halls of academia has its critics as well. One design research professional stated, "The layperson's view of academia is largely correct. Academia is full of people doing trivial nonsense that is largely unimportant" (de Forest, 1990, p. 46).

Business schools have also been the target of harsh criticism for "turning out narrow technicians, conformists, and office politicians. Even the best business schools have grown smug, complacent, and rigid - and still worse, are failing to address the critical managerial needs of American business and society" (Silk, 1989, p. 9). In the late 1950s, the Gordon-Howell Report sponsored by the Ford Foundation and the Pierson Report sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation (Main, 1989) declared that business schools "were filled with second-rate students, taught by second-rate professors, who didn't understand their fields, did little research, and were out of touch with business" (Main, 1989, p. 78). These reports prompted business schools across the country to revise their curricula, raise admission standards and encourage professors to undertake more research. From fewer than 5,000 MBA graduates a year in the early 1960s, the popularity of the MBA degree has risen exponentially to more than 67,000·graduates per year today. Overwhelming success has caused business schools to become complacent, and most have not substantially changed their curricula since the early 19608 (Main, 1989).

In a Fortune magazine article on the future of business schools, Stanford professor Harold Leavitt says that a business leader today must have "three major talents: problem solving, implementing," and what he calls, "path-finding," meaning visionary and entrepreneurial talents (Main, 1989, p. 78). Business schools are now beginning to teach the human side of business, shifting their emphasis to include subjects like foreign languages and cultures, ethics and communications, along with the standards of accounting, finance and marketing.

Research supports new directions for business schools. Stephen McDaniel and Richard Rise (1984a) state, "In order to be truly responsive to the needs of the marketplace, marketing educators involved in planning or restructuring marketing curricula must solicit and carefully evaluate feedback received from the business community" (p. 27). In their study of 236 CEOs of major industrial corporations, McDaniel and Rise found pricing and product components of the marketing mix were viewed as more important than the other two components - place and promotion. Specifically, they found that the surveyed CEOs placed greater value on customer relations, pricing strategies, new product planning and development, and product management, and less value on areas such as advertising, personal selling, public relations, and sales promotion.

Jack Behnnan and Richard Levin (1984) found that business schools are largely responsible for the failure of United States' companies against international competition:

"They (business schools) produce graduates who are too narrow, too shortsighted, and too risk averse. Rather than problem identification, goal determination, and high values, the schools stress data gathering, manipulation of information and personnel, and problem solving. They are oriented toward bureaucratic management rather than entrepreneurship and toward tools and models rather than rigorous, qualitative thinking. They pay too little attention to the development of the individual and of interpersonal relationships." (p. 140)

William Stanton (1988) found that business schools have gone too far in
emphasizing courses in the behavioral aspects and quantitative methods in marketing and need to move back toward courses in the mainstream. The areas most in need of attention are creative generation of concepts and emphasis on the implementation stage of the management process. Stanton says, "In the 1990s, the need for restructuring in manufacturing industries very probably will place more attention on making the product -- in doing, rather than only planning" (p. 5). Dillard Tinsley (1981) recommends that four basic courses be required for all undergraduate marketing majors: principles of marketing, buyer behavior, marketing research and marketing management (Tinsley, 1981).

McDaniel and Hise (1984b) studied 75 undergraduate catalogs of colleges and
universities offering a major or concentration in marketing for the 1982-1983 academic year. Each catalog was analyzed to determine what marketing courses were offered at that institution, as well as what marketing courses were required. The results from this analysis were then compared to a similar study (Hise 1975) which analyzed college and university catalogs from 1972-1973. Their findings show that of the top 26 marketing courses offered in one of these two years, there were no significant differences in the two time periods for 15 of the courses. Overall, their findings supported the recommendations of Blackwell (1981) regarding a shift in the curriculum to a conceptual orientation. However, no courses in design or design management were mentioned. The only courses listed that were even "in the ballpark," were advertising, promotion, advertising/mass communication management, marketing communication, and product planning/management.

John Deegan (1984) outlines a new method for teaching marketing principles to students called the Product Introduction Process (PIP), a "systematically organized listing of marketing fundamentals" (p. 25). Again, as in the McDaniel and Rise (1984b) study, no mention of design is made, although under the heading of company image he mentions innovation in product development, market positioning, product differentiation / obsolescence technology, and product identification (packaging / branding strategy). In the marketing mix place component he mentions image / convenience, and under promotion / packaging he mentions communication.

Taking Tinsley's (1981) recommendations of the four basic courses required for all undergraduate marketing majors (principles of marketing, buyer behavior, marketing research and marketing management), a quick survey of the subject index and text of books commonly used in these classes at both the undergraduate and graduate level revealed two mentions of design as discussed in this paper (Engel, Blackwell, & Miniard, 1986; Kotler, 1991; Pride & Ferrell, 1983; Zikmund, 1991). To be fair (although, hardly scientific) anything that even remotely sounded as if it might touch on design was investigated (management, for example). Kotler's Marketing Management: Analysis. Planning, Implementation and Control (1991, 7th ed.) calls design "the integrating force" of product differentiation qualities: features, performance, conformance, durability, reliability, reparability and style (p. 297). The following three paragraphs from Kotler's (1991, 7th ed.) book reveal all that a business student might learn about design during the course of his or her marketing education.

"All of the foregoing qualities are design parameters. They suggest how difficult the product-design task is, given all the trade-offs that are made. The designer has to figure out how much to invest in feature development, performance, conformance, reliability, reparability, style, and so forth. From the company's point of view, a well-designed product would be easy to manufacture and distribute. From the customer's point of view, a well-designed product would be pleasant to look at, and also easy to open, install, learn how to use, use, repair, and dispose of. The designer has to take all of this into account and follow the maxim "form follows function." The designer has to compromise some of the desirable characteristics. Much depends on knowing how the target market perceives and weighs the different benefits.

Unfortunately, too many companies fail to invest in good design. Some companies confuse design with styling and think that design is a matter of making a product and then putting some fancy casing around it Or they think that reliability is something to catch during inspections rather than designing it into the manufacturing process. They may think of designers as people who pay insufficient attention to cost or who produce designs that are too novel for the market to accept A design audit instrument to measure a company's design sensitivity and effectiveness would help management gauge whether it is adding sufficient value through design.

Several companies are now waking up to design's importance. Ford is an excellent example of a company that improved its process and product design and quality. In Britain, the British Design Council reports that some of its design projects not only have helped British companies increase their sales by more than 100 percent and cut manufacturing costs by 50 percent but have also helped nearly bankrupt companies turn around and vigorously compete with Japanese and West German firms. All said, good design can attract attention, improve performance, cut costs, and communicate value to the intended market." (p. 297)

Kotler (1991) also briefly mentions design in his discussion on image differentia-
tion, regarding symbols, written and audio / visual media, atmosphere, (environments) and events (pp. 300 - 301). Engel, Blackwell, and Miniard's Consumer Behavior (1986, 5th ed.) mention design only in reference to behavior modification in retail (environment) and point-of-purchase design, under the subheading of ecological design (p. 192).

Business schools are starting to realize that design and its management are important to marketing. Last year, Harvard Business School introduced an industrial design case studies class for the first time in its history (Dumaine, 1991). In October, 1989, the Design Management Institute held an exhibition on ''Designing for Product Success" at the Carpenter Center at Harvard University. The project produced thirteen case studies which provided the foundation for teaching design management in business schools. In the exhibition catalog, John R McArthur, dean of the Harvard Business School, says,

"As global competition becomes more intense, new dimensions of competitive strategy have received increasing attention. One of the most important is design and the management of design. Even as recently as five years ago, most managers considered good design almost frivolous. They viewed designers as the people who simply determine the color and overall appearance of a product.

When the success of companies like Braun in Germany or Sony in Japan is analyzed, however, the significance of design to their company's reputation and profitability become clear. Design - from reliable performance to quality appearance - is indeed a crucial competitive weapon. Institutions like the Harvard Business School need to develop the capability to teach future managers and business leaders how to manage design more effectively (Fulton, 1990, p. 5).

Yet, Kotler (1991) gives design and its management approximately one page out
of 756 in a marketing management text. Engel, Blackwell, and Miniard (1986) allot one half-page out of 633 in a consumer behavior text. The marketing principles text and the marketing research text reviewed make no mention at all. Little is being done by either the design schools or the business schools in this country to satisfy the needs of business by filling the gap in both design and marketing management education.

Gorb (1976) discusses the need for filling this gap,

"I define design as 'a plan to make something;' which in a management context is the co-operative achievement of product purpose; and also perhaps information about that purpose. Design management, therefore, is an aspect of the planning process, through which organizations are run. It is my proposition that it should be (but is not now) the central and vital aspect of that process. (p. 40)

Management consultant John Graham (1980) writes, "Once a function gains acceptance in industry, the emphasis shifts from the heroes who gained that acceptance to managers who can effectively integrate the function into the business enterprise. Today, design doesn't need heroes; it needs managers. (p. 39)

Olins (1985) says, "Design is normally regarded as a jobbing task to be commissioned and executed - or not as the case may be - for specific products or showrooms or brochures on a job-by-job basis, as though each is a completely separate task, having no relationship with anything else that emanates from the company.

The idea that design has any kind of overall coherence in a company's life is not just rejected or ignored - it simply doesn't enter anybody's consciousness.... Product design is run by engineers. Communications are run by public relations and marketing people. And in many companies, environments are looked after by the janitor.... There has to be a design manager, who is there to manage design - not to do the designing. He does need to know some knowledge of design, plus tact, sympathy, considerable political awareness and a determination to win. Some designers make good design managers because they understand what design can do. Most, however, don't. The disciplines in which they have been educated rarely bring out management skills. Marketing men, communications men, lawyers, even accountants, can make good design managers. They need to be trained to understand what the objectives are and then encouraged to get on with the job. (pp. 64-69)

Despite the sexist language and a strong disagreement with the notion that even
accountants can make good design managers (anyone but accountants), Olins' point is representative of the design industry. John O'Toole (1980) feels, however, that designers (and other "creatives'') can be effective managers: "It is the harvest of their bizarre minds which is our only real product. And no one is more concerned than they are about the efficient production and marketing of that product" (p. 2).

Gorb (1982) and Olins (1985) agree on the areas from which design managers must be culled. 'The overriding priority in the effective use of design lies in management education, first with existing managers, then in the education of young people preparing for careers in management" (Gorb, 1982, p. 41). Gorb (1986) has also instituted a long-term study investigating the training of design managers already in industry in the U.K

There is very little evidence of design management education taking place currently in the U.S. The Parsons School of Design in New York has begun a program which offers a bachelor's of business administration (B.BA.) in marketing and fashion merchandising (White, 1989). The industrial design case studies course at Harvard Business School was mentioned earlier. These examples are encouraging but are not comprehensive enough to be considered true design management. Peter Gorb might be teaching the only design management class in the world at the London Business School.

The only example of academic initiatives to produce a fully integrated marketing and design management curriculum in the U.S. comes from Colin Clipson, director of the Architecture and Planning Research Laboratory at the University of Michigan. Clipson directed a project called "The Competitive Edge: The Role of Design in American Corporations," a study to research and document the role of various forms of designing in more than 400 businesses in the U.S. and abroad and to identify the strategies by which design can become a central force for improving performance (Clipson, 1990a). The main finding from this project was that there is a lack of inter-professional education and experience at the training level (Clipson, 1990b). Findings from this project were used to develop an experimental course at the University of Michigan that brought together students from the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, the graphic design and industrial design programs in the School of Art, the School of Business Administration, and the College of Engineering in a "real-world" problem-solving situation. Clipson surveyed more than 200 business and design schools in North America and found that not one brought together the education of business, design and engineering students, and none shared a common focus on problem solving and innovation.

In Clipson's (1990b) ''First Things First" experiment, interdisciplinary teams of students were formed as new product groups. The first task assigned was to develop a business plan. A problem that arose almost immediately was difficulty communicating between disciplines. Team members were not accustomed to working outside of their specializations and found it difficult to understand other professional viewpoints. Designers were slow to see the benefits of organizing the project along business lines, and business students were impatient with the need to explore several ideas before testing and eliminating possible directions. Other problems were lack of understanding of total business operations, limited practical management experience and lack of creative problem solving abilities.

The findings from the ''First Things First" experiment were interesting but not altogether surprising. The teams were shocked at the difficulties encountered in "real" project management and the wide gap between theory and practice in this area. Design students had little concept of real world constraints, only a primitive view of how small business works and few management skills. Many design students harbored an anti-business attitude that has long been fostered in design schools. Each professional group had little knowledge of the potential for contributions from other disciplines, and each profession had developed its own language and procedures for dealing with problems, which they found difficult to overcome.

Clipson (l990b) notes in his findings that ''Higher education itself is a major contributor to the problem, not just at the professional level, but much earlier when the arts, sciences and technologies branch in different ways and never meet again except when bridged by creative individuals" (p. 140). Students stressed their lack of contact with other disciplines and the lack of appreciation for the big picture. Generally, the students found the experiment valuable, but felt it contributed too little too late (Walker 1990).

Although it has been demonstrated that designers and managers need to develop better communications and understanding between each other, very little is being done by either design or business education to foster this cooperation. Apart from Peter Gorb at the London Business School in the U.K. and Colin Clipson at the University of Michigan in the U.S., there is little evidence that business schools and design schools are taking notice of the demonstrated need for design management education.

A "Catch-22" situation exists. Business and design schools have shown that they are willing to change to meet the needs of industry. But until marketing managers and designers understand each other's roles, skills and value, they won't see the need for their contributions, and thus, won't require it from higher education.

Ch III Methodology