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October 2007 - Strategy Magazine
Special report

Design's new blueprint

by By Natalia Williams
page 38

Arthur Fleishmann, president of Toronto agency John St., which is behind the latest campaigns for the Bay, became a believer in the possibilities of design thinking about two years ago.

It happened during a one-day workshop on the strategy led by Heather Fraser, director of the design initiative at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, whose notable C.V. also includes a stint as partner at Toronto agency Taxi and 10 years working the client side at P&G. "She helped articulate what we were thinking all along," says Fleishmann, who was accompanied by the agency's senior management team that day, "which was that agencies have an opportunity to elevate their role in problem-solving, similar to companies like IDEO or Jump, through far deeper and broader thinking than they typically exercise." Fraser agreed, he recalls, but suggested that staffing be bold and include non-traditional agency people and, most importantly, go beyond hiring one or two tokens.

True to his new philosophy, in November 2006 Fleishmann acquired Amoeba, a Toronto-based design firm that made a mark designing the logo for the Molson Canadian "I am Canadian" campaign, and with which Fleishmann had worked since the early 90s. "I loved the way they tackled things," he says. "They came at projects with a three-dimensional perspective."

That thinking, embraced by big marketers like P&G and Apple, appropriates the way designers, from graphic to architectural, are trained to approach problems and projects. The whittled-down definition? Putting the needs of the consumer first. "Intuitively, that's how designers work," says Fleishmann. "They think about ergonomics and the physical interface between the person and product and the brand. They come at things very much from the user experience - how the person engages with the brand, the experience.

"We think that designers can solve the problem, not just make the execution better," he adds.

"Design is a hot word," says Fraser, but agencies and marketers who view it as simply graphic design are "way out of date." In addition to helping create the design thinking curriculum for the university's MBA program, Fraser says over 500 executives from some of North America's biggest brands have gone through her workshops.

What's making design so sexy? A mix of social factors including globalization, the rapid pace of new technology and an increasingly sophisticated consumer who demands more than a low price point from products. "Product [innovation] peaks out," she says. "How much better can you make shampoo or a chocolate bar?"

That reality is forcing marketers to be "way more broad-minded about how they innovate," says Fraser, shifting focus to end results far deeper than the simple product. It's a more human approach to innovation, she adds, because it's less about strategy and more about "creating real value" for the benefit of the consumer.

And it's an approach Fraser is putting to use practically as well. The Rotman designworks arm brings together MBA and Ontario College of Art and Design students to tackle real client problems from the Princess Margaret Hospital (which has asked for help creating a better hospital experience for cancer patients) and the North/South project (which aims to teach artisans in Mexico how to better market their products to the world).

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