Let’s Redesign Advertising

	GUEST COLUMN

	July 7, 2009

Let’s Redesign Advertising
By: Ross Popoff-Walker

We experience the digital world as timely, relevant, useful, and personable. I can find out exactly what my friends are doing as they do it via Twitter or Facebook. Or grab directions to a restaurant and concert tickets on the go through my mobile phone. This is how technology (when it works), has fundamentally altered the way we behave, work, and live.

But when it comes to advertising the focus is currently on disrupting culture, not augmenting it, and advertisers have focused on crafting messaging rather meaning. For this industry to thrive as technology continues to shift behavior, and during tough economic times, the model of experience design must move front and center.

As a discipline, User Experience, or UX for short, has been a staple of product and software development for decades. In essence, UX is about designing things for people. As Don Norman puts it, "The whole point of human-centric design is to tame complexity, to turn what would appear to be a complicated tool into one that fits the task, that is understandable, usable, enjoyable.”

UX in its basic form is information architecture: organizing content logically. But at its most potent, experience design has the power to transform brands and products. OXO changed cooking products by emphasizing ergonomics. Nike Plus transformed running through community. The iPhone redefined "mobile phone." All of these examples stem from understanding and designing for peoples' needs.

The vein through which we can transform advertising from a function of marketing teams, to a core piece of the enterprise, lies within human-centric design. It starts by approaching brands, not with an eye for communications, but from the view of an experience designer. After all, consumers can interact with software, or use a physical product. But people have never been able to use a thirty-second spot, or gain value from a billboard ad. And that's the fundamental reason why traditional forms of advertising are in decline: people want meaning, not more messaging.

Experience design focuses on individuals, rather than customer segments, and it levels the playing field between people and brands. Because people want to talk to each other, not to technology, and not to advertising. Just momentarily think about this: if corporations treated individuals like humans, would ads exist?

For decades we’ve been saturated with marketing messages from all angles and channels. Messaging that is surface-y rather than cerebral, comical rather than emotional, and usually based on popular cultural symbols, rather than deeper human truths. What we really long for as individuals are meaningful connections — emotional, personal, and significant moments.

That’s in essence what this cultural shift is all about — not technology, but about humanity. A revolution against the pedantic brand and enterprise-wide efforts we’ve been fed for so long. We don’t want to be talked down to anymore. We want to communicate with other people. Meaning trumps messaging.

After all, some of today's strongest brands, from Whole Foods to Google, have made their way into culture without a dollar spend on ads. They've built permanence by focusing on customer experience. They've designed for people, and that is the treasure chest for any agency moving forward. And this is the mantra: redesign the experience.

Comments

Add Your Comments

Shaun Walker (New Orleans)	on 24 Jul 2009 at 2:42 pm

Ross, Great piece. I'm thrilled more people are beginning to think this way. This is almost exactly the same model my business partner and I set out to create back in December when we founded HERO\|farm. We pride ourselves on being a "Creative Guild" as opposed to an ad agency and like to refer to ourselves as a think tank. Our foundation is based on doing advertising while having a social mission. We work with clients who have admirable missions of their own (such as Project30-90.com, an all-green music festival debuting in New Orleans in September). We don't want to be the biggest or richest agency; we want to be known as the most creative that makes the biggest positive impact on the world. Simply put, we want to make money, of course, but we more importantly we want to do our part in making the world a better place while doing it. Hopefully more and more people start to see the great value in providing true value to others. www.hero-farm.com

Ross Popoff-Walker (Bawston)	on 15 Jul 2009 at 9:08 pm

Britt, thanks for the comment, and yea, I'm racking my brain to think of good examples. I think that's because "brand utility" stuff or marketing as a service, whatever people call it, really blurs likes. Maybe these three: - Bank of America's "keep the change" program - Nike ID and Nike+ - Staples' easy button I think more examples will crop up if/when the ad biz model shifts more. From a traditional world of media buys to close client relationships that give you access to innovate.

Britt Benston (Los Angeles, CA)	on 09 Jul 2009 at 12:27 am

Rather than a redesign of advertising, Ross has not really named any "redesigned advertising" in any of his examples. But this is not a complaint. The examples he named, OXO, Nike and the iPhone, are likely compelling to many ad people. What it means for those of us who love the craft of advertising is that we may have to put that love aside and focus on what people want, which 99% of the time, is not advertising. Great nuts-and-bolts breakdown of the status quo, Ross.

Peter (Boston)	on 08 Jul 2009 at 9:20 pm

Perfect. We can't afford to waste resources...make advertising USEFUL, more than just a message.

Drew (The Trenches)	on 08 Jul 2009 at 5:06 pm

I wish I could staple this to some peoples foreheads.

Robert (NY)	on 07 Jul 2009 at 2:44 pm

Ross Terrific article! I think the idea of advertising giving people "meaningful connections — emotional, personal, and significant moments" would change the industry. The idea that in our quest to fill increasingly empty lives, lives filled with the smoke and mirrors of artificial entertainment experiences and cyber societies that advertising might help fill the void something genuinely meaningful seems counter-intuitive to say the least. But it would be a great step forward for advertising and our society as a whole.

Amelia (Frisco, TX)	on 07 Jul 2009 at 12:08 pm

Great article! Deeper human truths are truly the basis for advertising that works.

Monte (Chicago)	on 07 Jul 2009 at 11:17 am

Ross, Totally spot on. We have to bring things to the table that aren't metaphors and associations with culture, but that add value and meaning to the culture itself. The key component is obviously doing this as ethically and as transparent as possible. - Chris http://monikercreative.com/blog

About the Author
Ross Popoff-Walker

Ross Popoff-Walker joined Modernista! in 2008 to lead user experience at the agency. Previously he worked at Forrester Research, helping clients with youth marketing and web strategy, and at Harmonix on the video-game franchise Guitar Hero. Ross holds a Masters of Entertainment Technology from Carnegie Mellon University. He blogs regularly at http://www.annoyingdesign.org/blog http://www.modernista.com