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From the Trenches: Marketing a Design Firm
Part 3: Beyond Guerrilla: Survivor Marketing
by Joseph Dennis Kelly II

id-ONE of Austin, Texas has learned that traditional word-of-mouth marketing is the best method for expanding and evolving in today's highly competitive design consultancy field.

Since its founding as a one-man virtual firm in 1999 by principal and South African native designer Glen Clifton, id-ONE—specializing in product design, graphic design, icon creation, and product packaging—has flourished because of its holistic philosophy of design and business: Clifton defines this belief as synthesizing all components to work together as one. His diversely skilled ten-member team helps them approach each project with new eyes. The team focuses its energy on carefully listening to each client's voiced and unarticulated product requirements, and attentively follows international business trends in order to strategically respond to emerging marketplace trends in ways that benefit their clients' interests. Their achievements have garnered the firm much respect and admiration in the high-tech industry, recognition that's led to new commissions and clients via recommendations from satisfied former and current clients.

Embracing Change
When American companies began outsourcing mechanical engineering services to Asian firms a few years ago, id-ONE quickly began collaborating with the Asian engineers on their projects. This willingness to buck nationalistic boundaries showed their clients that id-ONE understood the pragmatic side of doing business—of producing the best possible product for the least possible price, unhampered by politicized economics. "When I started," explains Clifton, a 1998 IDEA bronze winner, "most U.S. design firms were 20-40% ID and 60-80% mechanical engineering. Revenue-wise, the firms definitely broke down this way. ID brought in the work, but the real revenue generation was happening in mechanical engineering. In 1999, almost all mechanical engineering work had gone off-shore [because of lower engineering fees and abundant engineering talent abroad]. The only things that weren't being put off-shore were the creative side of things, where the real market value of products has been all along."

Since companies will always pursue the source that offers the best possible service for the least cost, Clifton says design firms need to be more responsive and inventive to survive. What's been stripped out of the consulting design industry over the past five years is the fat and the padding," says Clifton, who emigrated to Austin in 1994 to work for the mechanical engineering firm 4D, for whom he founded and managed an ID component before leaving to start-up id-ONE in 1999. He explains that the typical design firm's organizational structure has been redefined over the past decade. ID Firms, he says, are now approximately 80% ID/creative and 20% mechanical. For Clifton and his id-ONE team, this change meant evolving the firm's staff mix to concentrate more on our core creative/innovative value (what we call the 'secret weapon') and reaching out to engineers and designers on the ground in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong to do the trench work.

Synthesized Performance
Changing id-ONE's dynamic mix has proven a positive and pragmatic solution: Change has enabled the firm to mature its holistic principles by working with other firms on one project and offered the id-ONE team with opportunities to learn new skills that make the firm more competitive and more efficient. As a result, id-ONE's close-knit team is stacked with individuals with diverse specializations each of whom are capable of serving as generalists. This has allowed the firm to increase its project load—especially smaller projects—without the burden of expanding its team or overburdening its designers with too much work. The result is that designers are more quickly able to respond to customer inquires, creating stronger personalized ties with clients and higher levels of client loyalty. Satisfied clients, in turn, pass on the good word of id-ONE to their peers. These referrals have generated more project work and new client contacts than any marketing initiative ever could.

The firm's first two years where exactly what Clifton wanted: He operated in the days of the over optimistic dot.com haze as a single-employee virtual firm that depended on a network of other virtual design firms to obtain the services he needed to complete project commissions. Despite operating under-the-radar and practicing anti-marketing during that period in order to develop its portfolio, craft a credible firm story, and acquire new skills, id-ONE—between 1999 and 2001—completed 6 large and 144 small projects. Client satisfaction quickly resulted in word-of-mouth referrals that led to commissions from startups to Fortune 500 giants, including Xplore Technologies, Lumatec, and Dell, with whom the firm recently won a 2004 Appliance Manufacturer award.

With the crash of the dot.com craze, Clifton moved the firm from his home into a professional office and proceeded to hire three full-time employees to accommodate an increase in commissions that came from previous client referrals. In its third year, between 2001 and 2002, id-ONE completed 6 large and 200 small projects. In addition to the benefit of leaving work behind at the end of the day, Clifton quickly learned that an office improved project team communication, provided employees with an environment conducive to increasing output and productivity.

During the following two years, from 2002 through 2004, id-ONE increased its staff to 10, moved into a larger office, and completed nearly 40 large projects and more than 1,000 small projects. Clifton credits his firm's expansion to the ability of id-ONE designers: They are known for carefully listening to clients and delivering designs that are exactly what the client wants and expects. More significant, the collective ability of id-ONE designers to hear and observe their clients has resulted in repeat business and numerous referrals. A client's body language, Clifton continues, conveys a client's requirements and expectations as much as words do.


Initiating Expansion
Two office routines that have helped the staff maintain its passion for design and for finding innovative project solutions are id-ONE's weekly design lunches—a designer show-n-tell—and frequent in-house mock design commissions. These two routines—giving the firm a think tank component—feed each other. The shared activities unify the staff and give the firm an outlet for diversifying its portfolio and developing its capabilities. The projects discussed during the lunches frequently spring-board the parameters for the mock commissions. These two routines also help designers get on the same page about design ideas. Once completed, the commissions often become postcard projects that the firm sends—in addition to occasional press releases—to everyone on its mailing list: former, current, and potential clients, as well as members of the press, professional organizations, and other related entities.


What's key about the postcards is that they show former and current clients other ways in which id-ONE could serve them. The postcards also demonstrate to non-high-tech companies the capabilities of the firm, and offer these companies fresh product ideas that these potential clients may not be considering. This diversifying of id-ONE's portfolio and professional image combats what Clifton identifies as the firm's most significant market vulnerability: too much recognition as a high-tech design consulting firm. This initiative has generated some non-high-tech work, such as the Pilates bed the firm recently designed for PeakPilates. The in-house commissions also give id-ONE a group of potential competition submissions, which further expand its name based on the quality of its work, rather than the cool or shock value of its self-branding.


Envisioning a Pragmatic Future
"Design is a business," asserts Clifton, who says that U.S. businesses are only beginning to wake up to design and its significance in increasing product sales. In his view, the future of design will bring opportunities for designers to gain market credibility with U.S. businesses because, he believes, businesses are going to recognize how dependent they are on designers. He believes that designers will sit on the boards of large companies and that more designers will operate their own firms. He sees designers more directly involved in the selling of the products they create. He predicts designer/manufacturer partnerships will become more common. And he thinks project fees will often include product royalties for designers.

Clifton sees that a progressive era in U.S. design is only beginning now to take shape, thanks in part to the ground-breaking work of Target, Wal-Mart, Michael Graves, and Philippe Starck. These institutions, he says, have paved the way for other designers to forge a stamp on big business. By raising the product expectation of U.S. consumers, and subsequently nurturing their design savvy, U.S. designers will soon be pushing manufacturers to bring to market products that surpass simple function and base survival. From this, Clifton sees a future where design will emerge as a kind of work of art—a kind of cultural artifact—that everyone can enjoy. Design is a process of appreciation, he says, through which civilizations can evolve. "We can't all own a Henry Moore," notes Clifton, "but we can all own a Michael Graves teapot. And that feels good."

Clifton is quick to note that the business of design is not the business of fine art. "Starving artist is a true term," he says. "Industrial Designers need to learn how to design the product as a component of business, i.e. assist in designing the business itself. To create design is to bring value to people’s lives. However id-ONE designs because we live in a capitalist society and we are trying to sell more and better products. There has to be a balance—we never lose sight of this. Marketing takes a while to build. There is no silver bullet. If there was, everyone would use it. Marketing success is a matter of meeting the right person at the right time in their business cycle." It’s a challenge that id-ONE passionately embraces.


Other articles in the series:
Part 1: Green Desire (Profile of Jamie Salm)
Part 2: Making the Leap (Profile of Jeff Miller)

From the Trenches is a six-part series that examines the methods contemporary design firms use to communicate their business mission and design philosophy through their marketing initiatives and public relations activities. Each of the first five installments focuses on a firm at a particular stage of evolution. Installments one and two presented design firms under two-years-old, the first operated by a recent design school graduate, the second by an established industry pro now striking out on his own. The third installment features a five-year-old firm embracing traditional marketing methods to forge a powerful presence in the high-tech industry. Installment four will look at a firm between 10-and-12 years old; installment five, a firm with more than 15 years of industry experience. The final installment will sum up the previous five with the intent of bringing clarity to the marketing and public relations methods that contemporary design firms use with an eye towards comparing these methods against those employed by firms who are battling for a competitive edge in other innovative industries.


Philadelphia-based journalist Joseph Dennis Kelly II specializes in covering architecture and design. A graduate of the University of the Arts and the Home & Design editor of Philadelphia Style magazine, his work has appeared in I.D. (International Design), Metropolis, Architectural Record, Architecture, Architectural Lighting (forthcoming), World Architecture, ICON, Interior Design, and Clear. He also provides strategic writing and editing services to clients working internationally in the architectural and design fields. He can be reached at jdkelly.kellycomm@verizon.net

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