Fresh Perspectives
Experience Design Studio Leader and Innovation Practice Lead
Steve has more than 20 years of innovation and marketing consulting experience and drives the firm’s innovation practice. Steve is an “experience strategist”, believing that the most effective way for companies to deepen relationships with their customers involves the development of emotionally meaningful experiences, be it through branding or product usage. Such experiences constitute the cornerstone of effective brand and product innovation in an era of rapid technological change.
Steve is the co-author, with Cheskin CEO Darrel Rhea and experience designer Nathan Shedroff, of the book “Making Meaning.” Recent clients include: Cablevision, The Washington Post, Gannett, Mastercard, Microsoft, Scientific American, AAA, and Weight Watchers.
Prior to joining Cheskin, Steve was responsible for media research at Continental Bank. He has also been a professor at Columbia College, Chicago teaching courses on advertising and marketing psychology, social marketing, market research, media, and political propaganda. Steve owns a film production company and has produced and directed several feature films.
28 March 2009
A client focused on understanding a global markeplace asked me recently about the likely impact of the recession on obtaining consumer insights. It’s difficult to know exactly how the current economic situation will show up in our work. It's essential to know how to listen to people in the context of their lives, of course, so the question is very timely.
We can anticipate that it could play out in a few ways, including:
1. People may be holding off on purchases. Because we know this is happening in the US, we can adjust recruiting so that, if people are intending to purchase relevant items in the next year (normally, we’d look for those planning on doing so in the next six months), they will qualify to participate.
2. People may be re-thinking the pricepoint they’re willing to consider for the relevant product category. We can’t predict the extent to which this is true, but we can detect it through the questions we ask respondents. Their sense of how their price sensitivity has changed over the last year isn’t entirely reliable, but at minimum, we can get a good read on how pricepoint is influencing their choices.
3. People may be re-thinking brand. Here too, respondents’ sense of how brand appeal is changing isn’t entirely reliable, but nonetheless, it’s important to dig up what is influencing their thinking currently.
It’s important to keep in mind that purchase timing, price sensitivity and, to a lesser extent, brand preference, are always subject to change under pressure of changing circumstances. Experiential preferences, however, are generally not, except in the broad sweep of a person’s lifestages. For instance, an individual may want to pay less than in the past, but their desire for excitement and accomplishment (two high-level experiences) is unlikely to be fundamentally altered by an economic downturn. Since the most valuable perspectives on people are grounded in the experiences people seek, our task will be to unearth enduring experiential preferences.
Posted in
Meaningful Experience
by Steve Diller, 0 comments
23 March 2009
Not surprisingly, we've focused a great deal of our attention on IP surrounding customer experiences so our clients can compete more effectively. If you have a clear understanding of the full range of experiences your customer might seek from Product Category X, you're in a much better position to design solutions around the ones that matter most, providing the basis for an enduring competitive advantage.
Increasingly, however, we're also looking closer to home- the experiences our customers/clients seek from working with us. Too often, consulting firms focus only on problem-solving. We feel that, while this is a necessary pre-condition, it's an insufficient approach to delivering optional value. The key moving forward is "transformation."
At its core, this means we're seeking to ignite our clients’ ability to confidently and profitably transform their world. This can involve transforming their organizations’ ability to nurture innovation. Or, transforming the way markets perceive the value they deliver. Or, given our heritage, transforming their customers’ experience in a way that produces long-term competitive advantage. Or all of the above.
In addition to our corporate clients' experiences with us, there's always the more personal aspect of the engagement- the way it feels to work together. Towards that end, we're working to transform individual clients' experience of working with a consulting firm, bringing excitement, surprise, and some fun, to every interaction they have with us. Thinking about the career and other relevant personal objectives of clients also seems essential moving forward.
If a firm sees itself as an experience provider, rather than as a problem-solver, the implications range from complete re-designs of offerings to a transformation of each interaction. In other words, a total re-imagining of objectives as well as tools. Cheskin has always been in a state of re-invention, and this move toward more transformational experiences will continue that process.
Posted in
Meaningful Experience
by Steve Diller, 0 comments
6 March 2009
Anytime you release ideas into the world, we know they take on a life of their own. What's surprised me recently is how true this is for "old" media, as well as the new social stuff.
Darrel Rhea and I co-wrote a book with Nathan Shedroff, "Making Meaning," a few years back. Our publisher, New Riders, was a known quantity- Nathan had worked with them before. Overall, we had a good experience with them during production. Once the book was finished, they helped put on a great event/book signing. After that, they kind of went quiet. They responded to orders, of course, and we enjoyed watching the books sort-of fly out the door. But there wasn't a big, global promotional push. Given that, it's surprising where the book and its ideas have lodged over time.
More...
Posted in
Meaningful Experience
by Steve Diller, 0 comments
24 February 2009
This winter, I’ve been teaching a “Marketing Insights Studio” course in California Academy of the Arts’ new Design MBA program. The idea of a design-oriented MBA may surprise some people, but the logic is impeccable. Just like we have MBA programs that specialize in marketing, like Northwestern’s, or finance, like the University of Chicago’s, it makes sense to train business people with a focus on the design of experiences and offerings. What’s surprising about the course for me is the ubiquitous suspicion of marketing from students who in fact are the unwitting inheritors of marketing ideas.
More...
Posted in
Innovation & Design
by Steve Diller, 0 comments
27 July 2008
Many of us offering innovation consulting services are engaged in a relentless debate about the concept. For some of us, "innovation" is about fresh product concepts. Others focus on a broader agenda that includes re-inventing corporate structures. Yet others argue from a more ephemeral standpoint, concentrating on the dynamics of creativity.
Whichever approach you're taking, if you're playing in the space, you're trying to define the nature of this "innovation" thing, because the stakes are so high. If we can get clarity, we can direct all our resources to developing the optimal solutions.
More...
Posted in
Innovation & Design
by Steve Diller, 0 comments
20 July 2008
In the last decade or so, it seems like marketing departments have come to see "ideating" as a core test of their coolness and creativity. Since few of us in business maintain parallel careers as artists, this expectation creates anxiety about corporate managers' capacity to be creative on demand. The success or failure of an ideation session often seems focused on whether people's inner creatives were liberated, that the session had been fun and cool, and that the experience produced novel, far-out ideas. While I enjoy creative thinking exercises as much anyone, I think these expectations are way out of whack. The thing is, when it comes to success in the marketplace, creativity isn't what matters. Relevance is what matters.
More...
Posted in
Innovation & Design
by Steve Diller, 0 comments
1 March 2007
The New York Times recently predicted the beginning of the end of "American Idol." The writer confidently anticipated that, because voting for your favorite singer is so easy, it therefore has no meaning and would soon lose any value it may have. If only he were right.
The idea that something has value to the extent that it requires sacrifice is a familiar one in economics. But, like many assumptions of the "dismal science," such as the idea of rational actors, this concept is seriously flawed.
Anthropology (and our work at Cheskin) shows that in the real world, "value" doesn't come from cost, it comes from significance. As long as people find meaning and/or entertainment in "American Idol," they're likely to vote, easy or not.
More...
Posted in
Meaningful Experience
by Steve Diller, 0 comments
11 January 2006
When you try to re-imagine any practice, you generally have to re-purpose language. The reason for this is simple- all words have connotations and a history of usage that invariably reinforces earlier concepts. New ideas need new language to bring them to life.
Take "meaning" in life. We view it as "that which gives us a sense of the value of our lives." This is the conventional definition in religion, anthropology and other social sciences. Unfortunately, it's NOT the definition of the word in marketing. When marketers got their hands on this word, they generally used it as a way to express "importance" of any kind.
More...
Posted in
Meaningful Experience
by Steve Diller
16 December 2005
When you write a book, you pay a little more attention to what other people are writing. You also pay attention to the way their books are being promoted.
We just received notice of a new book on "cult" brands that claiimed it was "the most original book on the subject ever written." That's a pretty questionable claim, of course. And even if it's true, you have to wonder about the originality of a book that's promoted using old-style, hype-oriented language to get and keep one's attention. But what's actually happening here?
More...
Posted in
Positioning & Branding
by Steve Diller
30 November 2005
A friend recently emailed me to point out an apparent contradiction in "Making Meaning," the book I co-wrote that's out in late December, and a recent blog of mine. The blog, entitled "How Cheskin Destroyed Civilization as We Knew It," argued that Louis Cheskin came up with the idea for the modern fast food restaurant as a revolutionary "casual dining" concept. The result, eventually, was a decline in the idea of "formal" anything, dining or otherwise.
My friend noted that, in the book, we argued that business thinkers don't really invent revolutionary ideas, they just respond to what's already there.
More...
Posted in
Meaningful Experience
by Steve Diller, 0 comments
26 October 2005
One advantage in writing a book about meaningful experiences was the opportunities it provided to plumb the depths of Cheskin's history. It's a pretty illustrious history, with engagements that often had impacts far beyond what Louis Cheskin, our founder, might have anticipated. It also has implications for all of us who work to enhance customer experiences.
A particularly interesting example was his work with McDonald's. The historical documentation indicates that, back when that company was seeking to expand more quickly, its management hit on the idea of altering the legal definition of their establishments, from "hamburger stands" to "restaurants."
More...
Posted in
Innovation & Design
by Steve Diller
25 January 2005
As I've mentioned in an earlier entry (I think), I've been writing a book on the design of meaningful experiences with Nathan Shedroff and Darrel Rhea. We're at the point now where the book's largely written, and we're in discussions with a few select publishers.
One of them has noted that business book publishing is "in the toilet." Apparently, the bursting of the bubble in 2001 burst much of the enthusiasm for innovative (or supposedly-innovative) ways of thinking about business practice. A "back to basics" movement, whose symptoms include such trivialities as having people wear ties again, supposedly rejects "newness" in general.
More...
Posted in
Innovation & Design
by Steve Diller
10 August 2004
I had the dubious pleasure of some laser eye surgery last week. The design of the experience of eye enhancement has undoubtedly come a long way in the last few years.
The Nob Hill boutique I went to, plush in a mid-century style, seems designed to simultaneously create feelings of comfort and trust. That's less easy than it seems. After all, comfort and technological sophistication often appear to be near-opposites, with tech's focus on dymamism, and comfort's cushier, slower style.
More...
Posted in
Innovation & Design
by Steve Diller
23 May 2004
I've been working on a book, in collaboration with Nathan Shedroff, on Designing Meaningful Experiences. The process of pulling our ideas together has been hugely exciting and stimulating. One key aspect of the work has involved trying to read everything I can get my hands on on design, meaning, and experience. A lot to deal with, I know.
We realized that there'd be a lot of verbiage to work through, and wasn't disappointed. Massive amounts of information are available on all three areas. What surprised me was the frequent lack of sophistication in the business arena on all three subjects, compared to the academic press.
More...
Posted in
Innovation & Design
by Steve Diller, 0 comments
5 May 2004
Just came back from an incredible week in Shanghai. The reconstruction of the city is arguably the most important urban design initiative since the rebuilding of Paris in the 1800s. Undeniably glamorous, the new Shanghai is consciously, centrally-designed, to project an image of the ultimate in internationalism. Architecture is about as out-there as one can find anywhere. Greenbelts make the city both attractive and the most environmentally progressive in China.
In a way, the Chinese Communists have found a formula that has allowed them to become the ultimate modernists, something always promised by Marxism but rarely seen in previous Communist regimes. And yet.
More...
Posted in
Innovation & Design
by Steve Diller, 0 comments
1 April 2004
Thomas Friedman had an interesting column in the New York Times this morning about a dilemma Mexico is facing. When the country signed NAFTA, the leadership there may have assumed that they could take advantage of free trade with the US by offering low-wage manufacturing labor to multinationals. Now, however, free trade with the rest of the world is increasingly shutting Mexican labor out of the market. Turns out China and India can compete even more effectively on labor prices.
Mexico's elite seems to have made the mistake of assuming that, in a dynamic market, they could simply select a niche for themselves and focus only on that. Meanwhile, they may have missed more enduring advantages. Just as the Indian government never realized that its training of engineers, English in the schools, and a consistent legal system could ever lead to being the back-office of the world, Mexico doesn't seem to appreciate the value of its culture in moving forward.
More...
Posted in
by Steve Diller, 0 comments
2 September 2003
I had the privilege to be the keynote speaker at the ASTECH Conference in Vail, CO last week. ASTECH is a yearly get-together of no-nonsense newspaper executives concerned about the nuts and bolts of profitability. They're very smart people, being asked to do the impossible.
As in much of post-bubble American business, these execs are being told to obtain measurable results from any particular action they take. So, for instance, if a new advertising campaign is undertaken, the agency has to be able to show what the impact was on the paper's sales. "Put out X ads, obtain Y dollars more than you put in" is the idea.
No one can seriously argue with the goals here- to waste less money and to obtain a return on investment. On the other hand, there's a fundamental challenge when one attempts to measure the value of something removed from its context.
When an ad is placed, its impact can't be understood purely in terms of "dollars in, dollars out," because the ad doesn't operate in isolation. It's like asking what part of a car's speed is determined by its gas tank. Clearly, the tank contributes in a manner that's determined in part by its quality. But which part of the car's speed is produced by the tank alone?
Because agencies can't easily demonstrate ROI in isolation, increasing numbers of newspaper companies are dropping advertising in favor of direct marketing. There's a certain irony here, since papers are simultaneously dependent for their existence on advertising, but that's another story.
Will branding be next? Design? Ultimately, the core question revolves around whether companies in fact reap rewards from communicating meaningful characteristics about their products to consumers, if they can't be precisely measured. It would be a far greater irony if the news media became the first industry to conclude that communicating doesn't pay.
Posted in
Positioning & Branding
by Steve Diller
4 August 2003
Journalists despairing of ever attracting young adults to newspapers and magazines have been theorizing lately that one major problem is navigation. It's assumed that young people can't make sense of the organizing principle of newspapers, since they've supposedly been conditioned to look for the menu on websites.
Is menu-driven navigation truly what young people prefer? Maybe. But right now, it looks a little like a substitute for hard thinking about content. If we really want to effectively serve readers, it might be worth some investigation. It should be a simple matter to study which models of navigation are most appealing to different generations, and gravitate toward the ones that are most useful to younger people. Until that work is done, though, we'll just be speculating.
Posted in
by Steve Diller
© 2007 Cheskin Added Value
