Making your own success

Set-up every project as a potential DEA entry. So by the time you get your results, you’ll already have a rough entry #dbaDEA

Good entries tell a story #dbaDEA

Each DEA entry is judged on its own merit, you’re being measured on what you’ve written in your own case study #dbaDEA

Why context is key 

Context is a key part of a design effectiveness awards entry. Without it the judges find it difficult to understand the measures #dbaDEA

Market context gives your case study the credibility and lets the results shine through #dbaDEA

Extrapolating design’s impact

What are the other influencing factors? Without clarity around this area you leave your case study open to interpretation #dbaDEA

Give yourself enough time to prove that it’s the design that’s driven your success, not other factors #dbaDEA

The judges

The #dbaDEA judges are a panel of business experts, they’re primed and ready to analyse your business case http://bit.ly/1UGx2y5 

The industry you’re in isn’t an issue, a CMO in finance might judge a piece of industrial design work – it’s about the business case #dbaDEA

Judges want to see the agency/client partnership through a holistic approach to story telling in your case study #dbaDEA

Words of wisdom

Words of wisdom from Ian of creative agency @ThompsonBP @HarrogateSpring #dbaDEA

• Help your client understand what matters about this product.
• Be the voice of reason when they’re in the thick of it.
• Do the homework.
• Give them the confidence to be themselves.
• Encourage them to use their own creativity.

On creating successful #dbaDEA entries @theyardcreative says: designer led research adds great value to the end product

Advice from Paul of @allotmentbrand: “Focus and agree on hard measures of what success looks like right from the start” #dbaDEA

Parting shot

Effective design is for business survival, not just a pretty trophy #dbaDEA

What to measure?

Download this guide for: tips on evaluating data on design effectiveness. What statistics should you gather for different types of projects? 

Download the guide.

Effectiveness case studies

Read the case studies of previous DEA winners. These will illustrate design effectiveness through the project objectives, evaluate the outcome against those objectives, and demonstrate that design made a specific contribution to the project’s commercial success.
Hone your own case study, read the examples.

Clean your hands!

The ‘cleanyourhands’ campaign wiped away the competition taking the Grand Prix at the 2005 DBA Design Effectiveness Awards.

The campaign was the first of its kind, aiming to improve hand hygiene on a national level across the NHS, in order to reduce incidence of avoidable infections such as MRSA. The objective was to make sure NHS staff cleaned their hands correctly at the right time in the right place, preventing potentially life-threatening healthcare associated infections.

Research had shown that hospital staff (on average) were cleaning their hands less than half the number of times they should. With healthcare associated infection causing at least 5,000 deaths a year and 30% of infections preventable, this poor level of hand hygiene was placing patients’ lives in danger. 

The award winning ‘cleanyourhands’ campaign, with its clear and simple messages and bold, eye-catching designs, initially piloted in six acute trusts and delivered a massive 241% increase in hand hygiene compliance in hospitals by engaging and empowering patients to take an unprecedented level of voluntary involvement in improving hospital hygiene and in changing the hand hygiene behaviour of healthcare staff.

Following the National Patient Safety Agency and Lucid Design’s ‘cleanyourhands’ pilot campaign, NHS trusts across England and Wales signed up.

Tackling a silent killer

Brand and communications agency The Team, worked with the Gas Safe Register to create a life-saving campaign that went on to win Gold at the 2014 DBA Design Effectiveness Awards. 

Following checks on the safety of gas appliances in 1,616 homes in the North West of England, the Gas Safe Register found that nearly one in five were unsafe and posed an immediate threat – potentially resulting in gas explosions, fires, escapes or CO poisoning if left unchecked.

Too many people were failing to have their gas appliances checked. Gas Safe Register needed a high-profile campaign to assert their role in helping change the behaviour of people towards gas safety for good.

But how do you make an invisible, odourless and tasteless threat live in the mind of the target audience?

It was not a simple design challenge presented to agency The Team, who had to get into the heads of ‘a cynical and complacent audience’ set, and then convince them to do something about it. They needed to motivate the audience to question their own complacent behaviour.

Using the single-minded, emotive idea of ‘The Silent Killer’ enabled The Team to create a ‘suspense thriller theme’ that worked across all creative assets. Every design asset was carefully crafted from this central idea. The Silent Killer is an enduring solution that has found a way into the hearts and minds of a previously dismissive audience.

The campaign hit home: in the period June-September 2012, only 6% of the target audience (dismissive, skeptic households in the NW of England) claimed they had had their gas appliances checked. This increased to 18% in just five months following the campaign – a threefold increase, and a dramatic change in consumer behaviour.

This equates to an additional 53,424 households protecting themselves from the devastating impact of unsafe gas work and appliances – and (with one in five inspections on average identifying unsafe gas works or appliances) in effect translates to 10,600 households that were potentially at immediate risk of harm, motivated to get their home’s gas safety checked as a result of The Silent Killer campaign.

Read The Silent Killer case study in full here.

A pearl of an idea

New legislation, introduced in 2015, saw shoppers in large stores charged 5p for every plastic carrier bag they used. It was something of a headache for Booths, as for other multiple retailers, throwing up compliance, tax and customer communications issues that the business could well do without.

As Booths’ design partner Smith&+Village says, “Gnarly issues like this often prove to be the grit in the oyster that makes a pearl of an idea.”

Their solution to this challenge for Booths is a classic example of how creative design thinking can turn a problem into something unexpectedly successful: how effective design can be a money-spinner.

The fabric bags they designed in response have attitude, are loved by consumers and have become true icons of the brand. The five designs combine simple typography with Northern wit, turning humble carriers into walking billboards that owners use day-in, day-out. Customers are now promoting the brand in ways Booths’ minimal advertising budget couldn’t have stretched to. Although this is a path well trodden by high-end retailers, it was not one that more every day retailers like supermarkets had ever ventured down in a deliberate way.

Smith&+Village’s simple idea to implement that strategy, to introduce fabric bags that become icons of the Booths brand, rather than just things to put shopping in, has had a remarkable effect on the perception of the brand and on its bottom line.

Sales of their fabric bags are up 510% since their introduction, generating sales worth over £230,000 in 12 months and essentially creating a new product category, where there had not previously been one. For every £1 invested in design, £9 has been received back in sales so far.

Read the DBA Design Effectiveness Award winning case study in full here.

Quantifying the value of the design

The visual power of the concept is derived from the inverted ‘catwalk’: literally an upside-down catwalk ceiling feature with shoes strutting the length of the store and up the shopfront; and has become Dune’s iconic feature. Looking appealing, welcoming, and easy to shop, it’s all about customer engagement.

The arresting visual appeal stops people in their tracks; and although it’s hard to measure visual impact empirically, thereafter measuring customer engagement is simple enough; and may be considered in two ways. Firstly, the number of potential customers can easily be captured using footfall counters.

Once potential customers are in the store, the concept focuses on improved customer experience, shop-ability, and practical effectiveness for the retailer. Here the second measurable deliverable, customer conversion, is calculated through sales: which, with modern EPOS till equipment, can be measured as an overall turnover figure against store size; or divided into product categories to measure their relative growth. In these ways, quantifying the value of the design and its commercial impact becomes evident.

Business is booming

Dune’s new-concept stores are booming: with an average 58% increase in sales by £/sq ft. Footfall counts are up: measured at a staggering 70% per quarter higher than old concept. While the improved customer experience and product showcasing has delivered 30% increased sales in accessories and men’s shoe ranges. In addition, using compound data, dwell time and numbers of returning customers have also increased – building brand loyalty.

Dune and Four-by-Two’s winning Design Effectiveness Award submission can be viewed in full here. 

Thought followership

Despite the volume of thought leadership that is created, not all of it delivers as it should do. A recent survey by Thoughtworks360 found that less than a third of organisations who invest in thought leadership successfully generate leads and close business from it.

This is not because thought leadership does not work. Done well, it can be highly effective, but it must be done well. Much of what presents itself as thought leadership is uninspired, “me-too” thinking. It is bland “content” that fills space but offers little genuine insight, much less leadership. In doing so it can do more harm than good to an agency’s reputation. 

Why does this happen? After all, this is the creative industry. Day in, day out we conceive and implement brilliant ideas that transform clients’ businesses – thought leadership ought to be second nature to us. To some extent the issue is that agencies are so devoted to client delivery that we lack time and attention for our own self-promotion. 

Conception, creation, distribution

Yet the issue is about more than mere lack of resource; it is also about skills. There is a subtle but critical difference between creating thought leadership for clients, and creating it for ourselves. Whilst we are typically experts in our clients’ businesses and issues, we tend to lack the broader industry perspective required to conceive the right topics. It also requires production skills – typically editorial writing – that we lack. Whilst we may be accomplished at crafting on-pack copy or compelling ad copy we tend to lack the editorial writing skills that are needed for thought leadership. Finally, B2B content distribution is a skill little in demand at most creative agencies, but is essential if any potential clients are going to see our carefully conceived and crafted thought leadership.

Many agencies choose to bring in experts to help them conceive, create and distribute thought leadership. Yet, it can be done in-house. The skills can be learnt. In the latest DBA – Red Setter Guide we detail the three key stages – conception, creation, distribution – that will result in distinctive, ownable material that will contribute to your reputation as a genuine thought leader and so help grow your agency.

Agency transformation

Thought leadership is not a short cut to agency growth and it is hard work. Yet, high quality thought leadership not only has the potential to deliver short term returns; perhaps more important is the longer-term shifts that on-going thought leadership creates in the way agencies are viewed by clients, employees, and peers, as well as by future employees and clients. 

We worked with a top-five agency which presented a fresh view of the future of the spirits market in an article in a drinks industry publication and then emailed it as a PDF to potential new clients. It got them in front of one of the main global drinks players, and they picked up the brief to create a more contemporary visual identity for one of the world’s most famous spirits brands. 

And a thought leadership article we developed with a small regional agency, following months of researching the UK’s further education market, was used by the Times Educational Supplement as a cover story, and led to an event attended by dozens of education marketers and addressed by our client. The agency picked up significant new business as a result. 

Done right, thought leadership can be powerful

If the potential of thought leadership seems enticing, but the time required seems intimidating or inconceivable, consider instead how you can create an agency of thought leaders. The agencies that do this most successfully, do not rely on just one person. They instil a culture where everyone is involved in the ongoing conception, creation and distribution of thought leadership. The agencies that begin this process today, will be tomorrow’s industry success stories. 

Design in context

Design is central to the British economy, helping to drive innovation and improve productivity. Recent research by the Design Council shows that the design economy alone contributes 7.2 percent to the total UK economy.

Central to the submission is the message that ‘Design does not exist in isolation’. It works across all levels of the economy, allowing for innovation to take place in sectors ranging from agriculture to robotics. As Britain prepares to leave the European Union, it is vital that design is seen both as a major contributor to the British economy in its own right, as well as a driver for growth in terms of both commercialising innovation and manufacturing.

Member consultation

In order to secure the best possible outcome for the UK economy, the DBA, APDIG and BIDA held an open consultation with the design sector, requesting their views on how the Industrial Strategy should work to:

• Embed design principles at the heart of British industry

• Promote R&D funding and tax credits for innovative companies and contractors

• Work towards a targeted sector deal for the creative industries

• Give people access to education and training to develop the skills needed for the industries of the future

• Develop Britain’s infrastructural capacities by investing in reliable communications, transport and energy

In carrying out this consultation – the DBA, APDIG and BIDA asked six open questions to members. Full details of which can be read in the submission. 

The role of design

The DBA, APDIG and BIDA’s submission calls for the Government to think carefully about the role of design and its potential contribution to a positive future for the British economy.

In developing a good working relationship with the design profession, the new Industrial Strategy can work to support and reward this vital sector of the economy, giving it the potential to grow itself, and to facilitate the development of businesses in both a sectoral and regional way.

The submission also calls for the Industrial Strategy to recognise the unique characteristics and tendencies associated with the design sector. In particular:

• It’s a diverse sector comprised of a range of firms, ranging from large-scale conglomerates to microbusinesses and independent consultants.

• Design is often under-represented in statistics and government discussions owing to its ‘hidden’ nature, oftentimes within other sectors of the economy. IBM, for example, employs 1600 designers in-house in the UK but they are included within the employment statistics of the Technology Sector and not Design.

• Growing the UK’s manufacturing base by improving or creating new and innovative products which has a major knock-on benefit to their supply chains and the export potential of growing businesses.

• It encompasses nearly all sectors of the economy – from agriculture to management to robotics and AI.

• Design is a cross-cutting enabler in business – working from the inside out across the entire supply chain for major manufacturing projects.

• Crowdfunding increasingly forms part of the business plan for many businesses and agencies.

• It’s a sector in which UK is world-leading and which also provides a huge amount of ‘soft power’.

The submission outlines that in all these areas design is the perfect sector to assist in increasing the UK’s competitive nature – achieved both in terms of itself, as well as designers working to increase efficiency and drive innovation for other sectors of the economy.

You can read the submission in full here.

With thanks to all those who contributed valuable comment to the consultation.

Further information on the Government's Industrial Strategy

In January, the Government announced a consultation into building a new industrial strategy, where the public sector works with private companies to promote economic development. The initial views of the government outlining the way forward have been published as a so-called Green Paper, which is available here.

The strategy has highlighted Ten Pillars, summarised below, that show the range that the new set of industrial policies will focus on:

1. Investing in science, research and innovation
2. Delivering affordable energy and clean growth
3. Driving growth across the whole country
4. Upgrading infrastructure
5. Supporting businesses to start and grow
6. Encouraging trade and inward investment
7. Creating the right institutions to bring together sectors and places
8. Developing skills
9. Cultivating world-leading sectors
10. Improving procurement

The Government announced that the Creative Industries will form one of the first five specific “sector deals”.