• Brandweek , Tuesday, November 4, 2008 10:45 AM

When I noticed yesterday that Todd Wasserman's cover story in Brandweek about the value of distinctive design had five jumps, I felt like Roy Rogers' sidekick, Pat Brady, addressing his runaway Jeep. "Whoa, Nellie," I exclaimed, and moved on to digesting faster-breaking news of the day. Marketing trade journalism hasn't seen an explication like this since ... well, since the last Bob Garfield cover story in Ad Age. (I'm not sure when that was, but they're always fascinating reads. Here's a link to a 2005 piece about "listenomics" I just reread).

Anyway, once I had the time, Wasserman's piece was worth the read. He starts with the instructive tale of Whirlpool's KitchenAid Series II line of appliances, which went against the grain of conventional wisdom by sporting a uniform look and was advertised en masse instead of piecemeal.

Apple and Target are, of course, paradigms of design-driven success. Procter & Gamble credits "design thinking" for the turnaround of Herbal Essences, and Bank of America credits it for its very successful its "Keep the Change" program.

Wasserman quotes from a Harvard Business Review article about design thinking by Tim Brown, the CEO of design consultancy Ideo, whom he calls the "godfather" of the movement.

But is DT really all that different from other deductive methods of ideation (aka, ways of thinking)? Is it just another fad? Read the piece to get both sides of the story and a full picture of how the process works .

Read the whole story at Brandweek »