Design

Full Title or Meme

Things without unique value make the most difference from other things only if they are done well.

Commentary

Tom Goodwin 2024-09-11 on linked in

In the 1980's, famously American Airlines removed one olive from each salad served in First class and saved $40,000 that year. I can also imagine nobody noticed, nobody started flying Delta, and nobody moaned about it on Reddit. But it's easy to take the wrong lesson from this. Imagine constructing a fancy new branch of UBS and asking the Architect the ROI of using Marble in the lobby, or a business case for the doric columns, you'd NEVER be able to make it. You'd not be able to start. What's the ROI for the small ferns in the toilets on Turkish airlines, or the leather (not plastic) menus in a 5 star hotel, What's the business case for real flowers over plastic, for the metal foil on the top on San Pellegrio cans. It's not a luxury thing, what is the economic rationale for quite nice lighting in Walmarts beauty aisle , or for toilets in Target, or for Zara's store design or for Delta's decent customer service.

There are some really weird paradoxes to provability & impact.

1. Almost everything in life that matters is stuff we can't measure or track. Can you measure your happiness, can you measure your love for your partner, can you explain it, monitor it, rationalize it? It's pretty much the same in business. Whats the value of having a pleasant office, whats the ROI of the last meeting you are in. What's the economic justification for good customer care, or nice packaging, or your website.
2. Often things that are unnecessary carry the most value. Nobody in the real world knows how much advertising costs, nobody knows how much it costs to move heavy salt shakers in a A380, or to Sponsor Chelsea, or what Apple's nice packaging costs. Nor do we think about it. But subconsciously, marble foyers, nice plates, leather binders, premium outdoor ads, sponsorship, TV ads, fancy boxes, foil over cans, end up with massive signaling to people. Things that are not necessary, carry enormous weight. A Church in a portacabin does not put the fear of god in you, quite the same way as St Peters. Design brings us joy in ways that add exponential value, but in ways we can't ever measure or value.
3. Often we know that things work, even though we can't ever explain. The VERY VERY VERY strange thing about this moment in time and in business today is that we KNOW the above is true. We know what matters can't be measured, we KNOW that wastage carries meaning, we KNOW our instincts are generally amazing! But the internet and data trails, now means about 1% of activity is now trackable, and it has convinced the entire business world to become an arithmatocracy. That EVERYTHING we do must be explained, justified, tracked, rationalized, optimized and over a very short period of time.

And it is entirely explainable, but utterly nonsensical. Especially in Media and Advertising it seems there is a near perfect correlation, probably, between how impactful an advert is, and how difficult it is to prove it. And almost nobody seems to have noticed.