Jim Northover

Part of a presentation given at a Brunel University Business School seminar in London on 10 December 2010

Apocalyptic scenarios are being hastily sketched out right across the higher education sector. The burning issues of funding and student fees cut right at the heart of current systems of provision. But, whatever results from the debate, the entire sector is sure to emerge as something different, not least in the way that future generations will regard the whole institution of higher education and the fundamental purpose and worth of universities.

For a very long time now there has been a consensus that universities are ‘a good thing’ and that, in line with everything else in a modern democratic state, they should be available to all, in principle. All, that is, who have the intellect and potential to profit from higher-level scholarship and the experience of academic life. More than that, for recent generations ‘going to uni’ has become a rite of passage for many, as students make the transition from teenage to adulthood.

Widening access has been a key strategy of government, based on the perceived importance of the ‘knowledge economy’ to the UK’s success in the world. Now things have changed, as we know. The whole idea of a university education is being re-examined, with a focus on who pays for what, when and how.

The questions I am asking, when the dust has settled and reforms implemented, are: what do universities now stand for, and how do they differentiate themselves in a market-oriented world?

To find an answer, as with every brand, it is always worth looking back, even before we look forward to the future. Brands are the embodiment of multiple interactions and experiences with something, be it a tangible product, a service, a company or an institution. In this sense universities are no different. Time can be a great brand builder. For a thousand years our older universities have been developing and evolving to become what they are today. Tradition and heritage (the words we use to reflect the meaning embedded in these institutions) are an irrefutable part of how they are perceived. Such brands have a patina – ‘the soft glow…produced by age and polishing’ as the Oxford Dictionary informs us.

It is equally true that the old universities still carry forward behaviours, cultures and patterns of operating that in many ways remain unchanged. So powerful was their influence in the 19th century that the great metropolitan universities copied them, and the ‘redbricks’ of the mid 20th century followed them, who, in turn were the aspiration, if not the inspiration, for the polytechnics that ‘traded up’ to university status. The curious thing is this: would any university look and operate the way it does, if it had been designed to meet the needs of the up-coming generations of school leavers? I doubt it.

So, in looking forward we see, in the very near future, some challenges that lie deeper than the immediate debates around funding and fees. What should a truly modern university look like? Excellence in scholarship and research perhaps, but for what purpose, for whom and for what end?

In a very real sense these questions are not ‘academic’. They are simply the questions being asked by 16 and 17 year olds as they contemplate their futures. Without ready and credible answers to these questions, universities may cease in time to command the respect and investment they have received in the past, nor will they attract the students that make their existence possible.

In the next few years as universities struggle to survive and thrive, how many, if not those at the venerable end of the spectrum who will continue to enjoy a level of patronage, will be looking radically at the ways in which they deliver teaching and conduct research?

Much as it may go against the grain and the natural instincts of academics and university managers, it is instructive to look at the successes and failures of corporate institutions. Many great names, and brands, have gone to the wall simply because, like prehistoric creatures, they either did not anticipate change or could not adapt when change was forced upon them. Most successful businesses have dramatically transformed their products, services and operating models. While universities may seek to demonstrate the many ways in which they have embraced technology, for example, they operate in a fundamentally unreformed environment.

It is time for some universities to break cover, to offer high quality, relevant education that makes sense for tomorrow’s students. Realistically, this may not happen overnight, but a radical move on the part of the braver in the sector could signal the need for repositioning their brands to communicate their difference in intent and action. No longer would there be, as now, a succession of ‘me toos’, all competing with each other to provide qualifications of equal (and sometimes dubious) value and commodity style delivery, a pattern replicated in how they describe themselves and articulate their brands. The opportunity for innovation is clear. Step forward the first university to challenge the status quo and show the way ahead.

The other day I came across this pencil, one of many we made as part of a Lloyd Northover promotion some time ago. The words seem to encapsulate what design is and does. They still feel right eight years or so later.

Some things come in twos. Partnerships often work best in creative businesses: opposing viewpoints, dynamic tension, complementary skills, integrated teamwork can bring out the best in design. After all it is increasingly accepted that design depends on collaboration more than on individual brilliance.

There are plenty of great design partnerships around today, although writing your name over the door is less usual now. Perhaps it was egotism or simply a sense of professional seriousness that persuaded Wolff Olins, Minale Tattersfield, Sampson Tyrrell, Lewis Moberly, Newell & Sorrell, Carroll & Dempsey, Smith & Milton, Trickett & Webb, Lloyd Northover and others to turn their names into brands.

Their founders have mostly moved on or re-formed, their companies sometimes absorbed, the names changed, and little recognition of the originals survive. Some companies are also life partnerships as well as professional ones. Others have moved into second-generation management. Nothing stands still, least of all the partners themselves. A look at the images of John and Jim below, in 1975 and again 30 years later, demonstrates the effects of time and the endurance of friendship.

Going to see Enron in London’s West End last week was to witness an acerbic indictment of corporate excess and self-delusion. As the play pointed out, we all bear some responsibility for the way the corporate world has frequently lost sight of its reason for being.

However, there was a time when Enron looked like a company going places and innovating. It commissioned Paul Rand, one of the most respected corporate designers of his generation, to design the logo and identity for the company.

Today that logo comes readymade as the identity for the play itself, liberally used on all promotional material and signing. I wondered who now owns the rights to that piece of intellectual property. No doubt Rand cheerfully assigned the rights to the company once he was paid for his work. Today the company no longer exists. The brand is ‘worthless’. But for play’s promoters it’s a useful piece of identity nevertheless.

This week saw the takeover of Cadbury by Kraft Foods. Cadbury is another name in the lengthening line of British household names disappearing from the corporate scene. While there is no room for sentimentality in business (as one UK bank chief executive memorable once said to me) the move does give cause for thinking through the rationale and the likely outcome of the merger. Most commentators agree that the financial benefits to Kraft are potentially significant, helping it reach international markets it has not been able to penetrate successfully so far. Clearly, it adds some major brands, of which Cadbury is obviously the foremost, to its portfolio.

It also seems that little interest in being paid to the Cadbury corporate brand, the company with a history and culture that made it distinctive and gave it a reputation for fairness with its employees and in its business practices. While there is little doubt that Cadbury exploited its suppliers of cocoa way back, it also practiced enlightened philanthropy towards its employees. The whole notion of Bournville, quaint though it seems today, was a concept ahead of its time. It was the last surviving chocolate company founded by Quakers; Rowntree’s and Fry’s being devoured long ago.

As deals are increasingly done at a purely short-term financial level, and brands change hands scarcely without a blink, the passing of corporate entities and their cultures goes unremarked. One of the objectives of the corporate identity ‘movement’, if I can call it that, was to project internally and externally the true nature and worth of the business ethos. Companies like IBM became classics of this paradigm.

With Kraft’s takeover, it will be interesting to see how the cultures will blend, if at all. The idea that anything of the Cadbury ethos will remain seems unlikely , as the two cultures appear to have little in common; just a case of the difference between ‘choc and cheese’ perhaps.

Keynote talk to introduce SIGN 09, a conference organised by the International Institute of Information Design and the Sign Design Society: Vienna 3-11 December 2009.

My context-setting talk, for the city identity/public spaces session challenges the way we look at information design interventions in the urban environment, both in an international and a local context.

Identities of cities and towns are built up over time, layered continually, such that there are, typically, a multiplicity of languages (both literal and metaphorical) and systems that shape places through identification, orientation and direction processes.

As business travel and tourism increase (albeit at a slower pace recently) the more the requirement for ‘international standards’ and ‘best practice’ strengthens. As we strive to achieve a lingua franca in pedestrian wayfinding, transport information and street signing the more people will benefit, or so current wisdom suggests. On the other hand, cities and towns are looking to promote their individuality, distinctiveness and attractiveness to encourage social and economic growth.

Over the last year or so, there is evidence of a rethinking of the need for ‘local’ demands to supersede the orthodoxy of globalisation. The challenge is an important one: the richness of city life derives in part from accretions of information over time. Cities tell their own stories in different ways and information planning and design needs to be conscious of this reality. Can we adapt standards and systems in order to better reflect uniqueness and local culture, or is this just pandering to stereotypes? Are we importing Western methods inappropriately in some cases?

My argument is not for or against, merely to propose that we, as designers, make few assumptions at the outset, ask the right questions and seek to understand the nature of locality and community to find ways to ‘square the circle’. In developing the discourse I will reference current thinking and practice, as well as historic precedence from cities around the world.

Talk delivered at Brunel University Business School 4 December 2009

For years now, brands and branding have been associated with goods and services, mainly those we see, buy and use everyday. The world of marketing has focused on these because that’s where the big money lies, or has done.

We also know that business to business brands are important as companies are consumers of goods and services too. We have become conscious that it is not just the individual products or services that are branded to make them memorable and distinctive, but it’s the organisations behind them as well. There are all sorts of reasons why we need to be concerned about corporate brands. Trust is one. Our attitude to corporate brands in the financial services market is an obvious example. Ethics is another. We are increasingly concerned about the social and environmental impact of corporations on our world. As information travels further and faster we get to know what’s going on.

Of course, brand owners want us to know more (about the right stuff, naturally) and to know more about us, so we can engage more closely with their brands. Increasingly, they want brands to create an experience that builds loyalty, empathy and even affection. But managing that experience is not as easy as it was. To some extent that is the role clients want us to play. To help them coordinate every aspect of what they do, however and wherever they touch their audiences.

And it’s no longer just the consumers we’re talking about, it’s all of those stakeholders our clients want to influence. More and more this means investors, governments, the media, and, of course, employees and potential recruits.

The channels through which brands now interface with all these stakeholders have increased phenomenally. The internet alone has been responsible for transforming the world of branding by creating an astonishing range of networks and relationships. Brand management as a consequence has become much more complex. For the brand owners, it feels like they no longer own the brand at all. And they’re probably right. Even from a legal standpoint, the intellectual property safeguarded through trademark and patent law is either being directly challenged or ignored in many parts of the world.

Even more significantly perhaps, is the sense that stakeholders really do have a stake in the brand. One of the successes of branding is that consumers (as we still call them) are now much more proprietorial about brands than ever they were. “You can’t do that with my brand!” Or even “I’ll tell you where you need to go with the brand next.”

This has changed the nature of the relationship between the two parties. Probably forever. The idea of the brand increasingly revolves around a tense partnership, a tussle between those who choose to be engaged in the debate.

I believe there is a sense in which everyone is operating on a more individual, personalised level nowadays. For example, the division between home time and work time has eroded considerably. While there are more opportunities for employees to work from home rather than attend the office, the quid pro quo is that they are now contactable via email, phone and Blackberry on a constant basis. Not only that but great sections of the community are effectively self-employed or contractors without any single corporate affiliation.

Communications have freed us up and simultaneously enchained us to our work. And even when we are working we are using individual networks and contacts to make our business operate. Linked-in is an example of social networking concepts now operating in the corporate space.

All this is changing how we see ourselves. If we started out by being viewed by brands as ‘consumers’ this term now seems offensive – an undignified role in which we uncritically devour whatever capital and enterprise have to throw at us.

We moved on to being customers, whereby we were seen to have a contractual relationship at least, and the idea of customer service has gained traction over recent decades, such that businesses re-oriented themselves around satisfying defined needs and expectations, rather than just selling product. With all that’s been happen around us economically, and this time on a global scale, we must be ready for another re-appraisal of brands and their role.

Against the background of a corporate world based on wealth creation, enterprise and market-driven economics there has been a separate, parallel development in branding.

For some time now it has been clear that the power of brands to inform, engage, persuade and empower has not been lost on other institutions in our society, whether they are government bodies and departments, government agencies, non-governmental organisations, or entities moving from the public to the private sector, or becoming elements in a public-private partnerships.

The responsibility for delivering public services, including housing, transport, health, education and culture, for example, often in competition to private provision, has forced these organisations to see what they could learn from brands. Some of the lessons learned in the period of the Thatcher government in the UK clearly turned out to be flawed. Seeing a market in everything was an interesting paradigm in that it served to help re-focus some organisations on what they were there for, but, equally, many new structures built fundamental weaknesses into the system, some of which we are just beginning to discover as capital markets falter.

Nevertheless society needs infrastructure in all its forms. Without that continuity of purpose and investment, many of the services we take for granted would simply cease to be.

As consultants we have been involved in some of these changes, acting to help make change happen, not to comment on its political or social significance. Which is fortunate because, looking back over a lengthy career one sees initiatives fall by the wayside, institutions stumble and fail, errors of judgment become exposed.

But it’s not all bad. I think we are beginning to see how branding can have a social function that isn’t some return to Marxist doctrine post a capitalist collapse, but returns to my earlier notion of how we are operating as individuals so much more these days. And part of that individuality and the sense of personal identity and space in which we operate is counterbalanced by an awakening understanding of our wider social role in the world. We are coming to realise, perhaps a bit late in the day, that we can’t leave things to the experts, whether they are in government or in enterprise. Gradually we are re-engaging with our own lives and our interconnectness with the lives of others. And, of course, our environment.

It seems to me that we are in the process of seeing ourselves increasingly as citizens, members of a society that operates around places, infrastructures and enterprises, all of which have a bearing on our individuality and our part in a wider whole. In this context, branding can have a role in building these multiple relationships. Some of these will remain commercial in nature, others more social or cultural.

It’s one thing to identify change happening (perhaps not so difficult in present conditions), but it’s another to see what that change will mean.

So, for now it remains an observation, the beginnings of a discourse and a prompt for you and others to think about.