Book Notes: Emotion by Design
07.15.24 - Recently finished reading an insightful book on creativity and design - Emotion By Design: Creative Leadership Lessons from a Life at Nike - by former Nike CMO Greg Hoffman, and wanted to share a few notes from the book.
If you’re not familiar with Greg, for reference below is his bio (taken from the Lundquist College of Business):
Greg Hoffman is a global brand leader, former NIKE chief marketing officer, and founder of the brand advisory group Modern Arena. For more than 27 years, Hoffman held marketing, design, and innovation leadership roles at NIKE. He has been recognized for his transformative leadership in listings such as Fast Company's Most Creative People in Business, Business Insider's 50 Most Innovative CMOs, and AdAge's Branding Power Players. During his time with the Nike Brand, he focused on themes of equality and empowerment through sport, driven by his role as a leader within the NIKE Black Employee Network and NIKE Foundation Board of Directors. Today he serves on the boards of Summit Impact and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
If you work in the marketing, branding, or creative category, I highly recommend picking up a copy of the book for yourself. The book goes into detail with information on actual campaigns and recap principles at the end of every chapter, but below are a few of the passages I took most note of:
Introduction
“Competing is exciting, and winning is exhilarating, but the true prize will always be the self-knowledge and understanding that you have gained along the way.” Sebastian Coe
Put simply, a brand gains a competitive advantage through its ability to construct powerful emotional bonds with its consumers. I believe this connection can be consistently achieved by cultivating a strong creative culture.
I call this Emotion by Design – the ability to create stories, images, and experiences that make people feel that even their most audacious dreams are possible to achieve.
Chapter 1 - My Journey Into The Arena
P10
It was as if Nike’s ethos was reflected in the architecture and environment, a place where creatives could thrive in a domain dedicated toward inspiring their talents. To feel inspired by your surroundings, and to use that emotion to inform your work, set a new standard in corporate culture.
P17
Just think of the Jordan Jumpman logo – simple, clean, a silhouette, but the feeling it generates, the sense of immediate identification, and the thrill of poetry in motion. That is what a logo can achieve.
P22
An artist will say that art can change the world, and this is true. But at Nike I came to understand that art only moves people when they feel inspired or heard or driven to excellence.
Chapter 2 - Creativity Is A Team Sport
P25
Your advantage is your eyes,” Coach K said, staring at each of us around the table. “You see things that others don’t see. As a marketing team, your vision is what separates you from everyone else.” Incredible. Perfect metaphor, perfectly stated. What we see, how we see, what we choose to see, and how we show others what we have seen are all part of a brand marketer’s job.
As brand marketers, our job is to show the world to our audience in novel, insightful, and at times provocative ways. We do this with what Coach K called our “vision advantage”, our ability to see the insights and the truths that others miss, and reveal those insights and truths to our audience through the means of images, films, campaigns, architecture, and products.
Whatever the medium, we share our brand’s values and purposes through insightful stories that move our audience, that elicit a specific emotion, and that build lasting bonds between consumer and brand.
P42
Curiosity is the catalyst for creativity. It’s what allows you to see opportunities and harness the inspiration to seize them.
P45
We had to work with what we had, rather than complain that we hadn’t been given enough.
Chapter 3 - Never Play It Safe, Play To Win
P63
The challenge, whether a brand is old or new, is how do you first establish a culture of creative risk-taking, then protect it from those natural forces that try to crush it?
P64
Put simply, the purpose of taking risks in marketing is to create a new way to engage with consumers. You are trying to reach them on a level that has never been done before, but once done, changes the game forever (and often opens up new revenue opportunities). Some call that disruption; I call it innovation.
P73
A physical retail destination must have a point of distinction, a reason for being, beyond traditional shopping – Niketown NYC – and its many sister sites around the world – were destinations in themselves, places people wanted to visit even if they walked out sometimes without a single purchase.
P80
I liken this to creating a “movie poster of the idea.” How can you distill the story, the concept, into a singular image that immediately takes the viewer into the idea? My mantra was: Be quick and be visual. Don’t waste time talking about an idea in countless meetings; use that time on making the idea a reality.
P88
The trick is to find the balance between serving the needs of consumers across social media and other digital channels while also igniting their imaginations, and expanding their understanding of what your brand can achieve.
P89
As the legendary advertising art director George Lois once said, “You can be cautious or you can be creative. (But there’s no such thing as a cautious creative.)”
Chapter 4 - Game Face For Greatness
P95
Your brand identity should be as distinctive as a signature. Your customer must immediately recognize that this identity signals your brand’s values and purpose as well as the unique qualities that set it apart from competitors. Does your identity tell your brand story as well as any mission statement or written communication? Does your brand have a personality that is mirrored in this industry, a set of characteristics that powerfully come through in every identifier that crosses the consumer’s field of vision?
P96
A distinct color. A type of font. A logo. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that some of these elements are happy accidents, that the brand itself just sort of stumbled into a look that everyone now knows.
P99
To put is simply, your brand identity is the foundation upon which you will build a company for the long-term. It will evolve and it will grow, but rarely can a brand remake its image. Once the public has an impression of your brand, good or bad, it is very hard to alter that impression. So start out being deliberate in the impression you want it to have. Don’t leave it to chance, and don’t think that you can “get to it later.” Start now, and you will grow your identity into the shape, style, and form that best represents your brand. The payoff may not be discernable in the beginning, but the benefits over the long run are undeniable.
P104
If you do it right, then it will also fill your customers with pride and a sense of belonging to and belief in the brand itself. A logo without those values and purpose is just a picture. It means nothing unless it stands for something.
P106
I remembered why the best logos are considered the best: They’re simple, they’re visually distinct, and they tell a story.
P107
The point is, whether you get it on the first try or spend a year obsessing over various logo directions, a brand must commit fully to its visual center, the anchor that grounds every other element in its visual language.
P110
That’s the power of portraits and photography, to bring a captured moment to the consumer and connect them emotionally to the athlete.
P118
Your brand identity – the image you show to the world – is your game face. It’s what your consumers see when they see you.
How we present ourselves to the world matters. How the world sees our brand determines their attachment to our brand. The strength of that attachment must grow over time – you can’t create it from scratch – but there needs to be a visual representation, a symbol, that serves as your standard.
Chapter 5 - Dare To Be Remembered
P125
Your brand is your story. You are always telling it. Every time you put something out into the world, you are telling your brand’s story. An Instagram post tells a story; a brand website tells a story; a holistic campaign made up of retail windows, event experiences, television ads, and social media content fits them all together to tell a story.
P141
Brands need to continually look at creative ways in which to invite more people into their worlds. This requires having a pulse on the culture, an awareness of the trends, the styles, the artists who are shaping it. Then, a much harder trick, finding those areas where those cultural markers intersect with sport, thus opening doors for people who don’t necessarily have a passion for the specific arena you are representing as a brand.
Nike commercials have always told stories through images and sound. Music, perhaps more than any other creative medium, has the power to inspires us, to make us remember, and to bring us together.
P144
Timing is everything. This is a far harder challenge than simply being able to turn around something quick. It’s about an organization’s internal structure, its ability to see a moment coming and elevate its importance above other preexisting priorities; and to always be asking, “What if?” That’s how you win before the moment, rather than waiting for the result.
Chapter 6 - Don’t Chase Cool
P158
Nike didn’t set out to make the AF1 a “street” shoe; consumers did that. We should avoid taking credit for what consumers do with our products that are beyond our scope and reach. But we should get out of the way and let it happen.
P164
As I mentioned in chapter 2, curiosity is a critical element in any creative endeavor. You must consistently look for ways to “get out-side yourself” to find inspiration in ways you’d never imagine.
P168
Why do we document history at all? Because the story of our past, the stories of where we came from, the moments that make up an era, an event, a life matter.
P171
For all brands, the stories you choose to tell at some point stop belonging to you. If told well, they are assimilated – like folklore or fairy tales – into the undefinable cauldron of culture, where they are passed down and shared, transformed in the retelling, and assume a legacy even greater than what you set out to create. Tell the stories; share your history. Give it back to your audience.
P176
(…Air Max Day rests on central tenets of aligning a brand with culture.)
The first, and perhaps most important, is that Air Max Day puts the community at the center of the festivities. Nike’s role is to make it easy for anyone to share their passion with others, either in-person or through digital channels. Like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day, the event gives consumers a reason to celebrate that which they already love.
Air Max Day encourages fans to express their passion in their own way. The holiday is a celebration of community, creativity, and self-expression.
P178
More often than not, a brand is finding it challenging to stay relevant and remain part of the cultural conversation. Because of this, some brands chase the latest trend, influencer, or social media platform. Too many brands latch on to what everyone else is doing, and the result can be something that is inauthentic and lacking in any emotional power. You’re chasing cool and, most likely, you won’t catch it.
Cultural icons begin to take form when a brand remains authentic to its identity and purpose. Do that, and cool will chase you.
Chapter 7 - Spark A Movement
P197
(on creation of Nike+)
We couldn’t have known it then, but we had just begun a trend in digital branding that continues to this day, with brands from Disney to Walmart adding plus symbols to represent their digital membership services.
P212
Good brands create memorable moments; great brands create movements. But any movement needs to begin with an aspirational vision: What do we want to achieve? Put another way, since brand movements are tied to products, the better question is: What do we want this product to achieve? Not do, but achieve. What can it facilitate? How can it improve to consumer’s life? Find the answer to those questions, and you have the vision for your movement.
How will this product help me? And by helping one person, it can help many people. But don’t stop there. Don’t leave it to the individual customer to be converted as a believer in your product; help them convert others. Be active and purposeful in building a cause around the product.
From one into many. From one lone nut – or ambassador – into an entire festival of dancers. From one reluctant runner into an entire city joined together, triumphantly climbing the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Movements are community led; they flourish when those within them believe they are a part of something greater, something that helps not only them but everyone around them. And that share a feeling of progress, that together we are unleashing our own potential, that is the fuel that keeps them going.
Discover the potential in your product, and you will help consumers discover the potential in themselves.
