Design communications

I was having a nice chat with a great friend of mine who works in branding for a major international and we realized how basic comms performance is nowadays. We like to think that we have gone past the stage where “make me a logo and a TVC” was the regular client brief but truly we have not.

The problem is twofold: clients do not demand more, but agencies do not offer it either. I found myself at least three times in client meetings saying “why don’t you brief us to change your window decoration design and internal signage look and feel”. This usually gets me ugly looks from the CD and the accounts because effectively agencies do not want to deal with this, as they are advertising agencies ultimately, so they want to do TVCs.

The concept of communications design is one that is very remote from what we do in Romania but at the same time one we desperately need. This fuses the need to touch consumers at any point (basically communication is everything you do) with the idea of design, namely that any THING, IDEA, CONTENT that you as a brand produce should be carefully managed (designed) to best fit its purpose.

For instance, shop window design is something no one speaks about although it is statistically the no. 1 reason people go into a shop. POSM design is usually “let’s slap that TVC still frame on this wobbler” and the job is done. Internal comms is also lacking in design and implementation and this is probably why in big companies works gets rejected at various levels: because people have no coherent internalization of the brand.

What company in Romania can do these things? Not one, to my knowledge. How many companies do TVCs? Hundreds. Where is the comms evolution then if we are all struggling to make the same things?

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