We like to getting out to new places and sharing our thinking. One of our Senior Consultants, Kamil Michlewski will on his way to Austria soon for the 4th International DOM Conference: Creating Desired Futures.

Organised by Design-Organization-Media Research Laboratory (DOM), the conference will be held in Linz from 14-17 May. It aims to explore how design – not understood as a way of form shaping but as a way of creative thinking different from analysis – may add value in solving complex business problems.

Kamil will be speaking on the theory of management and design – if you would like to learn more about the conference please visit the DOM website: http://www.domresearchlab.com/content/4th-international-dom-conference-may-14-17-2009-creating-desired-futures

Green & Blacks are really pushing their recently launched NEW 30% cocoa ‘Creamy Milk’ bar – apparently aimed at those people who find ordinary milk chocolate too bitter, but white chocolate too light…

Is this a great example of a brand seeking to innovate by forcing a market in the gap rather than the other way around? The accompanying press ads (crawling all over a broadsheet near you now) do lead with the message that this is a whole new chocolate market sub-category.

Or is it just a tactical move to re-cite the brand as a mainstream competitor to the likes of Galaxy and Cadbury? Indeed a recent article in Marketing Magazine takes the view that the brand may be struggling in its premium positioning: http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/news/898351/Green—Blacks-targets-mainstream-chocolate-market

Or maybe it does neither – if I’m a Galaxy lover surely I’m addicted to the specific, unique taste of Galaxy (not the fact it’s “creamy”) and therefore won’t be swayed in my loyalty by a pretender… And if I’m a Green & Blacks lover who simply wants something creamier, I’d be looking for more of a ‘reason to believe’  around creaminess (rather than the simple 30% cocoa message) to help me make the switch.

Or maybe I’m over-intellectualising it and actually it’s just chocolate… who knows.

A long time ago someone told me the definition of marketing was “meeting consumers’ needs profitably” and having always thought it a good definition, I wondered if the structure would work in creating definitions for sales and branding too and whether once complete, the three definitions would help differentiate between the disciplines. See what you think…

SALES – Retailing what you can make or source profitably

MARKETING – Meeting consumers’ needs profitably

BRANDING – Identifying and marketing your vision and values profitably

Despite our oft-repeated plea to clients – “it’s the idea not the execution!” – we appreciate the value of great design in building strong brands.

It has been a nice surprise this week to be contacted by two separate organisations – both wishing to feature our website design.

Firstly – cssWOW - ”a collective gallery of the most incredible css codes found over cyber space”: http://www.csswow.com/page/2/

And secondly – Colorgorize – which categorizes websites according to dominant colour. We’re on the ‘black’ page here: http://www.colorgorize.com/show/1697/thevalueengineers/

Thanks also to our web design agency, Kyan http://kyanmedia.com/

1. “A chicken is an egg’s way of making another egg.” (Samuel Butler)

2. “Always design a thing by considering it in its larger context – a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.” (Frank Lloyd Wright)

3. “We are not retreating, we are merely attacking in another direction” (Major General Oliver Smith)

4. “It’s easy, I simply get a chisel and chip away anything that doesn’t look like a lion” (Pablo Picasso on how a block of stone could become a lion)

5. “Buyers don’t buy quarter-inch drills, they buy quarter-inch holes” (Theodore Levitt)

(Borrowed with pride from all over the place)