Authentic Brands, Design
Thinking and Wicked Problems
University of Oregon: Contemporary Design Talk
Keith Gerr, Director of Strategy – Opus Creative
4.15.09

What is an Authentic Brand?
• Value Delivery
– Does what it is supposed to do
– When it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, the
company fixes it
• Values Resonance
– Company consistently acts in accordance with a
value system that is identifiable to you
– New Social Contract vs. Old Social Contract

“Products without aesthetics are
uncompelling; brands without
meaning are undesirable; and business
without ethics is unsustainable.”
Marty Neumeier, President Neutron LLC

Brand is behavior – it is not logos,
color palettes and slogans

Is any brand truly authentic?

The definition of authentic is personal
What are your expectations of quality ?
What is your tolerance for shenanigans?
Are you willing to forgive?
What’s the threshold between preference and loyalty?
How open are you to change?

So how does a brand attempt to be
authentic?

Companies and the brands they
promote must fundamentally give a
shit about it’s employees, customers,
partners, shareholders and the rest of
the world

Stay true to the origin story
Promote defensible attributes
Act in accordance to a stated values
system
Have open dialogue with the world

Understand the role your brand plays
in a persons pursuit of self‐identity
Respect the head, Touch the heart,
Satisfy the gut
Don’t be afraid to repel audiences
Value design thinking

Design Thinking
“The premise is that if you tap a designer, or a
designers’s problem‐solving approach, to tackle
standard business problems, you will get game‐
changing results.”
“With their emphasis on charts and data, marketers
often practice inductive thinking (if X, then Y). Design
thinking, by contrast, is more a case of abductive
thinking – more a creative leap that attempts to solve a
problem in previously unforeseen ways ”
Source: Thinking By Design, Brandweek

We need more Design Thinking people
People who are not afraid of jumping to solutions
before the problem has been completely defined
People that embrace rapid proto‐typing and the
spirit of iteration
People who recognize the inter‐connectedness
of all things
People who use multiple mediums to elucidate an
idea

The world is full of wicked problems
“Varied as they are, these problems share some key
characteristics: each is unique, difficult to define, and often
linked to other issues” Roger Martin, Dean Rotman School of Management
How do we solve world hunger?
How do we reverse global warming?
Can the internet be made safe for kids?
Would we all benefit from a global currency?

Let’s use Design Thinking to solve
wicked problems
“Design contains the skills to identify possible
futures, invent exciting products, build bridges to
customers, crack wicked problems, and more. The
fact is, if you wanna innovate, you gotta design.”
“Design is rapidlymoving from ‘posters and toasters’
to include processes, systems, and organizations”
Ilya Prokopoff and Fred Dust, Partners, IDEO

Hand‐shakes are nice but collaboration
is more meaningful
The Law of Requisite Variety: Only variety absorbs variety
“So when dealing with high‐variety – with complex challenges – we
can only hope to address them by bringing to bear an equal
amount of variety in the form of people, information, knowledge,
experience, relationships and their influence.”
David Komlos, CEO Syntergrity
Let’s value each others contribution
during the design journey

Now go disrupt something
keith.gerr@opuscreative.com blog.opuscreative.com twitter.com/keithgerr