Brand Matters : Think Sideways

Find inspiration by taking a brand field trip

It’s time to get out. Out of your cubicle. Out of your home office. Out of your company’s groupthink. Out of your industry’s bigger groupthink. Just get out. It’s time to get sideways. You’ll be amazed at what a little outside thinking can do to rattle your inside perspectives.

Did the upside-down ketchup bottle in the fridge door inspire Target’s new color-coded prescription bottles? I will never know for sure, but I do know these product development designers and creators weren’t simply looking at their companies’ previous models and trying to create more of the same. They got out. They looked up. They looked down. They looked sideways. They connected dots from outside their industries and brought that thinking into their own in revolutionary ways.

Author John le Carré wrote: “A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.” So, let’s get up and take a walk around a few industries and window-shop into their brands. Let’s see if we can learn a few things we can bring back to our tasks at hand.

Plant Dreams
For total freedom and independence, there’s nothing like a stop at the local Harley-Davidson dealer to find inspiration. I always have learned a great deal from this brand, and I continue to admire its gusty moves.

Business innovators like Tom Peters, Seth Godin and Mary Lou Quinlan have been advising companies across many spectrums to take women seriously for years. Harley is one that does. While women account for just 12 percent of sales, Harley believes that number has nowhere to go but up.

A few years ago, it started “Garage Parties”—an unusual but contemporary and ingenious twist on Tupperware parties. Harley dedicates a significant part of its Web site to these events and invites women only to these get-togethers, which “offer fun, basic instruction for non-riders who have little—or even no—prior knowledge of motorcycles.” And, most recently, Harley declared this May as the first-ever Women Riders Month, a chance to “honor all the women who enjoy the freedom and adventure found in taking control of their own handlebars.”

Harley-Davidson also launched a limited new promotion that gives away Harley rings (designed by Karen Davidson, great-granddaughter of one of the company’s founders, and inscribed with “Live to Ride. Ride to Live”) to women who buy a new bike and graduate from the Rider’s Edge training program. The ring, while fashionable in its own right, is also a great symbol of conquering a fear and is a proud badge of independence. These parties and programs both plant dreams and help women who want to own their own bikes, but feel a bit intimidated, conquer that fear. Brilliant marketing: plant dreams and quell fears.