From: us To: you

This week we are proud to announce the change from the old slogan "Experience Design" to our brand new one: "Service Innovation".
This change was inspired by our recent discussions in events in which we spoke and presented our ideas, sales pitches and the Engine (www.enginegroup.co.uk) seminar that took place in London-UK last week and from which i just came back.
It is kinda simple to chunk down what Design Loyalty does, and that is : Service Design.

Problem is that, not only in Brazil but in the whole world, people get confused with the term "Design", often accepting it as a "way to do nice cute things". And that causes a contextual gap that ends up draining lots of effort in the part of the sales pitch we do not think is the most valuable one.

The "What" part of the sales pitch is the one we are suppose to defend Service Design inside the "What do we do" context. That's the worst context to do it, in our view we're rather to pitch the "service design clever way" of doing things in the "How we do it" part. That's when we have time and can get more deeply inside cases and examples.
The "What" phase is a "elevator speech", and don't allows the right amount of info to be shouted out.

So, what we do?
Service Design. But that's our job, our way of doing things, and it is completely about us.

The question that really matters is:
What you Brand/Business wins by work with us?
And that is Service Innovation.

Now, that's about you.

iCoffee: A perfect case of Experience Design

Nespresso is the premium coffee Brand division of Nestle. Despite the parenthood with the mother Brand, Nespresso is a totally independent Brand. This strategy is seriously taken by Nestle, which prevents customers to easily associate both Brands, and allows Nespresso to position itself as a new luxury (Masstige) Brand.

Nespresso is a perfect case of Experience Design.

In every interaction with the consumer the Brand creates a remarkable experience. This experience is orchestrated in all touch points and takes in deep consideration the customers rituals when drinking espresso coffees.

The Nespresso Brand is strategically positioned as a New Luxury or Masstige Brand. This way it holds a premium price while it keeps itself inside the trade-up wallet of the average consumer. Only brands that delivers real meaning can be positioned in the up wallet, as this means that consumers will be pleased to trade down and save in other commodities to keep buying these premium goods (that's why you should not aim to be a commodity in recession times).

The Nespresso Brand has deeply impacted the espresso machine market when it introduced a completely orchestration of services instead of simply selling the espresso machines. Following a business model very similar to the iPpd model, Nespresso has created an Experience Value Chain that empowered the Brand to sell superior technology machines for a price bellow the average espresso machine market price, concentrating most of it's revenues in the capsules of coffee.

This experience design strategy became even more powerful with the creation of the Nespresso Stores. The stores are full of incantation moments and storytelling strategies. To be at a Nespresso store It is always a nice trip around design and the premium Coffee world, and unlike Starbucks, the store is not targeting to position itself as a third place for people, instead, it is there to tell stories that convey elements of luxury that have the power to make the Brand desirable. These elements are:

1) Identity and personalization
The Nespresso Club makes you fell like you belong to a very exclusive club of people.

2) The value of scarcity.
Special seasonal blends of Coffees and special limited editions in accessories and machines.

3) The constant search for the aesthetical and technical perfection.
High Impact aesthetical and usability Design permeates all products and service interactions. The only drawback is the Nespresso web site experience that , in my view, does not delivery the same experience level of the other channels.

But what makes Nespresso a great case of Experience Design it is not only the experiential signals, but the capacity that the Brand has of keep itself as a market leader over time, while still holds a premium price on the capsules in comparison with the common coffee sachets other machines uses and also the ability to keep the Brand evolving and maintaining a great customer loyalty base. To perform that through the delivery of consistent great experiences is what makes Nespresso a great case of Experience Design.

This is what an Experience Design project is really about: Consistently enchanted customer + Brand differentiation = Loyalty customer base and revenue growth.

For those who didn't associate why that is similar to the iPpd business model: In an iPod touch of 229 usd you can load 10.000 usd on music. Take also in consideration that iTunes store is now the biggest music store in sales volume in the world.
It is easy to see that the core success of the iPod is not in the 229 usd gadget but in the experience value chain it creates.