Brands as Patterns 3.0 – 
Orchestrating a Business

Originally presented at PSFK San Francisco in 2012
Written by Marc Shillum

Forward

To some extent, the Brands we build are limited by the organizations that run them. As delivery of the goods and services becomes more technical, the gaps between departments and division increases. Of course, the customer doesn’t understand departments, they just see an end-to-end experience that is often fractured, disconnected or complex.

To arrive at more performant Brands we must consider the design of the organization above the design the Brand because organizational alignment can directly felt within all parts of the experience. The cadence of product release, software release, market message, event planning and social conversation can create an almost pavlovian response in the end user or customer.

To conduct the organization effectively, careful consideration must be given to the overlapping operational frequencies of the business and the sympathetic or destructive frequencies of the market and mediums of communication.

I first noticed the effect of organizational design when I was considering buying an iPhone4. I realized that I somehow knew what operating system I was on, I understood that the features of the new product were available on my existing product if I upgraded the software. I then found out that the new features were valuable, but would work better on new hardware.

The software was an advert for the new hardware, an example orchestration on a new level.

Orchestrating a Business

Brands today have to be 
both iterative and consistent to fulfill both relevance of need and the need for recognition. Managing this iteration while retaining consistency can be difficult if not overwhelming. For the most part this is due to organizational models that obstruct visibility. Orchestration is the central nervous system of a well performing business and can take the shape of planning, roadmapping or production calendars. 

But, planning rarely happens in parallel because each part of an organization has a cadence. Marketing is organized by quarters. Technology is planned in eighteen month cycles and six week sprints, with code freezes and technical debt management. Finance is locked to quarterly business reviews, or financial years. Communication is in news cycles. Business Strategy is planned three to five years in advance.

Also, the media in which we share news of our new products and services also have unaligned cadences. Search by the millisecond. Twitter by the second. TikTok by the minute. Instagram by the hour.  Facebook by the half day. Linkedin by the week. TV, day by day. Magazines by the Month. Events by the quarter.

The benefit of parallel roadmapping is to use the overlapping frequencies of your organization and media to build a wave of understanding in your customer. Taking advantage of the resonance that’s possible by building orchestration also has the secondary value of creating noise which drowns out the competition. Marshall McLuhan was right, the medium is really the message. But if the medium is the message, orchestration is the voice. 

To Orchestrate, a Brand steward must consider eight overlapping frequencies:

1. Your Customer has a frequency.


A frequency of purchase, a frequency of consideration and interaction, a frequency of consuming information. This frequency shifts 
their state from user, to customer to consumer, 
to advocate or critic.
 Do drivers really consider a car every four years? Or every time they get into their existing car? What is the cadence of your customer? 


2. The Market has a frequency.


Shifts within your market will influence the decisions of your potential customers, their likes, or dislikes and their level of fear or willingness to take risks is dependent on the context in which they have to make decisions. What is the cadence of your market? 


3. Your Communication has a frequency.
 

Your ability to create content, send out messages, or to receive feedback is beholden 
to the permeability of your interface. Can you say what you want? Would it need to be checked through legal? Does it have to be written by the communications team? Communication also relies heavily on the underlying frequency of the channels, or platform you choose. Explosive like twitter, infectious like Facebook, ever-present through the product platform or periodical like a magazine.
 What is the cadence of your communications? 


4. The development of your 
Products and Services has a frequency.


The cadence between the generation of a new idea, 
the sequential analysis of value and technical implementation and commercialization of a single product can disrupt pre existing innovation cycles, the entire technology roadmap and the overall flow to market. Balancing the relationship between the 
time to launch, the time to adoption and the demand 
for something new can define the overall success of 
the product experience. What is the cadence of your product and services? 


5. Technology has a frequency.

Although we know, through Moore's Law, that computational processing speed is almost exponential. It is impossible to be faster than an underlying technology. For instance, the demand for personal electronics and computers drove innovation in rechargeable batteries. The desire for mobile phones made rechargeable batteries smaller and more powerful. Autonomous drone technology drove batteries to be lighter and faster charging. Which inturn enabled the innovation of the electric cars that we have today. The rechargeable battery was invented in 1859, it took 150 years to get to a viable electric vehicle. The technology was available sooner, but the business of internal combustion technology slowed innovation. What is the cadence of your underlying technology? 


6. Policy has a frequency.

Possibly the slowest moving gear to account for is policy. Consider how quickly the FDA made the SARSCov2 vaccine available – this was the fastest that the FDA could move. The FAA has taken years to organize class G airspace so that autonomous vehicles can begin operations. Government runs on paper and signatures and adopts new technology slowly. Does your cadence rely on slow moving policy? 
   

7. Your Company has an operational frequency.


Your company relies on how often you consider your position, 
your values, your portfolio, your technology roadmap, 
your innovation cycle, your research and development. Your corporate frequency can depend on how often you can get the most senior people in the same room, or it can rely on how often you focus resources on the most junior people, who may well be at the very forefront of what your brand experience could become. What is the cadence of your operations? 


8. Your Competition has a frequency.

If you’re stuck delivering in the same cycles,
what’s going to stop a competitor stealing your market?
 Startups have less operational overhead, less decision makers and a business that lives and dies against the next release.
 Forget the ‘challenger mindset’, true pioneers don’t have anyone to challenge them, they’re defining the market. Do you copy the cadence of your competition? 


A Real World Example

The ability to deliver brand, product or 
service to market relies on the interconnected frequencies of demand, delivery and production. 
The timing by which your product enters the market, the space between generations or updates, and the reaction of your competitors sets a rhythm in the purchaser's mind which can cause a subsequent, almost pavlovian desire for the successive product.


Great business is about a successfully 
aligning your brand, product and service.  Creating a great Brand is about the modulation of 
the frequency of your organizational pattern that can gain an amplitude and frequency which is capable of oscillating throughout the entire customer journey.

To prove this out. I took a six year slice through a company, Apple.Through a single product, iPhone. I mapped four factors of the frequency of the iPhone against time from 2007 to 2013. Some interesting Patterns show up.

Green = Supporting Marketing
Blue = TVC launches
Orange = Software Updates
Magenta = Hardware Launches

Look at the regularity. Notice in 2011, the delayed release of the 4S, because of Steve Jobs death. But note that the launch of the 5 stays within that new rhythm. A new pattern? Product release cycles are usually managed by Product Managers.

Then look at the software launches and updates, IOS1, then only 1.1 in september 2007. Notice the counter rhythm, it’s still in sync, but modulates. 2, then 2.1 2.2 in fairly quick succession. 3 coinciding with the launch of 3G. 3.2 in April 2010 anticipating the launch of 4, effectively pre-selling iPhone 4. The preview of verison 5 in June 2011, almost like they knew there was demand. Software release is usually regulated by the CTO.

If you play these interconnecting rhythms, they sound like music. An organization in harmony. Working together to put a new, revolutionary product into the market. If there were silos, they were orchestrated to work together to gently remind the customer that they maybe out of sync.

References
FAA Small Unmanned Aircraft rule,
Part 107

Moore's Law: The Life of Gordon Moore, Silicon Valley's Quiet Revolutionary
by Arnold Thackray

Design system, adapted and extended from 10x10 paper design and typography, Sean McGrath at Method Inc

Further reading

The Medium is the Massage
by Marshall Mcluhan

Principles of Orchestration
by N.Rimsky-Korsakov

Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything
by Stephen M.R. Covey