Overview of Article: This is Part 2 of an interview with David Butler that is a follows up on the Fast Company Article and Business Week article that have drawn so much attention.
Thoughts on this Article: I like the questions that are raised and David Butler’s honesty in his answers. This is a great “rest of the story” to go with the original interviews.
Part 2 of Designing on Purpose: An Interview with David Butler, VP of Design at Coca-Cola
by Henning Fischer
Welcome to part 2 of our interview with David Butler, VP of Design for the Coca-Cola Company. Part 1 is available here. When we left off we were talking about the different roles that design fills within Coca-Cola. This part of the interview shifts gears a bit and talks about one of the major themes we’ll be exploring at MX: designing in a down economy.
[Henning Fischer] How do you design with purpose in a down economy?
[David Butler] That’s a good question. It’s all in how you look at it. That sounds kind of trite, but there’s a similar discussion about the value of design. Is part of the value of design driven towards productivity? Doing more with less? Or is designing to do more with less thought about in terms of sustainability? They’re both sort of the same thing. In a down economy, doing more with less is exactly the focus of the company. In reality it’s what we do every day. As designers it’s always about how we can provide more value or more enduring experiences. It’s not that different from what we do in an up economy.
[Brandon Schauer] Design is easily seen as a cost center in a tough economy. What advice would you give to people who are feeling that?
[DB] When I got here, people asked, “What do you do?” and I worried a lot about trying to define design and tackle everything that we could impact. Soon I realized we should just focus our design efforts on the things that really matter for the company and provide the most value: the way people are going to actually touch the package and experience our brands. Most of what we do focuses on retail and the retail experience and that is never going to go away in an up or down economy. What I have done and what we continue to do is focus on the highest value that our function and capability of design can provide to the organization.
One more thing…let me say it in a different way. Everyone is tightening their belts, right? What that means, simply, is that we need to design more accurately, and we need to leverage our scale more proficiently. The projects we work on have not changed dramaticaly, they’ve just become more important.
[HF] I like the phrase designing with accuracy. In some ways it’s what we’re going to be struggling with over the next couple of months as well. We’re seeing changes in our business and I think we will have to increase the accuracy of the things and the engagements that we step into as well.
[BS] Yeah, if budgets are smaller and you’re doing fewer projects, you need to raise the chances of each project’s success that much more.
[DB] Linking projects directly to the value to the business is critical. If you can prove that value, it’s not a big discussion. You can see the impact.
[BS] Can you give is an example of ways you have helped to explicitly connect to that value? Have you been able to get down to bottom line dollar impacts and things like that with some of your projects?
[DB] Let me answer that in two ways. One is around cost avoidance. We can design something and talk about the scale and hypothesize what the cost avoidance could be. Another way is through the pure, old fashioned business case- the levers that drive the value and provide the return on investment that we have. Nothing new, just a straight-ahead business case. For example, if we design something to be durable over time, we can avoid a lot of the costs in the future. A great case study is the Coke contoured bottle. The basic form was designed in the 1920s. It has been basically untouched since then. Imagine all the costs that we have avoided around that design by designing a classic, enduring design.
[BS] You didn’t even have to create a new icon. You’ve just had to embellish something that was already in people’s lives. How about partnering within Coke? How have you worked with others in the organization to make design more effective?
[DB] As designers we’re intuitively equipped to adapt and integrate than perhaps other functions or parts of the organization. For us we have never had a problem integrating. It has always been the opposite. The demand has far outstripped the supply from day one. Once people understand the value that designers can bring to their part of the organization, it’s not a sell in at all. It becomes more about capacity discussion.
[BS] You’ve had a great career going on from brand director at Sapient to some really successful years at Coke. Who do you look to for inspiration and insight for where you’re going to take things next?
[DB] I’m actually very passionate about design theory. I’m a big fan of the publication, Design Issues. I’m really motivated by theory. I’m interested to see how design theorists are creating the idea of public policy around design in mass culture. That links into sustainability and other issues that we’re facing as a society. Keeping up with the thought of having this culture of design rather than focusing just on the profession of design. When you have a global view, you see the developing economies of China and Brazil and Russia. All these economies are advancing a global middle class and are seeking to develop into something that we here in the United States are familiar with. You see the opportunity and future for design and its almost overwhelming .
[HF] I don’t know if you have seen the recently published design manifesto that was sent to the Obama Administration…
[DB] That’s exactly where my fascination is. That’s where I see design going. For me personally, that’s exactly the path that I see before designers. It’s quite fascinating…
[HF] We’re definitely a few years behind people like the UK Design Council.
[DB] Not just that. If you think about it- I just saw this statistic the other day- roughly speaking we have about 10,000 students in design schools in the US. That sounds like a lot until you understand that China has over 100,000. You quickly see that Asia is going to be the source for design strength and leadership in the not too distant future. When you look at India and China, it causes you, as a Westerner, to rethink where design is going and your influence on that.
[HF] One last closing question: what will you share with us at MX?
[DB] I’d like to share how we developed our strategy and how we’re executing that design strategy here at Coke.
[HF] David, thanks for your time. We’re looking forward to seeing you at MX.
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