Joe Heath at BBH just sent me this link to a deck by Paul Isakson at Space150: 

http://www.slideshare.net/paulisakson/modern-brand-building-presentation/

It’s a very good slide presentation that says, “The product really is the marketing: make better products first”. IE. planners may have finally got it. It reminded me of the piece below which I wrote a very very long time ago as a result of experiences working with Orange, when at Metadesign. It’s about merging product and brand and service development and the importance of defining narratives in enabling a product or service to realise its true value; apologies for the academic tone - it’s called ‘The communication is the product…’ and it goes like this:

The idea that communication is the product (and vice versa) has its root in three conditions: the dematerialisation of products and services; the inclusion of networked communications within products and services; the personalisation of services.

Where products have partial or no material reality we can objectify them in any way that might be desirable. Effectively, we ‘write’ the product’s story upon it. The way in which we communicate what the product does, who it is for, the context in which it belongs and how it is used can determine how valuable that product will be.

And furthermore, when a product incorporates a system of communication – especially when it is bi-directional - a primary route for marketing communications becomes the point of use and the building of customer relationships becomes intrinsic to the product or service itself.  

When a service is personalized there is an implicit requirement for bi-directional communication. The customer becomes a co-creator, and must be able to 1) understand the scope and value of personalisation, and 2) use the communication tools provided by the vendor to create their personalized service.  Again, this is a means of building relationship capital.

From the user’s point of view the product of networked digital services is almost always information, access to information or a means of control, communication or exchange. The material reality of these services – back end systems, fulfilment systems, cable networks etc. - is entirely hidden from the customer unless it incorporates some form of physical delivery (and that is in itself only a partial manifestation of the customer experience). These services are in many cases entirely novel or subject to rapid adaptations and evolution, and so how their narrative is written and presented at point of use and in marketing communications may contribute substantially to their success or failure.

The idea is not limited to pure information services, but extends to services added to products. Defining narratives are just as important to physical objects and especially those that are mutable, sensitive and communicative. Digital electronic products are a hybrid of physical and logical systems. They are increasingly dematerialised and unconstrained by physical limitations. The designers’ role is becoming the creation of new object languages that define the things they make, and the establishment of mechanisms for building and sustaining a relationship with the customer. A digital radio interface might be a set of cards with station idents printed on them - throw a different card on the deck to change the station; an answerphone might be a tray of glass phials filled with messages waiting to be poured out (thank you Durrell); a car still has four wheels and an engine and a boot, but the definitive value propositions are shifting from speed, status and performance to comfort, lifetime cost and intelligence – services added to the product that provide real value and differentiation. In the future, we will buy cars more for the information they provide about our destination and the road ahead than for their speed in getting there, and more for the relationship we have with the information provider than for the body, chassis and engine configuration.

The conclusion drawn is that brand communication and service delivery often reside at the same interface and that the quality of communication determines the quality of the product. This is what is meant by ‘the communication is the product’. The line between brand development and service development and design is becoming increasingly blurred, and the suggestion is that, as brand strategists, we need to involve ourselves in the creation of value itself rather than simply communicating what that value might be through some physically separate medium. This means being involved at the genesis of product development, not after the event.