The past year has seen me truly embrace the power of the digital space as both a powerful advocacy and amplification channel and as a incredibly powerful new business mechanic. I have had the pleasure of connecting with very interesting colleagues from across a variety of industry sectors, none more so than Mr Jack Rouse In a multi-faceted career that spans more than 30 years, Jack Rouse has embraced the worlds of academia, entertainment, education, culture and community development, and a quote of Jack's that resonates with me and the experience world I live and breath is “All of these worlds share one common element,” Jack has often said. “They all want to connect with an audience.”
Jack recently spoke at the Event Design Summit with nothing more than a t-shirt and a pair of jeans, no powerpoint no whizz bangs and no fluff, yet the audience hung on every word. I have acquired his every word from Event Design... Enjoy, it makes for an interesting read.
After the past month it’s fair to say that all bets are off, and trying to predict 10 trends you can count on would be the height of folly. Only a designer living alone on an island would be foolish enough to think that the global economic meltdown doesn’t affect the design world in several very serious ways. So perhaps an economist would have been a better choice for this speaking slot. But you’re stuck with me. And I want to focus on the fundamentals of the business of design with an emphasis on consumers, audiences, and clients. Others here are dealing with projects, materials, technology, and a wide variety of other design specifics.
Oh yeah—fair warning—part of the next few minutes may be depressing, but it does have a happy ending. So I won’t bore you with a PowerPoint, and great images of JRA projects, but I will mention that our work is primarily in history museums, science museums, kids museums, museums of conscience, corporate visitor centers, sports facilities, location based entertainment—and increasingly in the huge market of urban development and urban revitalization. While these areas are slightly different than some of your projects, the principles and skills are the same, so I hope some of what I have to say will be relevant. At JRA, geographically we focus on the U.S., Middle East, China, Eastern Europe, and the Asia-Pacific Rim. There are about 40 of us fulltime and dozens and dozens of partner firms and individuals assembled for the needed skills and talents of each project.
I’d like to do two things today: One—provide my overview on how I think the current global mess—and what else would you call it—affects our world and, two—what trends may emerge in the future following the straightening up of the mess.
As I tried to organize my thoughts for today’s session, I started by looking at some of the sectors where JRA works to see if I could feel better about what’s swirling around us. Part of our firm’s client list is in entertainment design—theme parks—usually a very unreal world where you leave your troubles behind and go skipping down the yellow brick road to Cinderella’s castle where you live happily ever after. Maybe this sector is ok because people will always want to be entertained. So I could quite easily go into my Pixie Dust mode and pretend that what’s been happening on Wall Street and in the global financial markets doesn’t really impact us here in the Land of Happy. But I don’t believe that and it would be a lie.
Another part of our firm’s work is in the arts and culture sector: history museums, science museums, kids museums, zoos. This is a slightly more esoteric world than the Land of Happy, because in this sector we satisfy the audience’s need to understand other cultures and the world around them. This is a basic human need and the housing meltdown and the demise of Lehman Bros. won’t impact this sector. So I could just as easily go into my Dr. Rouse mode and maintain that what’s been happening in the real world really doesn’t impact us here in Quest-for-Knowledge Land. But I don’t really believe that and it would be a lie.
Another part of our firm’s work is in the area of corporate visitor centers where corporations in all sectors strive to “connect with their customers in a meaningful and emotional way.” So they use experiential design to bond with the consumer and win clients for life, blah, blah, blah—you know the drill. What we do is not retail or trade shows, but rather bricks and mortar ego pieces for Coke, Ferrari, Packers, and others. Creating brand loyalty is particularly important in down economic times.
So I could put on my corporate communications hat and maintain that regardless of what’s happening on all the stock exchanges around the world, corporate clients will always find ways to support these initiatives and in Reach-Out-and-Touch-the-Consumer World, it will be business as usual. But I don’t really believe that either.
While these are all different sectors, they all live in the space we call leisure time. And long term that is what gives me hope. Globally, that broader world of leisure time is very accustomed to change. That world has seen sectors, trends, and fads come and go for centuries. The sector has experienced financial ups and downs and has lived through social and political upheavals—-and yet it is still here. So it would also be easy for me to put on my audience-focused leisure time hat and claim that this isn’t the end of the world and that with patience, planning, a willingness to accept major change, and with flexible strategies things will be OK. And I do believe that, and it is not a lie.
So in spite of what is to follow, this session will not end on a gloom and doom scenario, for people will always want to laugh and smile, they will always want to learn and open their minds, and they will always feel a need to connect with the customers they serve. One of the young co-op designers in our office asked me last week if she should consider changing her major in college. She was worried about the future. “Of course not,” I said. The role of experiential and event design may be hitting a major bump in the road and evolving in different ways, but the profession is not going away. But changes are coming and they likely won’t be minor.
You can look at it two ways, I added: “Is the glass half full or half empty? Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Optimist here,” I said. Half full. (You get a bit Pollyanna-ish when you live in the Land of Happy too long.) Smiling she replied: “Half full here too.” That’s the future and that’s cool. Economic history teaches us that when economics get rough, the focus of most individuals narrows and turns inward. This has happened in every single economic decline since the Great Depression.
The focus understandably turns to family, personal needs, non-discretionary finances and the necessities of life. The focus in depressed times is not so much on discretionary leisure time. So one could make a strong argument then that what we do for a living (supporting the leisure time sector) may seem a bit frivolous when financial worlds and social structures are crashing down around us, our clients, and our audiences. But one could also argue that no economic downturn lasts forever. That some of the greatest periods of creativity happened during periods of economic, social, and political upheavals, and that in times of stress, leisure activities become even more important.
Radio, tv, and the movies all matured during some very rough economic times.
Escapism is sometimes just what we need. So, half full or half empty? Optimist or pessimist? You can drive yourself crazy with pessimism, or look for opportunities within the storm and prepare for a changed world after the storm passes. So what’s the role of experiential or event design as we sink into this period of crisis? And what’s our role when this passes—when the sun comes out and we all skip and dance again into the Land of Happy Profitability? I think our role is to understand that when the sun comes out, there will likely be some fundamental changes in the way people look at leisure time.
No one knows how long his down-turn will last of course, or what the world will look like when the upturn kicks in. But we might find some insights by looking at the five stages of a global melt-down and seeing how they might relate to our world. First from a pure business point of view. (As the oldest guy in the room, I’ve lived through some of these before). Mild Amusement: This is just a blip. A correction. Ha, ha, ha—Let’s go have a drink. Shock: Well maybe this is more than a blip. Blips and corrections shouldn’t last this long. Let’s go have a couple of drinks. Disbelief: This can’t be real! I’m too paralyzed to drink. Fear: Damn!
What’s next? Trepidation: I better modify my behavior and my business models and be very careful going forward. According to most analysts, consumers now are somewhere between disbelief and fear.
Now here are those same five stages as they impact our studios. Curiosity: Will this economic mess impact us as designers? Bewilderment: Hey, the RFPs and RFQs aren’t coming as frequently. What’s going on? Realization: We better seriously look at our studio and business model with capital and credit drying up for us and for our clients. Investigation: What will our clients and various business sectors be looking for when this ends? Reinvention: What does our studio look like in a changed, more cautious world? At JRA we are moving from realization to investigation—knowing that some form of reinvention is out there. I think design and economics share one important reality here: periods of flamboyant excess are always followed by periods of change and cautious restraint. What trends come out of all this? Here’s a few I think you might be able to bet on:
Trend One: Design in the future may be more conservative, understated, and non-flamboyant. When the mood of the world is somewhat cautious and hesitant, location based and non-location based experiences usually do not want to look ostentatious. The trend will also be toward quality and doing a better job with a smaller footprint and a reduced investment. Happily this trend preserves the trend toward green design.
Trend Two: Green design itself may be increasingly challenged as capital dollars get tight, for we all know that green often costs more initially. So the focus for the designer must be on the long-term benefits more than ever before. We must become sales people for green. The financial argument that in the long-term, operating efficiencies will offset the higher initial capital costs, is still valid. But when clients struggle to get any capital, that argument becomes a little thin.
Their focus, like most of ours, is on the short-term. The fact that design strongly impacts the health of the planet is indisputable—but financial realities are also indisputable. The successful designers will be those who understand the increasingly important intersection between aesthetics, green, and finances; and who can make cogent business cases, not just design and environmental cases.
As I said before, doing a great job with a smaller footprint and less bravura may be both financially and environmentally the best way to go.
Trend Three: Another trend will be that more than ever we need to get into the heads of our clients. We need to understand their business, their financial models, and their quantitative criteria for success. Meeting their business mission and goals with creative solutions will be the price of entry going forward. I challenge all designers in our studio to see design as an extension of a solid business plan, not just as an extension of a brand or a mission. In many of our sector’s purchasing departments, project managers and bean-counters are influencing all kinds of creative decisions. They talk differently! Lamentable maybe, but a reality.
So many financial and business forces will be intersecting in the future—not all of them will be directly related to design, but they will have a strong impact on design. So I am highly confident that the composition of the studio will change to include skill sets that anticipate these intersections.
Trend Four: When the world rights itself again, audiences will have reevaluated their priorities in terms of leisure. We know that attendance is down at location-based and non-location-based venues, traffic on show floors has dropped, as has attendance at a variety of galas and fundraising events. This is no surprise, of course. But what it may signal for the long-term is that consumption and expenditures may not be viewed the same way as they once were when we get out of this mess.
People will still have leisure time of course, but maybe during this economic downturn they will have discovered different activities to pursue with their leisure time that are just as satisfying. This will definitely have some impact on the worlds of event and experiential design. Not the end of those worlds, but the coming perhaps of different worlds.
Trend Five: In a global world the opportunities for experiential design are much larger and much different than they once were. Here’s a happy trend that is not linked to the current global mess: Our studio used to design just for the sectors where we have expertise. More and more, we take a proactive business development approach to integrating that multi-sector expertise into large (sometimes massive) urban mixed-use developments. This involves a studio with different skill sets than we had just a few years ago. Huge global developers are increasingly realizing the importance of arts, culture, sports, and entertainment in differentiating their mega-billion dollar projects. We want to get in early—and in many cases they want us in early. So we have notched up our participation at MIPIM, CityScape, ULI, and ICSC.
Trend Six: I believe that it is inevitable that design firms and studios will be smaller after this economic crisis has passed. But the trend was already there as the world became flat, as project teams supplanted full-time staffs, and as the trajectory of everyone’s career path changed to accommodate a changing, more mobile workforce with changing requirements for personal job satisfaction. I believe this is a good thing as collaborative design trumps ego-centric design; as audience satisfaction is placed ahead of studio satisfaction; and as business realities exert an increasing influence.
These trends will play out in different ways and in different timeframes. But the future is still bright, partially because as I learned from that co-op designer last week, who considered changing careers, the passion for design still burns in many, the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well, that’s cool. Experiential and event design opportunities will continue to exist and eventually grow all over the world. Audiences will want meaningful new experiences—they will want to smile and learn and connect, and our role in facilitating those connections will be as strong as ever.
Yes, I am 100-percent certain that what is currently happening on Wall Street and on the global scene will fundamentally change the way we do business—perhaps forever. I think it has to, for it will certainly change the way our clients think and the way they do business. This isn’t all bad in the long-term perhaps. In some ways it will be a bit cathartic. I’ve lived through catharsis before, and painful though it may have been, looking back I can honestly say that I and “we” emerged better for it.
We all live in a world of creativity and innovation. That spirit of creativity and innovation will be essential as we sustain ourselves and reinvent ourselves for the next cycle.
