Design Matters (If you don't call it that.)

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that design is an afterthought of good marketing strategy.

But even the smartest of marketing strategies won't get consumer markets fired up in a vacuum. It takes careful integration of many disciplines to make that happen in a way that sticks and delivers the lasting volume to stick it out in the B-to-C world. And design is a critical part of that mix.

Just ask Coca-Cola's new chief of design, David Butler.

Butler has used high-performance design to enhance brand identity, user experience and sustainability. And he's gotten Coke un-stuck from the visual identity doldrums. His secret? Don't call it design.

Read more about it in this week's BusinessWeek article by Jessie Scanion, Coke's New Design Direction.

The Spies of Social Media

The last decade has seen social media networks create cool new communications avenues for both the individual and the organization. But not without a little risk.

As Rohit Bhargava warns in a post at Influential Marketing Blog, tech-savvy online spies could piece together information about your company's goings on that might put you at a strategic disadvantage. Here's his hypothetical scenario as shared by MarketingProfs:

1. You tweet about a business trip to the West Coast with a friend who is known to be a lawyer.
2. She updates her Facebook profile, mentioning a client meeting in Redmond, Washington.
3. Media outlets quote a Microsoft executive about being in discussions with companies in your field.
4. A Microsoft engineer blogs about a new company in your town.

"In four small updates from unrelated people," says Bhargava, "a smart social media surfer could get a very direct sense of a deal about to happen and some inside information..." Scary.