- Recently, I made a video talking about the importance
of infusing brand into product design.
Because if visually things look super different
on the marketing site compared to inside the app
or software itself,
it makes it a lot harder for a tech company to build trust.
Today, I wanna share with you the end-to-end approach
that Dropbox takes to its brand
to ensure that all touch points are covered
and that things stay consistent.
This is a clip from a recent interview
I did with Liz Gilmore,
who is the Executive Creative Director at Dropbox.
So here's Liz explaining how they structure their work
and team into three pillars
of what a user sees,
how they buy and then how they use the product.
- Brand at Dropbox is really important,
as well as critical to the business.
And we really approach, you know,
our brand first and foremost end-to-end.
We also believe that you can only really truly unlock
not only the power,
but also sort of the impact and reach
of a brand through that end-to-end consistency.
So really thinking holistically.
I wanted to take a pause
just to clarify what I mean by end-to-end.
- Please.
- Because that means a lot of things to a lot of people.
When we think about end-to-end,
it's really a customer-centric way
to approach the expression of our brand.
So it really should be providing a cohesive,
consistent and thoughtful experience
for our customers from the first exposure to the brand
and to how they learn and evaluate it and buy it
all the way to how they use the product
and even return to it.
We believe that a user-centric,
flexible, but also opinionated brand and identity system
is a really key part in upholding that integrity.
So, you know,
we really think of it through the full customer journey
and really not individual surfaces,
but many interconnected surfaces for brand expression.
In fact, you know our user research,
done maybe a couple of years ago now
showed that an inconsistent
or fragmented brand experience for a customer,
can really erode user trust.
And as you know,
we have really high brand equity and awareness,
and we would never want to erode that trust
with ideally a solvable solution
with a stronger system.
- Yeah. And so what I think is amazing is like,
first of all, everything you're saying,
I'm sure everyone nodding along,
is like, "Yeah, this makes sense.
"You want the brand to be consistent."
But where I feel like you've gone a step further at Dropbox
is not just, you know,
focusing on the work of this as a brand,
making sure that you're covering all the points,
you've structured the team around this as well.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
- Yeah, absolutely.
So early of last year, we took an opportunity
to really restructure our design team.
So we have this new identity system that was,
we really use this framework of end-to-end.
So you know, how we see things out in the world,
how we buy our products, and how we use them.
So we created a system that really thought
about this holistic journey.
So naturally we wanted to also reflect our team structure
and how we work to really mimic that methodology.
That also gives us really good touch points
to the entire organization as well,
and ensures that all surfaces
are really being accounted for,
when we think about the creative
that we're putting out into the world.
So within my team, I have, you know,
I'm sort of the Executive Creative Director on the team.
I have a layer of Associate Creative Directors,
that really look over at those different work streams
and then sort of me, as an umbrella,
to make sure that it's consistent across all of those.
So we use a framework called See, Buy, Use,
which is kind of a user-first way
of orienting ourselves within the brand.
So, you know, See is usually our louder,
more brand forward marketing and advertising moments,
Buy is primarily our website, our purchase journey,
how people sort of educate, consider, evaluate,
and buy our products.
And then obviously like onboarding
into the product and how we use.
So we sort of divide our team into leads,
that are domain experts within See, Buy and Use.
And then our designers are actually fluid.
So, you know, while they have a domain expert
as maybe their direct manager, you know,
their skillsets for their own personal growth
need to be pushed by trying out different surfaces
and sort of expanding their skills.
So the sort of the redesign of our design team, yes,
map to the structure of our business,
but what's great is that also mapped to growth development
for our team.
So it was a very people and business first approach
to how we could better situate the impact of our team.
When we think about See,
or I like to call marketing and advertising,
those are really like, you know,
their charter is, you know,
consistently show up in culture in the world at large.
So that's a lot of advertising.
That's a lot of marketing, you know,
that's a lot of like really pushing the brand forward.
So the way that we think about the brand
in relation to that is like,
that's going to be your much more brand-forward moments,
a lot more colorful, a little more experimental.
We really rely on a lot of our advertising
to expand the contours of our brand
and help us evolve it
because they're constantly uncovering new ways
to play with our toolkit.
Within web or sort of Buy,
is primarily all of our websites, plural.
So we have a lot of websites.
We don't just have dropbox.com.
We have a lot of other different interconnected surfaces.
And then, so, you know,
a lot of our web designers or interactive designers,
sort of, that's their wheelhouse.
- Yup.
- And then interestingly,
we also have an entire team
dedicated to our brand and product,
which is a very unique role
and specialized role for our team.
Usually they have a product design background
or they map to a product design role,
but they really index high on visual design
as a product designer.
So having a lot of that design systems thinking
that's essential to product design and scaling a system,
but also with sort of the art direction and visual eye
for understanding how to bring in key brand elements
into the product.
In my past, there's always been a really big disconnect
between a marketing website and the product,
usually because of org structures or just like silo-ing.
And that's a pretty glaring gap for a user
when they experience this really beautiful and like,
you know, storytelling,
and like a lot of graphic elements
when they go to a website,
and then they log into the product
and it's not the same colors or the same type face.
You're like, "Wait, where did I go?"
So that's like a really important part
of the user journey for Dropbox as a brand.
- And those people,
the designers who work on that sit within the brand team,
but they have that product experience.
- Yeah, there actually, I think half of that,
well, the lead for that team or the ACD
is a product designer.
But she does report into me.
- Yeah.
- So she's still within our team,
but she definitely indexes higher,
or has skills within product design
that really kind of give that superpower
for that particular sort of vertical.
- I've spoken to the designers
at around 18 different companies now I think,
as part of Inside Marketing Design,
and this is the first time
that I've heard about this end-to-end approach
or like terminology.
I think it's super smart.
And I especially love how Dropbox
adjust the brand expression
for each of those different pillars.
I feel like I often see this between the marketing site
and inside the product,
but Dropbox takes it a step further
by having this See, Buy, Use.
You can watch my full interview with Liz
over on the Inside Marketing Design channel.
I highly recommend you'd go and do that
because she shared loads of great stuff.
I learned a lot from it and I know you will too.
I hope you find it interesting though,
just to hear this clip about their approach to brand.
And I'd love to hear it in the comments.
If this is something that maybe from hearing it,
you want to apply at your company.
And if you're on a smaller team, like I am,
how are you going to make that happen?
Because that's something that I am still thinking about
and trying to figure out myself.
All right, I will slide over now
and leave you to go watch the full interview.
Go on, click right there.
I'll see you over there.