中国营销传播网， 2005-12-30， 作者: 翁向东

前面几篇有关品牌气质的论述以及野力、乐百氏、万宝路、LG、杰尼亚和范思哲的案例表明，笔者前面所言不虚——“品牌气质会影响一个品牌的销售乃至生死存亡”，好的品牌气质能有效提升品牌价值，提升目标消费群心理上对对品牌认同和忠诚度，而令消费者反感的品牌气质会使品牌其它方面的努力与资源投入功亏一篑。

　　 那么该如何创建品牌气质令目标消费群心动的品牌气质呢？

　　首先，要研究透目标消费群的审美情趣与价值观，然后规划出吻合他们的审美情趣与价值观的品牌气质。这是至关重要的，娃哈哈酸奶在上海的失利就是一个典型的案例。一个卖给市民阶层的中低档白酒，过多地注入“奢华”的元素，放到会使消费者敬而远之。而一个高雅的咖啡吧、手表，平面广告画面灰暗，没有美感，也一定会使目标消费群产生排斥。

　　

　　其次，要了解形成品牌气质的主要传播载体。所有向消费者传递品牌信息的载体都会影响品牌气质，但影响最大的是：产品的工业设计、包装、VI系统、海报、DM、报纸杂志等平面广告的设计风格、模特的造型、影视广告的画面。比如模特的造型，任达华英武、阳刚的造型让人觉得报喜鸟是英武的、阳刚的、高档的；模特的表演也会对品牌气质产生重大影响，野力干红中那位男模特失态的眼神让人们觉得品牌的低俗；影视广告的画面晦暗不精美、音乐、配音不动听就会给人品牌低档粗劣的感觉；场景金碧辉煌就能暗示品牌的高档，音乐、配音、剪辑都能赋予品牌或亲和、或温馨、或古典、或激情、或土气、或低档的品牌气质。中国移动《让沟通无处不在—电梯篇、乡下篇》、中国网通《有我天地宽》、平安保险《中国平安、平安中国》注重通过广告的赏心悦目来树立品牌形象给人以舒适美感与精神享受，让人们感受到品牌的大气、高雅与品位。 2000年10月，杰信对中国彩电业的一次品牌调查表明，有不少人认为康佳就象其所在的城市深圳那样“现代、时尚”，而长虹则比较“老气、守旧”，象一位“头上绕着白头巾、拿旱烟筒、穿劣质、皱巴巴的西装的一位村支书”。再追问下去发现，这种差异主要是由影视广告的美学表现所决定的。康佳的小画仙广告、冰上芭蕾镜面电视广告片简直是美学精品，画面色彩缤纷、背景音乐怡人心神，小画仙广告模特前卫、时尚，镜面电视广告中跳芭蕾的模特清新甜美，无不赋予康佳品牌“时尚、现代感”，康佳大部分的影视广告都有很高的美学价值。大家回忆一下长虹的影视广告，如“长虹－红太阳篇”、“长虹－中国风空调篇”，就可以发现，画面晦暗、粗糙、质感差，配音的分贝高但很不高雅，美感比八十年代整个画面充斥着“誉满全球、厂址、电话、厂长姓名”的广告强不了多少，难怪消费者会对长虹品牌形成这样的看法。好在，长虹后来的影视广告如“精显－流星雨”篇无论画面与配音都折射出“高科技、高档感”，对长虹土气的品牌气质是一大改良，如果长虹以后能一直坚持所有的影视广告以及VI、海报等平面广告的美学表现都达到“精显－流星雨”与康佳的水准，长虹也一定能树立高档、高品位形象，从而获得较高溢价。

　　所以，在营销传播活动中要不断地测试产品包装、VI、终端展示、影视广告、平面广告对品牌气质的影响，要定期调查消费者心目中的品牌气质究竟是什么样的，与企业自身的预期是否符合，若不符合乃至相背离，就要找出原因并调整相应的营销传播活动。

 

中国企业应该追求品牌策略吗？

From www.gemag.com.cn     http://spaces.msn.com/members/foresight

 

要回答这个问题，需要先来分析一个在中国已成惯例的商业策略。  　　这个流行的模式基于如下假设：在竞争性的市场中，对于任一种具有特定功能的产品来说，只有一个真实的市场价格。
　　假设这种“单一价格法则”有效，那么，企业别无选择，只能按如下做法：根据它的生产能力，选择一种特定的产品，以尽可能低的成本来生产该产品，并集中力量优化供应链。这就是被中国许多企业运用的老套的商业模式。  
　　但是，“单一价格法则”有效吗？对某些产业来说答案是肯定的（比如个人电脑），但对大多数重要的行业来说，答案则是否定的。这些行业包括许多消费品（食品、饮料、化妆品等等）；在购买前消费者难以评价其质量的产品（如药品）；消费者并不完全了解的产品（如新技术产品）。  
　　如果一个企业所在的行业“单一价格法则”无效，该怎么办呢？一个战略选择是，集中力量将自己的品牌区别于市场上的同类产品。不过，设计和贯彻一项成功的品牌战略并非易事。
　　企业需要进行详尽的、定位准确的市场研究，以有效锁定目标消费者群，选择适当的广告内容，调整价格和广告策略，量化短期和长期效果，仔细平衡风险和收益。而且，企业还要认识到，追求品牌战略并不意味着简单地在广告上面多花些钱。企业必须精心设计一以贯之的商业模式，采用新的标准来评价管理绩效，贯彻能够鼓励长期绩效的激励计划，在新产品发展过程中对需要提高效率的部分引入组织变化。  
　　有这些困难和不确定性，中国企业为何还应该追求品牌战略？答案很简单。在长期运营中，品牌和技术是产生卓越成绩的唯一途径。而且，随着中国经济的发展和居民收入的持续增长，国内的劳动力成本也会增加。因此，中国企业靠继续采用低成本战略来获得卓越的经济成效，将会越来越困难。以上原因，将使得中国企业除了追求品牌战略之外，别无他选。
    让我以一家中国企业发展和贯彻品牌战略的案例来说明我的观点。光明乳业，尽管这是一家最近在产品上出了问题的企业，但它在过去几年中运用品牌战略，从低附加值产品，转型为一个附加值更高、并更好为特定消费群体提供产品的公司，在这一点上无疑是成功的。  
　　贯彻和发展这一品牌战略，要求光明乳业发展全新的商业模式。光明乳业分析了不同区域市场的消费者偏好，在每个区域市场为不同偏好的消费者生产特定的产品，并采取灵活的价格策略。光明乳业还设法让它的区域性产品适应当地供应链的需要。  
　　重要的是，如果没有一个全面的广告策划把光明和它的竞争对手区分开来的话，以上的策略都将成为空谈。值得一提的是，光明并非中国乳业最大的广告投入者。作为光明的主要竞争对手，伊力和蒙牛在广告上投入更多，也拥有比光明更大的市场份额。但是，光明却比它们获得了更高的利润。
　　光明的品牌经验，为那些想追求品牌战略的中国企业提供了几条重要的经验教训。
　　第一，品牌战略的经济价值严重依赖企业的战略特性。不同所有权结构的企业，其战略特性是不同的。伊力和蒙牛主要依靠外部投资者，因而需要不断地向股东证明短期业绩和股东回报。而尽管同为上市公司，光明的大股东上海牛奶(集团)和上实食品控股有限公司均为政府背景，它们共同拥有光明近2/3的股权，这使得光明能够集中力量追求长期回报。  
　　第二，持续和分阶段执行的市场进入策略，通常比大规模的一次性进入策略好。通过分阶段扩张的战略，企业可以有效控制风险。此外，企业还可以在以后引入新产品，从已经被消费者认可的商标中受益。  
　　第三，成功的品牌战略必须有成熟的商业模式作支撑，它必须包含以下几个方面：市场分区，对不同地域消费者偏好的了解，与不同区域供应链状况相适应的品牌战略。
　　第四，企业必须用量化的方式，来评估广告对业绩的长期效果。在评估中，企业需要注意区别由品牌带来的效果和其他市场策略，比如价格杠杆带来的效果。  
　　第五，企业尽量不要被广告预算束缚了手脚。特别要注意避免对广告效果定性调查的忽视，定型调查可以为合理分配广告预算提供更好的方案。  　　　　第六，用教条的标准来衡量长期业绩，可能会导致糟糕的品牌决策。因为这些标准无法评估品牌战略的弹性经济价值。  
　　最后，我们回到基本的问题。中国企业如何量化不同的品牌战略在长期效益或长期股票价格上的影响？做这个分析，要求运用融合经济学、财政学、营销学和心理学的新理论和经验方法，以在不确定性下作出最佳决策。 （作者为美国战略管理与市场咨询公司总裁）（文/《环球企业家》□ 出自：2005年9月 总第114期）

What is the lesson of Yahoo China for five years in China market?

 

Foresight Marketing  http://spaces.msn.com/members/foresight

Internet Business  http://spaces.msn.com/members/ibizmen

 

In recent days Yahoo spent one billion USD to acquire 40% of Alibaba’s shares, it means Yahoo plan to pay more attention to develop e-business. It also means Yahoo accept the failure fact of Yahoo China within five years, so Yahoo sold Yahoo China to Alibaba.

 

Why Sina, Sohu and 163 have made great profits within five years, but Yahoo China could not? What are the lessons of Yahoo China?

 

1.       The decision makers are far away from market and customers.

This is common mistake for global company in China Market. Usually global groups’ headquarters are not in China, their top leaders of headquarters consider China divisions are only one department of groups, so China Divisions have not right to make decision.

However these decision markers are far away from market and clients, how they can make right decision?  How they can make quick response?

 

2.       The top management team members are not local talents.

Although global groups understand very much the importance of localization, however their top management teams are not from local talents. They love to use American and European managers, so these top managers should spend two or three years to understand Chinese market.

 

3.       The strategy and tactic of marketing are not right at beginning.

Although global groups have strong advantages on Investment and Technology, however they do not understand Chinese market at beginning, their strategy and tactic of marketing are not right, so they go wrong way in the market at beginning. When they realize the wrong strategy, it is too late, because competitors never give them enough time.

 

Yahoo China spent five years to understand China market. Now Yahoo plans to develop e-business. The lesson is too expensive. We hope Yahoo can grasp new chance in China.

 

Foresight Marketing  http://spaces.msn.com/members/foresight

Internet Business  http://spaces.msn.com/members/ibizmen

Foresight89@yahoo.com.cn

Foresight89@hotmail.com

 

品牌战略对企业发展的作用

 

from http://spaces.msn.com/members/foresight,  先见市场策划

from http://spaces.msn.com/members/bestname,   美名源

 

今天全球市场竞争已经到了白日化的地步，中国市场也是如此。中国企业和许多全球企业一样已经被杀价竞争搞的遍体鳞伤。企业和产品市场竞争已经进入了品牌竞争和技术创新竞争的时代。

 

虽然大部分企业都知道品牌的重要性，也投入了许多资金。然而大部分企业还是存在一个严重的误区，认为包装和广告就是品牌。而忽略了品牌的实质内容。我们看到过去许多有着国内外知名度很高的企业和产品现今天销声匿迹就是这个原因。

 

我们非常羡慕美国的“肯特鸡”、“麦当劳”的品牌，虽然中国的快餐业已经模仿和学习了他们二十年，但还是在本国市场彻底输给了他们。

 

我们也嫉妒“耐克”和“阿迪达斯”这样的运动品牌，虽然他们没有自己的工厂，却源源不段地赚取全球为他们加工的工厂的大部分利润。可喜的是我们看到了中国自己的品牌“李宁”牌的崛起。

 

中国虽然是全球的加工业基地，但是大多数企业却只能为了别人进行加工，将最大最厚的销售差价利润让给了别人。为此全球无数的跨国制造业和贸易巨头用他们的品牌垄断着全球的市场。

 

我们高兴地看到近年来中国家电制造企业在中国市场树立了品牌，然而要在国际市场要树立自己的品牌却遇到了巨大困难和阻力，还有很长道路要走，还要付出巨大的代价。最近联想收购IBM就遇到了很大困难；去年长虹暴露出巨额资金被骗等等事件说明了中国企业如果没有自己的全球品牌，就会在市场遭到严重的阻力，发展就会存在困难。

 

那么如何创建自己的品牌，如何根据国内外市场形势用最少的代价，最有销的策略和方法创造响亮的品牌。我们美名源联合先见策划可以为您提供建设性的和创造性的品牌策划服务。

 

 

 

 

What is the role for company development?

 

Global market competition is extremely strong today and China market is the same.  A large number of Chinese firms like global firms face cruel price struggle everyday.  The competition between different companies go into to the stage of brand strategy and technology creation.

 

Although lot of managers know the importance of brand strategy, however they still misunderstand the meaning of brand,  they consider brand strategy being only advertisement and package, they do not know the nature.  We can see how many world famous brands in the past disappear in the market today.

 

We envy the famous brands like Kentucky and Macdonald.  Chinese fast food firm have learnt them for nearly 20 years. However Chinese fast food still lost market in China.

 

We also envy the famous sport brands NIKE and ADIDAS.  Although they have not own factory, they earn much profit from OEM factory in the world. We are so happy to find the famous Chinese sport brand establishment Li Ning.

 

Although China win the name of factory center in the world today, however it is hard to find famous Chinese brand on global market.

 

We are so glad to see many famous Chinese electronic brands in China market, however when Chinese firms get into global market, they meet hard difficulty.  Recently China Lenovo meet challenge from American government for taking over IBM PC.  Last year Chang Hong exposed being cheated huge amount of money by one oversea Chinese firm.  These terrible cases tell us how important for Chinese company.

 

How to establish your brand in the market?  How to spend less money to create excellent brand strategy for your company.  Bestname and Shanghai Foresight Marketing can supply you with right service.

 

March 2, 2005

 

Bestname and Shanghai Foresight Marketing

 

Bestname89@yahoo.com.cn

Foresight89@yahoo.com.cn

 

Get Creative!
How to build innovative companies

Slide Show >>

 

Listen closely. There's a new conversation under way across America that may well change your future. If you work for Procter & Gamble Co. (PG ) or General Electric Co. (GE ), you already know what's going on. If you don't, you might want to stop what you're doing and consider this:

The Knowledge Economy as we know it is being eclipsed by something new -- call it the Creativity Economy. Even as policymakers and pundits wring their hands over the outsourcing of engineering, software writing, accounting, and myriad other high-tech, high-end service jobs -- not to mention the move of manufacturing to Asia -- U.S. companies are evolving to the next level of economic activity.

What was once central to corporations -- price, quality, and much of the left-brain, digitized analytical work associated with knowledge -- is fast being shipped off to lower-paid, highly trained Chinese and Indians, as well as Hungarians, Czechs, and Russians. Increasingly, the new core competence is creativity -- the right-brain stuff that smart companies are now harnessing to generate top-line growth. The game is changing. It isn't just about math and science anymore. It's about creativity, imagination, and, above all, innovation.

What is unfolding is the commoditization of knowledge. We have seen global forces undermine autos, electronics, and other manufacturing, but the Knowledge Economy was expected to last forever and play to America's strengths: great universities, terrific labs, smart immigrants, an entrepreneurial business culture.

Oops. It turns out there are a growing number of really smart engineers and scientists "out there," too. They've learned to make assembly lines run efficiently, whether they turn out cars or code, refrigerators or legal briefs. So U.S. companies are moving on to creating consumer experiences, not just products; reconceiving entire brand categories, not merely adding a few more colors; and, above all, innovating in new and surprising arenas.

The U.S. has a lead in this unfolding Creativity Economy -- for the moment. The new forms of innovation driving it forward are based on an intimate understanding of consumer culture -- the ability to determine what people want even before they can articulate it. Working in what is still the largest consumer market in the world gives U.S. companies a huge edge. So does being able to think outside the box -- something Americans still do better than most. But Toyota Motor Corp. (TM ) has a feel for U.S. consumers, and Samsung Group can be pretty creative, too. Competition will surely be intense.

A New Dance
For managers, the biggest challenge may be making the leap from their Six Sigma process skills to new ways of thinking. For corporations, transforming themselves will require new sets of values and organizational principles. Have you heard of design strategy? It's probably the Next Big Thing after Six Sigma. How about consumer-centric innovation? It may be the most powerful way to raise a company's innovation success rate. Do you know what innovation metrics your company needs? Have you heard of CENCOR (calibrate, explore, create, organize, and realize)? It's the post-Six Sigma dogma GE is spreading far and wide among its managers. Are B-schools on top of all this change? Not really, but Stanford University is starting a "D-school" -- a design school where managers can learn the dynamics of innovation. Teaching elephants to dance is never easy, but that's the task ahead if you want your company -- and your career -- to prosper.

You're thinking "this is all hype," aren't you? Just another "newest and biggest" fad, right? Wrong. Ask the 940 senior executives from around the world who said in a recent Boston Consulting Group Inc. survey that increasing top-line revenues through innovation has become essential to success in their industry. The same BCG survey showed that more than half of the execs were dissatisfied with the financial returns on their investments in innovation. They should be. By one measure, from innovation consultant Doblin Inc., nearly 96% of all innovation attempts fail to beat targets for return on investment. No wonder innovation frustration is the talk of corner offices.

BusinessWeek is joining this growing conversation about getting creative by launching a new online Innovation & Design portal -- www.businessweek.com/innovate -- to present the best research and thinking on the subject. Take a look at the interactive self-assessment feature developed by Larry Keeley's Doblin Inc. There are six innovation metrics available. Keeley is the guru of the evolving field of innovation science. Some compare him to W. Edwards Deming, who revolutionized the field of quality measurement.

There is, in fact, a whole new generation of innovation gurus. They are not the superstars of the '90s, such as Clayton Christensen, who focused on what might be called macro-innovation -- the impact of big, unexpected new technologies on companies. The new gurus focus more on micro-innovation -- teaching companies how to connect with their customers' emotions, linking research and development labs to consumer needs, recalibrating employee incentives to emphasize creativity, constructing maps showing opportunities for innovation.

When creative mojo gets going, it can explode into innovation. An example: the mundane mop. Cleaning used to be done with mops and water. Design Continuum Inc. in West Newton, Mass., researched cleaning for P&G and observed that water tends to slop dirt around, while dry rags pick it up (thanks to electrostatic attraction). Ergo, the Swiffer. In the design-speak of the Creativity Economy, this is paradigm shifting. Design Continuum helped P&G shift the cleaning paradigm. Now the Swiffer may become P&G's newest $1 billion brand.

Think out-of-the-box consumer experiences, and you get the idea of paradigm shifting. Old paradigm: corner coffee shops. New paradigm: Starbucks (SBUX ). Old: radio. New: satellite radio. Old: crowded electronics stores. New: Apple Computer (AAPL ) stores. Old: grungy, smelly circuses. New: Cirque du Soleil. Old: any airline. New: JetBlue Airways (JBLU ). Old: Macy's (FD ). New: Target (TGT ). Old: Earth-toned Birkenstock sandals. New: colorful beach "Birkis."

The evolution of the economy toward creativity has been underway for some time. Steve Jobs, of course, has turned Apple into the paragon of the creative corporation. Companies throughout the world are deconstructing Apple's success in design and innovation, and learning the lessons.

Today all kinds of blue-chip CEOs are signing on to creativity. A.G. Lafley, P&G's CEO, and Jeffrey R. Immelt, GE's CEO are at the core of the new movement. Lafley started it when he took over in 2000, but Immelt's conversion to creativity when he became chief executive in 2001 is giving the shift to creativity more momentum. Because of GE'S size and scope, when it moves, the economy moves with it. The vocabulary of business may be changing as well. It's hard to imagine former GE boss Jack Welch saying: "Creativity and imagination applied in a business context is innovation," as Immelt recently did. Or "we're measuring GE's top leaders on how imaginative they are. Imaginative leaders are the ones who have the courage to fund new ideas, lead teams to discover better ideas, and lead people to take more educated risks," as he added. That's a sea change from rewarding GE managers for a career of floating from operation to operation, massaging the process for incremental improvements.

Lafley sits on GE's board, so two of America's most powerful and effective CEOs now meet regularly, talk about creativity, discuss which of the new breed of innovation gurus is offering the best advice, and exchange notes on what works and what doesn't. When the history of the transition from the Knowledge Economy to the Creativity Economy is written, these two will probably get much of the credit.

To understand why the creativity movement is becoming so important, you need to go back to its roots at P&G. By harnessing the power of design, P&G has transformed itself from a stagnant brand manager into a model of innovation efficiency that outperforms industry rivals.

Before Lafley, P&G's volume growth was basically flat. The company cared more about how its products functioned than it did about how customers felt about them. "P&G had the best chemical engineering and marketing operations in the country," says Patrick Whitney, director of the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology. "It didn't care about the user experience." P&G could tell retailers to stock eight kinds of Crest, and they did. As power shifted to big retailers, P&G couldn't do that. "It had to create new products, and to do that, P&G had to get closer to the consumer," says Whitney.

Fresh Eyes
Lafley turned to design. In 2001 he established a new executive post: vice-president for design, innovation, and strategy, naming Claudia B. Kotchka, now 53, to fill it. She and Lafley knew they couldn't change P&G's culture without fresh eyes from the outside. So they made a major decision: Even as P&G began laying off thousands of top executives, middle managers, scientists, and others, it quadrupled its design staff. For the first time it hired a legion of designers who had worked at other companies and in other industries.

In a second crucial decision, Kotchka dispatched designers to work directly with R&D staffers to help to conceive new products. This changed P&G's entire innovation process, making it consumer-centric rather than driven by new technology. To open up the company further, P&G started hiring different kinds of consultants. Among them were Design Continuum; ZIBA Design in Portland, Ore.; Chicago's Doblin Inc.; and IDEO in Palo Alto, Calif.

Here's how it works at P&G: Kotchka contacts P&G's divisional heads, asking for a list of possible opportunities designers might address. Recently, the head of home care said it was time to look at bathroom cleaning. Kotchka brought in IDEO with the goal of helping out. IDEO and P&G's designers went out and observed people cleaning bathrooms around the world. In South America they saw women using brooms to clean walls and showers effectively and built a prototype combining a small hand cleaner with a long pole. P&G tested the idea via a survey. People hated it.

But P&G hung in there. What is fast becoming the Holy Grail of innovation -- the "unmet, unarticulated" needs of consumers -- didn't show up in the survey. Instead, P&G relied on the informed intuition of designers and tested the idea again, using working prototypes. People loved the real thing. P&G then broke down the walls of its Mr. Clean brand, reached in and used the Mr. Clean detergent for the new product. The Mr. Clean MagicReach was introduced in April -- with a four-foot detachable pole. Mundane as this example may be, it shows how design strategy can generate innovative new products and sales.

To build a design infrastructure, Lafley also established what he calls his innovation "gym," a place to train managers in the new design thinking. And he created a Design Board of non-P&Gers who provide an independent perspective on products, brand extensions, and marketing.

Jeff Immelt inherited one of America's most successful companies. GE's incredible process culture, which brought so much to the bottom line in the '90s, was no longer enough to maintain its leadership in the 21st century. Like Lafley, Immelt needed to create an innovation culture quickly. One of his major goals was to raise GE's average organic growth to 8% from the 5% of the past decade. The skills Jack Welch prized -- cost-cutting, efficiency, the continual improvement of operations -- couldn't deliver that.

Big Bets
Immelt launched a series of what he calls Imagination Breakthrough projects, investing more than $5 billion in 80 initiatives that take GE into new markets, product areas, and industries. He told his managers to connect with consumers, learn to take risks, and place big bets. GE is already reaping major benefits from previous bold moves. Its latest quarterly profit surge of 24% is due in part to reframing the idea of power generation. The company expanded it from gas turbines to wind and solar, which paid off.

Also like Lafley, Immelt is pushing to change the corporate structure to spur creativity. He appointed Beth Comstock to the newly created position of chief marketing officer in charge of generating innovation and creativity. He's bringing in many of the same design and innovation gurus Lafley uses so effectively. And GE being GE, has its new acronym, CENCOR, for its innovation process.

Call it CENCOR, creativity, or imagination, GE is doing it. Comstock recently held a "China market discovery" session, bringing together some 90 people for three days. Outside innovation consultants pushed the envelope. "We forced the group to get outside itself, to look at China with new eyes," says Comstock. The effort appears to be working: Sales to China soared in the latest quarter.

What is the methodology of the new design strategy that Lafley, Immelt, and others are adopting? The basics are simple. They start with observation -- going out and directly seeing customers shop at malls, families eating in restaurants, or patients being treated in hospitals. Gap Inc. (GPS ) and others have found that social shopping -- in pairs and threesomes -- is the norm in its stores, so it's making dressing rooms bigger. Trying out lots of ideas fast by making models or videos (prototyping) is the next step. This lets managers visualize concepts, make decisions on which to improve and which to discard, and launch products faster.

Storytelling is very important. Designers have found that placing a potential new product within an emotional story that connects with consumers raises the chances of success. The design of the new line of MINI_motion watches and driving shoes, for example, captures the story of the Mini Cooper's cool urban driving experience. It's about the driver, not the car.

The final ingredient in design strategy is building an organizational process that does these things all the time. This kind of change can be wrenching for a company, but the payoffs are enormous. "You can build a kind of culture of routine innovation through design thinking," says one of the pioneers of the new discipline, David Kelley, co-founder of IDEO and head of the new D-school at Stanford.

So watch out, consultants. A whole new cadre of advisers is out to lead CEOs into the Creativity Economy. They speak a language different from Establishment consultants' (more anthropology, less technology) and advise differently (more hands-on workshops, fewer companywide surveys). Mainstream consultants, such as BCG, are building their innovation expertise, but they'd better hurry.

The new gurus have emerged from the depths of the late '90s meltdown and the shock of Asian competition to show CEOs a path beyond the Knowledge Economy to an even higher-value-added business model. They say they have found a way to play a high-margin game in a low-priced world, a means of differentiating products in a commoditized marketplace and a methodology for staying ahead of Asian rivals. They are the keepers of creativity in a world awash in technology, the champions of innovation in a globe drowning in commodities. Meet seven of them and many more on our new site.

There's a lot of talk about America becoming a 97-pound weakling. But the naysayers don't get the strength inherent in a truly Creative Economy. This revolution has barely begun, and building creative, innovative companies is the great task ahead. In the stories that follow, you'll find the tools, methods, and metrics to help make it happen.