Coca-Cola: Creating value through design

Companies which understand they are not in the business of selling certain products or services, but rather in the business of delivering lifestyle enrichment to customers, are the ones that prosper.  Blue Ocean Strategy helps to instill this perspective, and once it takes root, a company can continue to stay highly relevant to customers, drive lifestyle changes, and continuously create blue oceans.

But what do you do when you are a company like Coca-Cola — which sells the fizzy beverage at the rate of 18,000 servings per hour — yet your product doesn’t change?  Enter David Butler, Coca-Cola’s VP of Global Design, whose aim is to create value for the business through design.  Following some Blue Ocean Strategy-like insights of his own, Mr. Butler now is helping to show that Coke’s core business is not just as a 123 year old manufacturer and distributor of beverages, rather, it’s core business is actually design.  

From Fast Company:

The idea was to show his colleagues that even though they didn't recognize it as such, Coca-Cola is one of the world's largest design companies. And to point out that a more deliberate focus on design could sell more stuff. "The word 'design' is not so important to the top echelons of the company, but winning at the point of sale is fundamental," Butler says. "I wanted to show how you could create value for the business through design. I had no organization, no influence, nothing to point to, but now we had that statement out there -- a flag in the ground."

[Image via Flickr.]