Ferrari is one of the world’s most recognized and prestigious brands. So why – and how -- does a European company with a global reputation for high-end quality and performance decide to build a theme park, complete with roller coasters, on an island in the Middle East? After all, most people will never be able to afford a Ferrari and the company builds no SUVs, minivans or pickups, only two-door sports cars that usually cost in the six figures. The answer has a lot to do with a global strategy to spread the Ferrari brand well beyond those who can shell out $200,000 for a new F430 to enthusiasts who are eager to buy licensed clothing and merchandise and in general spread the word about Ferrari.
The company charged with expressing the Ferrari brand in the theme park setting, giving visitors a fun experience while maintaining the Ferrari mystique, is Cincinnati-based Jack Rouse and Associates. JRA has worked around the world designing theme parks, museums, zoos, sports halls of fame and visitor centers. Its latest project will be the entertainment anchor of a $40 million development on Yas Island in Abu Dhabi and will feature Formula One-themed racing roller coasters, a pit lane team experience, a Ferrari driving school, a virtual reality racing simulator, dune buggies and a 200-foot G-force tower to simulate the cornering forces felt by race car drivers. Every experience there will be designed to impress visitors with the Ferrari brand – its heritage, its power and its emotion.
How JRA meshed the design of the theme park with the powerful Ferrari brand will be a featured presentation at the Design Management Institute’s Brand/Design 20 Conference, the 20th meeting of this influential organization that leads design thinking around the world. It will be an unprecedented opportunity for the Rouse firm to showcase this one-of-a-kind project and its work in general. More than that, this gathering of international design leaders is seen as a showcase for the burgeoning brand design industry in Cincinnati, an opportunity to highlight the talents and capabilities that thrive here.
This will not be the type of gathering where thousands of conventioneers converge on downtown, but, beginning June 10, more than 100 thought leaders from the brand design industry will gather here to share ideas and network. Some of the nation's leading experts in the field will make presentations, including designers from Starbucks, Kodak and The Wharton School. The Cincinnati Brand Design Alliance, a consortium of several branding firms, is helping to sponsor the event.
Cincinnati's role in the development of brand design and the number of leading brand design firms in the city was a major factor in DMI’s decision to hold the conference here. Other upcoming DMI seminars are scheduled to be held in New York City, Chicago and Denver, cities more often associated with the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the advertising and design industries. But Cincinnati is known within the industry as a hub for brand design and word is beginning to get out beyond the industry circle. The DMI conference will be an opportunity for leading design experts to learn more about the city and its talent, says Jerry Kathman, one of the event’s organizers. Kathman’s firm, LPK, is a leading independent brand design agencies, and a big reason Cincinnati is known as a brand design capital.
“This city has an interesting story around brand building and we can support it,” Kathman says.
Over the decades, the city has emerged as a center for advanced brand design. San Francisco-based Landor, a pioneer in branding, has its largest office in Cincinnati. Omnicom’s Interbrand has a large office here as well. In addition to LPK, other major independent agencies such as LAGA, Deskey, Fisher, and FRCH are headquartered here. And there are many others in Cincinnati’s brand community, including Northlich, Strata-G, Metaphor and HSR.
“It’s the most interesting creative class story in the city,” Kathman says.
It’s also a story that could be told by walking through any grocery story aisle. A trip to the grocery can find dozens of products that have been touched in some way by design thinkers in Cincinnati, either through the product design, the packaging, the colors associated with the brand, the display, the words, the advertising, or all of the above. What brand designers do is put all of those together in a way that creates connections with consumers, that builds emotional attachments to products and keeps them buying.
The list of brands that were created or extended here is long and includes Tide, KFC, Crest, Hershey, Kellogg, Birdseye and Heinz. And when Jack Rouse’s firm finishes its work next year, Ferrari.
“Who would think that type of thinking would come from a city in the heartland?” Kathman says.
Kathman himself is a heartland guy, growing up on Cincinnati’s West Side, attending the University of Cincinnati and then going to work for a precursor of LPK. In 1983, he was part of a group that bought the firm, which has experienced growth on the order of 20 percent a year since.
In fact, the heartland is where the industry was born. Most experts trace the development of the brand management concept to Cincinnati in 1931 when a junior manager at Procter & Gamble named Neil Mc Elroy penned what is now a famous memo to senior management outlining a new way to organize the company and improve sales. Read today, McElroy’s memo seems dry and unremarkable, a list of recommendations. But three words keep cropping up in his recommendations for what the “Brand Man” would do: “Take full responsibility.” The brand manager would take full responsibility for marketing the products, coordinating manufacturing, research, advertising and sales. The brand – be it P&G’s Ivory, Camay or Tide – would be the focus of the organization around which everything else was organized.
McElroy’s ideas were put into practice at P&G and later, emulated by consumer products companies around the world. (McElroy didn’t stop there: he went on to become chief executive of P&G, and in the late 1950s, was named U.S. secretary of defense.)
P&G, of course, is the world’s largest consumer products company, marketing more than 100 brands around the world. Its global headquarters in Cincinnati has been a major force in driving the brand expertise found here. But other Fortune 500 firms headquartered here have attracted brand design talent: Macy’s Inc., owner of two of the most powerful brands in retailing, Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, and Kroger Co., the $60 billion grocery retailer that is exploring new ways to build loyalty to its stores and the brands they sell. The city is also home to Chiquita, whose brand name is virtually synonymous with bananas and other fresh produce.
Cincinnatians will be well represented among the DMI speakers, including Cindy Tripp, P&G’s global marketing director, Aaron Betsky, director of the Cincinnati Art Museum, who will talk about his work examining icons, and Craig Vogel of the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning, who will discuss his LiveWell Collaborative. UC’s DAAP has been another key element in spreading the influence of Cincinnati’s brand design culture. A cooperative education program, in which students spend four to six quarters working in the field, and partnerships with local industry research and design projects, have nurtured its reputation as one of the top design schools in the country. Other notable DAAP alums include Michael Graves, whose firm pioneered the “design-for-all” concept with its products designed for Target stores, Michael Bierut, principal of Pentagram Design, a well-known graphic design studio, and Stan Herman, president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, who designs loungewear, sweaters and scarves sold on QVC, as well as uniforms for corporations like McDonald’s and FedEx.
From soap to sleepwear to shopping and now to the world’s most prestigious automobile – brands all touched by a Cincinnati connection.
Photography by Scott Beseler
Ferrari Theme Park rendering, provided by Ferrari
Jerry Kathman, provided by LPK
LPK offices
P&G Towers
Deskey offices