Nissan SVP Andy Palmer

During his talk at World Business Forum 2012 in NYC, Interbrand CEO Jez Frampton chatted with Nissan EVP  Andy Palmer and Adobe CMO Ann Lewnes on stage. I wanted to share a couple of interesting insights presented by Nissan’s Mr Palmer.

Nissan asks its engineers to predict social trends 15 years out. It asks its marketing department to show the TVC launching a new vehicle 7 years out and the PR release 5 years out.  It is this disciplined inclusion of the marketing and communications effort of the firm at a very early stage in engineering new products that impressed me.

Mr Palmer summed up the twin dimensions of engineering and marketing beautifully: “The art of creating things and the art of telling stories must have equal weight”, according to Palmer.

I was also unsurprised to hear that Nissan is a strong supporter of adherence to corporate identity guidelines — at Allegravita, we’re highly driven to the development and execution of disciplined and persuasive CI guidelines to make brands more persuasive.

What did surprise me was that Mr Palmer disclosed the global Nissan CI has received far greater consistency in global advertising and messaging executions only over the last 18 months. He name-checked the “big ticket items” of his company’s CI guidelines: logo size, colour and placement; no more than three approved messages in any execution; photographic assets always supporting the key messages of velocity and achievement.

These factors are all important, but only a few of the critical dimensions in excellent, hard working corporate identities. And taking a western brand to China requires an even more disciplined research, analysis and localization process.

Thanks to the World Business Forum 2012 team which which kindly invited me to represent Allegravita and attend the conference as their guest.

Please consider all our blogged stories from the World Business Forum 2012:

Management guru Jim Collins, on “return on luck”
NYC property mogul Barbara Corcoran on her top-8 lessons learned from her career as an entrepreneur
MIT psychologist professor Sherry Turkle on the danger presented to society by being always-connected
Interbrand CEO Jez Frampton on what makes a great brand
Nissan SVP Andy Palmer on the importance of melding engineering with marketing and communications
Legendary GE CEO Jack Welch’s choicest quotes from the conference
Harvard Business School’s Prof. Michael Porter on ‘Shared Value’ for-profit CSR
Inspirational entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson’s choicest quotes from the conference