Through my consulting practice I’d already helped lay the foundation for a re-imagination of eBay. But getting a company to align around any new strategy is hugely complex – exponentially more complex as the size of the company increases. Being on the outside looking in created a level of objectivity but I began to see the limits of a consulting model in practice.
What quickly became clear is that acceptance and understanding of the new brand strategy differed from team to team. And the vagueness of the term Brand, largely misunderstood in the product and engineering teams, was further exacerbated by the absence of a clear customer facing expression of the strategy.
So when eBay asked me to come inside and form The Brand Innovation Lab (BIL), I realized that my first job would be to find a way to express the new strategy to help everyone bridge.
In its first year the Brand Innovation Lab set the groundwork for a customer facing expression of the new strategy. 'Fill Your Cart With Color’ became the first Global Brand Campaign in eBay's long history.
After six months running the lab. I was also given creative oversight of Global Brand Creative, crafting the launch film for 'Fill Your Cart With Color' working with 72&Sunny. But, we didn’t just create marketing expressions, we also crafted product prototypes to identify new ways to interact, wrote patents to highlight new business models and created experiences for partners within the company to show them how the new strategy could grow their business.
After a year I gained oversight of the Brand Expression System, and in collaboration with the UX and Brand team launched a playbook for visual and verbal communication for the entire company. For this launch we concentrated on creating Brand ’Tools’ rather than ‘Rules’. Our prime objective was to help employees and partners save time as well as adhere to the new brand.
Two years into my role at eBay the CTO offered me a tandem position in the Product team to run end-to-end product experience and product design patterns. The knowledge I’ve gained from unifying product and brand in the setting of a complex international fortune 500 company is invaluable, the vote of confidence from the CTO was incalculable.
My most profound insight from this is that any consultant who cares deeply about their client’s business would not only want to be able to access the objectivity of being on the outside looking in but also empathize with the practical problems discovered only by being on the inside looking out. This really took a team.
The Team
Karl Isaac – VP Brand
R.J. Pitman – Chief Product Officer
Marc Shillum – Founder Brand Lab, Global Executive Creative Director
Dave Lippman – VP Design
Nicolas Brandenburger – Senior Director, Brand Strategy
Jen Bernard – Creative Producer, Brand Lab
Mauro Alencar – Creative Director, Brand Lab
Hae-Soun Song – Brand Strategy
Sheira Furse – Brand Strategy
Victoria Ekwenuke – Brand Mangement
Thomas Walker – Senior Director, Brand Insight
Emily O’Hara – Director Operations
Antonio Wolffenbuttel– Operations
Chi-Chi Bello – Design
Noriko Ohori – Design
ChuChi Lin – Design
Elbow – Brand Design, Writing and Content
Fred Zaw – Product Design
Tom Crabtree & Manual – Box Hack
Nate Robinson & NTropic – Timelimes, For The Love Of
Sub Rosa – Not So General Store
Peter Reid & 72 & Sunny – Fill Your Cart With Color
RG/A – UI Innovation
Free Association – Platform and Tools
Andrew Chee – Contractor, Brand Lab
Robinson Piramuthu – Research Scientist
Phase two of Timelines created the underlying data set to establish value. Value gained over time can be measure through Velocity (the amount of search, viewed, watched and sold), Newness (amount of new, used and vintage), Price (highest and lowest) and Provenance (Origin of Manufacture, Sale and Ownership)
Phase three looked at the visual relationship between price, category and related products.