Package Design - January/February 2015 - 18

"Design will be quickly commoditized. It will
decoration station to market, unless it shows
a different outcome for a brand."
tinct, if it's not desirable, if it's not deliverable,
then it's probably not worth spending too much
time on," he says. "If you are going to spend time
on it, we have got to create a pretty compelling
story as to why. If we're not getting the customer
or the consumer to desire what we're creating, if
we can't do it and if it's not distinct, then it's
probably not going to be the best investment."
This system is especially important when
communicating design strategies to ConAgra's
private-brand customers. "My job, at its core,
there, is to facilitate," Denham says. "I don't own
the design; the brand owners own it. But you
have to think of the values in the 3-D model and
just ask, 'What are we really trying to achieve,
and have we thought this through?' Sometimes,
it's the last thing a design manager wants to hear
or do because he or she is being held accountable on timing of a project. But at the end of the
day, if we're doing something that's not going to
build value into the business and make consumers part with money, we need to make sure that
it's worth doing. It's very tough, and it may create
a short-term issue. So you need to go back with a
convincing, influencing argument.
"It's interesting," he adds. "One of the things

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

you're taught at college that's tough to hold onto
in the commercial world is the theoretical right
way to do design: Being in touch with what consumers or what customers are doing, and what's
influencing them, and knowing how to use that
to start to create solutions. When you come
into the commercial world, a lot of that process
of understanding has been done for you. You are
told, 'Here's the order. Go fulfill the order.' And
sometimes the order makes sense and sometimes it doesn't. You have to step back and say,
'What are we really trying to achieve? And is the
order that just came in the right order? Or do
we actually need to go back and work with
these people to figure out what the right order
should be?'"
BUILDING CREDIBILITY
That courage needs to be applied not only to
tactfully but clearly question, but also to defend
your work and ideas, all the way up to the
C-suite. "I think back to one point in my career
where the CEO of the company had come back
from an international assignment where he'd
been exposed to very sophisticated design and
he saw that as a competitive advantage," Den-

ham says. The CEO came back to the U.S. and
asked for Denham to join him and the R&D
leader in evaluating the year's package design
work. "The CEO looked at one of the absolutely
critical brands and said 'I'm not sure that's
right,'" Denham recalls. Although he was excited
for what at the time was the rare opportunity to
review designs with a CEO, he challenged the
CEO's assessment.
"Instead of the conversation ending with, 'We
need to go and fix it,' he said, 'I hear what you're
saying and you're expert in this area, so let's run
with it and see what happens,' Denham recalls.
The brand that the CEO wasn't in love with was
an incredible business success. Even in the
depths of the recent economic depression, Head
& Shoulders still grew at a healthy rate.
One of the takeaways Denham gained from
that interaction is "not everybody is going to
love your design" and that a designer needs to
stand up for his or her design and ideas with
robust reasons. "You need a huge amount of
courage," Denham opines, "and that courage has
to be very durable."
Courage is one thing, but how does a designer
make an effective argument to senior business

Package Design - January/February 2015

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