Massey Magazine November 2001

The Iron Man

design account manager
Name: Grant Davidson
Qualification: Dip Industrial Design

Look around your household chattels, and you’ll quite likely find a piece of Grant Davidson-influenced design. Anything carrying the ubiquitous brand name Philips will have a tinge of Davidson, who is the design account manager of Philips Design, domestic appliance/personal care division.

Yet as he tells today’s students, each of whom has had to go through a rigorous selection process to gain entry into the Design School, “Looking back today, I doubt if I would have selected me.

“When I was leaving high school, the careers advice seemed to be all about architecture, civil engineering, maybe town planning, and here was me raving on about going to Hollywood to make movie sets,” says the former Northland boy.

“So nothing was happening until this lass shoved some papers in my hand and said ‘try this’. It turned out to be industrial design at Wellington Polytechnic. So I worked like hell to get my portfolio done, and managed to scrape in.”

He remembers the Polytechnic of the time and its mix of disciplines with affection.

“Here’s the catering school, the beginnings of fashion and textiles, a few rooms for graphic design and textile design, all set against the lilting sounds of the orchestra rehearsing down the corridor. Designers are a crazy class of student, very practical, not too much time for the ‘heads down’ academic thing. I had a really good feeling there…”

One day, the head of Philips Design in the Netherlands stopped in for a visit. Somebody asked about student placements. “So my ears pricked up. Noel Benner was the head of industrial design, he argued my case. I got a small bursary, my parents put up the rest, I jumped on a plane.”

Davidson found his niche at the multicultural Philips Design offices in Eindhoven. Valves had just been ousted by new-fangled transistors and the world of consumer electronics was going through a sea of change as Japanese brand names flooded world markets. “And here was Philips, still with localised multibrands. Something had to be done,” says Davidson. Far from out-innovating the Japanese, the first challenge facing Philips was to match their sophistication. That Philips did that and more is evidenced by the brand’s success, particularly in the American market.

In a saturated consumer market, says Davidson, you either need to take the world by storm with a major innovation, or you need to present a matrix of other consumer benefits.

Davidson instances kitchen appliances: “We had to reposition them simply to get out of this homogeneous rat race on the shelves, where everything is white, and everything is subject to price wars, which are absolutely crippling…” Part of the repositioning was to establish a certain emotional resonance: appliances you could fall in love with.

Davidson’s ‘Looney Tunes’ toaster, part of the Philips-Alessi range of appliances, wouldn’t look out of place in Roger Rabbit’s kitchen. The toaster, kettle, juicer and coffee-maker that make up the range share the same soft, organic shapes and perky, pastel colours. The product becomes a little like a pet, says Davidson; something with which to develop an emotional affinity .

“The coffee-maker soon became the icon of the range, just through being so hug-friendly – that whole momma poppa thing – and the toaster and juicer also had that feelgood factor, a harking back to the form and functionality of the ’50s.”

Designing for a global market isn’t easy, says Davidson. As head of the Philips Design global service unit, he leads 35 designers from 11 nationalities. Design services are sold at cost across the eight Philips divisions. Then there are 18 branch locations around the world, each employing design teams attuned to local cultural variations. Psychologists, sociologists and cultural anthropologists all help provide an insight into how particular markets operate and interact.

“Understanding a market instinctively is impossible, because everyone has this cultural package inside. There is no way, for example, that I could design for the Chinese on my own…

“So our regional offices are the foil and endorsement of what we do, and we also have tools we’ve developed for mapping out tastes, aesthetics, even qualities of use. The flexible manufacturing abilities of today allow short, economically viable production runs. The product can be customised for specific cultures.

“Sometimes we customise a platform product; other times it’s an entirely new product. You cannot make a global blender, for example, because although the Americans understand them, the Europeans don’t have a clue. The Philishave razor was perhaps as close as we got, but now the Asians understand the quality of their own designs, and these regional variations have begun.”

Davidson is a firm believer in ‘smelling the same air as your colleagues’: “At Philips we don’t separate design from the accounts manager, because we feel if you put a good account manager and designer with the R&D people, then you’ve got a team happening there, you’re well focused.

“In the world of business, marketing and design, the days of the soloist are long gone. The market has got so complex, the consumers so prickly, that companies, designers and marketers alike are obliged to build an intimate knowledge of the consumer, the user groups and their national characteristics.”

A design education should increasingly emphasise the value of multidisciplinary teamwork and the need for market research.

Even the successful Allesi range, which carries the Davidson imprint, might not be suited to a market launch today. “Our Allessi range may have been avant-garde in Paris in ’92, but avant-garde can often become tiring, and not all such innovation crosses over to the wider market.”

And how does Davidson feel about his decision to go to Philips? After all, 24 years is a long time with any one employer in any one profession. “I am still biking to work with a smile on my face.”