I am a big believer in the power of design to build brand by injecting everything a company does with a little bit of flavor and creating one more touch point where a brand strikes a chord with the consumer. I was reminded of this by landing on IDEO’s 404 page…

This aspect of being a design focused company is not about putting more logos on products or adding pages to sites or increasing the steps in a UX flow, it is about taking the time to design every potential interaction with the customer to maximize brand impact.

At AND1 we tried to do this a lot and would put trash-talk into everything we could. An

example was our insoles — we were not doing anything special with the actual technology, but instead of printing our logo on the heel like most companies, we would print trash-talk slogans like, “Your game’s as ugly as your girl” inside the shoes. Kids loved it and once our customer knew we were doing this, retailers told us that kids would come in the store and pick up our shoes first — in order to read the slogans — and the first step to buying at physical retail is picking up the shoe in the first place.