Affected

Foreword

Back in 2005 when I was Head of Marketing Research and Strategy at Philips, we worked on developing products that made sense to people. That is how the Philips slogan ‘Sense and Simplicity’ came about. Now the slogan is ‘Innovation and You’. Innovation is geared towards addressing the emotional needs of users and buyers of products and services. This book presents an innovative and well-researched approach to designing emotional channel engagements and provides a practical path from design innovation ‘wow’ to design innovation ‘how’.

The authors make the point that most companies do not know how to select the right types of channels to reach their audiences. They do not operate well strategically. More particularly, most companies do not really understand at a deeper level the motivations of the users and buyers of their products and are therefore incapable of creating meaningful engagements and loyalty in the new landscape. The authors propose the Digital Affect Framework and offer a typology of digital channels to better equip companies to emotionally engage their customers.

It is often difficult to write a book about such a fast-moving subject. However, Wrigley and Straker provide a practical new approach to design innovation. Their Digital Affect Framework enables customers’ latent needs to be addressed through the use of design thinking. All managers who run firms, as well as those responsible for strategic communications that want to compete on value rather than ...