## Teaser

what is the mechanic behind it so usually we start by defining a brand identity and the promise. We start to set out a vision and a promise.

And this is the moment of truth. 

the delivery gap says that, 80% of the companies believe that they provide a superior proposition, but only 8% of their customers actually agree.

When we do workshops and meetings we always try to bring together the different perspectives. What people report us back is often that they say the actual outcome of these meetings is the mutual understanding and the alignment.

Understanding these real customer needs and issues, you can really focus your resources on the right things.

I'm very suspicious around the NPS, because you just measure how it's perceived or if it was good or bad, but not what's behind it.

You build up the brand through the experience or through the service and not vice versa. 

## Welcome and Introduction

it's my pleasure to welcome you all again here to this event of the Swiss Service Design Network where we will speak about branding and Service Design and how they mix together. And to speak about that. We have a lovely, smart.

Great guest with us. 

## Meet Valentina Röschli

Who is Valentina? Valentina is a Swiss creative consultant and Service Design practitioner with a love for branding. Valentina Röschli is a creative consultant at FutureWorks where she uses the power of Service Design to serve organizations that want to achieve their business goals by making their offering more relevant, tangible, and attractive.

To their customers. But before that, Valentina worked as a copywriter and consultant, both in consultancies and in the house. So it's my pleasure to say hello Valentina. So nice to see you here. Hello Daniele. Thank you very much for inviting me here. Such a pleasure to see you. Thank you so much for accepting the invitation.

The stage is all yours and we are very happy to learn from you. Thank you very much.

## Valentina's Journey and Passion for Service Design

I would like to share, a personal topic, I feel it's like the connection of the two things is a personal story and it's also a story that we work on at FutureWorks.

And I'm also super happy, like afterwards in the q and a, like to hear your perspectives and yeah, to hear what you have to say for on this topic. And what I'm offering here is my experience and my point of view or the point of view of FutureWorks also. And yes, very happy to discuss them this afterwards as well.

So I'm sharing

it works, right? Good. Perfect. Absolutely. Okay. So you might wonder why I am showing this crappy image. It's, I just wanna introduce what is this topic or what is this this connection of the two fields actually all about. And I didn't want to start, there's so many examples and I'm sure you have all your own examples in mind.

But it's caught my attention. It's like I took this picture from. From the train when I went to Lucerne. And not because of this, of the fancy look, but because of the promise that Adam Keon ma that makes, I hope you can see it. It says the best. And I was like, okay, that's a bold one.

And the point I wanna make is I can only test or prove if that promise comes true if I go there and really have to cap up, right? The point I wanna make here is that the brand actually comes to life through the experience that I have and not through what has been defined or what they write on there.

Websites on their store, et cetera, et cetera. And if this kbo, I mean if this re is really the best and if it's really true what they promised, then this branding, you could say not a lot of effort has put, been put into this branding. But then this might even fit, right? Because it's the super authentic experience that you have there.

You can tell that they put all their efforts into making the best kebo in town. And then this. This not big effort might even fit this experience or this brand. So I hope with this story I could actually already make my point that the two perspectives really need to work together and that the brand might even be a product of this experience that we have.

## The Connection Between Branding and Service Design

So branding and Service Design, I would like to talk about why and how they are connected. What is the challenge that we have and how can we bridge the gap? And I feel what I've prepared is for many of you, I guess a reminder of maybe on what we should focus on and what we should pay attention to.

And before I jump to the topic, I would actually like to frame my perspective and thank you, Daniele, that you already introduced me. So I can make this really short. I have a background in business communications. So it's, this is the bachelor that I did 20 years ago and I worked as a copywriter in branding and advertising agencies.

This is where I actually discovered my love for creativity and also the power of creativity. So this is where I'm. I'm coming from and through the years, I could take over more and more strategic projects and also dive into research. I could lead research projects. I had the opportunity to do this, which for me actually uncovered my love for research and for understanding who we are doing this for and who we are communicating to, and I work in different roles in the last 20 years as a consultant, as a design researcher, and a as a copywriter. And I think trying to bridge all these things is my, what shapes me as a professional and is my personal story. And I think it's only three years ago that I found a name for what I'm passionate about and what I'm actually doing.

And its Service Design. I really had this moment of revelation or where I've, I found this is it, this is what I wanna do and this is what I'm passionate about, and this is where the value comes from and everything. And so now I'm doing this this master program in Service Design where I also got to know Daniele.

Thankfully. And also I think my story. So since I am in this community and since I talk to people at conferences and at events, I realized that I, like many people have similar stories like mine, and I feel bridging the things is a way of. Finding purpose and looking for impact through your work.

This is something that I feel in very good company, in this community. And I'm curious to hear your stories, but I heard lots of similar stories since I am in this field. And at FutureWorks I am also super lucky to work with people that have a similar mindset and I that work on, on, on the same topic.

So we share this wish for bridging stuff, for bringing things together. And two of these people are also in the call today. So maybe later on we can, you can even like share, yeah. Please. Please contribute also to what we are doing here together. That's what I wanna say. Also you already mentioned FutureWorks.

We are a creative consultancy. At the bottom, you can see a couple of of the clients we work for. We work for big clients. We work for small clients that are based in Switzerland, but also acting internationally. You already read our promise out loud. It's making offerings more relevant, tangible, and attractive to customers.

And I see in the relevance you can see more the Service Design perspective. And in the attractiveness you can see maybe more the branding perspective. So bringing these things together to the best to the business value of our customers. This is actually our promise and if we act on this, you need to need, you need to ask our clients, right?

It's our promise. This is what we say the best. Okay. So just to, so that you understand where we come from and where I am arguing from. So it's really this consultancy perspective, this agency perspective. Alright, now what's going on here? So what's the connection between the two fields? And I try to visualize this here with this loop and just after I created this slide, I realized that the Service Design Network has exactly this as a logo, right?

So either it's super obvious or this is really what it is about right to create this loop of things coming together. But what is the mechanic behind it? So usually we start by defining a brand identity and the promise. So we start to set out a vision and a promise, but in the first place. And usually we do not start from scratch, right?

We have like we, we work with a brand that has a heritage, that comes with values, with a history. And we need to incorporate that into what we define for the future. But in the first place, it's vision. And it's not out in the world yet. It's just what we defined it, it could be, and of course, customer insights, everything go into this promise.

And this defines then the service development. So it defines the standards that we wanna achieve. It. It defines the services that we offer. It defines the features that we offer. It defines how this experience should work or should come to life. In the real world. And the promise also informs the customer expectations.

So if I read the best of, or if I read something on the website, this creates an expectation for me as a customer. And not only this, but also previous interactions with the brand or what I hear from friends and family. All this creates the customer expectations. And then the service interaction happens.

And this is the moment when the shit goes down, if I can say it like that, this is the moment of truth. If we really act on our promise. And what I experienced there then shapes the brand perception, loyalty. So if I come back as a customer what I tell, what I say about this brand et cetera. So this is this brand perception loyalty is the moment when the business value is created.

And not before. This is the moment and then everything gets measured nowadays, which is great. And this again informs then, the brand identity and the promise. So if we need to adapt something, we can go on like this. So everything that we learn from the market, everything we learn from this, these interactions, if they work or not, then again, go into the loop.

And this is how the two. The two perspectives work together. This brand promise informs how we want to to shape our services and on the other hand the ser, the service delivery needs to fulfill the brand promise. And only then this loop works and the business value is created. 

## Challenges and Solutions in Bridging the Gap

But there's an issue because the two fields are often treated as separate entities.

And this is due to different perspectives on the same thing. I would say on the customer experience because branding focuses on differentiation and creates promise. As you, as I just said. And Service Design, on the other hand, focuses on the relevance and designs these interactions. So it's two different perspectives on the same thing.

And often in, in in companies, they're also treated in different teams. And it's a promise and it's super complex how this works within companies. But what we see and what we see is that companies often. They promise something that does not come true in reality. So there's there's a gap. This is what we know as the delivery gap. This is the consequence of this separation. And I'm sure you all know the delivery gap because it's super well known and it's also really old. It's 20 years old, right? When BA and Company conducted this study and published this report, the delivery gap says that, 80% of the companies believe that they provide a superior proposition, but only 8% of their customers actually agree, which means the companies think that they do great work and they deliver this great experience, but the customers, they don't see it this way. And this is what still, even though it's old, what we are still working on and what we try to bridge and we try to close and it's really not easy.

But still, I tried to come up with a couple of suggestions, like coming from observations that we have from our consultancy work what we can do about this. 

## Practical Suggestions for Integration

And it's definitely, it's a big topic. Everyone that is in, like tries to work on this. It's a strategic topic and it's also leadership topic, but sometimes we are not in the position to define the strategy or we are not the leaders in these companies.

But I think even when we are like working on smaller projects, we have. We have things that we can do or we have small things that we can try to implement or we can try to to ask for let's say, and four of these suggestions I, I brought with me. So the first one is not a small one.

It's actually the focus of the two fields and I would say it's the superpower of the two fields. So on the left side, branding, the superpower is to understand what makes your brand unique, authentic, and credible. So this understanding of who we are. And what we can do differently than others.

This deep understanding is super important. And on the other hand we have Service Design. And here I would say the superpower is to understand the most relevant moments for our most relevant for our most valuable customers. I wrote the sentence, but it's a bit complicated. Sorry, but what I wanna say is.

To focus to understand, and then to focus on this, to focus all our resources on this is super important. And not to treat them in these separate silos, but really to try and create this mutual understanding of who we are and who, what we stand for, and who we are doing this for. So how can we create value for our customers?

And I just give you a small example from my private life. And as I said, I'm sure you have all your own stories and examples of the delivery gap in your minds because we really experienced it all the time. But my health insurance is the promises to be the health insurance for families, right?

And a couple of years ago, so I would say with this promise, I'm the core target group of this. A couple of years ago, they set out their their digital platform. Like you have it, you have now every insurance has a digital platform, you where you can deal with your invoices and everything.

And I. When I tried to set this up for me and for my kids I discovered that their system doesn't cover my case because in my case, we have different, two different bank accounts and their system doesn't allow doesn't allow me to log in with one. With one account and then deal everyone that's who's on the app, who's actually in my family to, to do this with one login.

And this was the moment when I was like, and I had a couple of phone calls with them to make sure. I got this right. So I'm, I really need two logins and it gets even worse. I need two different devices to log in. Short story, but what I wanna say here is that they set out a promise, but they're not able to act on it.

And this is an example for the delivery gap, right? And it's huge. But I think still in our daily work, like to re remind us who we stand for and who we do this for is super important and really helps to close this gap. The second one is also not a small one. It's working together and it's all about this orchestrating the organization that, tons of articles on this are out there, but what I observe in my work is that this.

This collaboration doesn't really often, does not happen often, and this is a problem. So for branding, I'd suggest work with your colleagues from CX and product teams, and for Service Design, I'd suggest work with your colleagues from brand communications and marketing team. It's super simple and it sounds really obvious, but I can tell you from my work.

When we do workshops and meetings we always try to bring together the different perspectives. We try to involve people from different parts of the organization when we work on certain topics. And what people report us back is often that they say the actual outcome of these meetings is the mutual understanding and the alignment.

And they had that, they had the different that to understand the other side and not what we actually created. So not the artifact that you created in this workshop or meeting, but that they were able to talk together. Pay attention to this. And even though it sounds so obvious I think we are really not there.

We really need to work on this. And so that's what I wanna say, force this collaboration in your daily work. The third one goes into the same direction. What I mean is sharing knowledge. So for branding, for example, it means share your brand elements. I don't only mean what's on frontify. But also as I said, what's our values?

What's our promise? What makes us unique? So share this. Within the company, and for example, also brand tracking data can have really valuable insights for CX teams, Service Design teams, et cetera. Because often we ask how the services are perceived in the markets and we can draw really valuable insights from that.

And on the other hand Service Design who has a lot of research insights and creates personas and journeys for example, from that. Also, make sure that this doesn't stay in your little team, but make sure that it's spread across the organization or across like the teams that you, that, that need to be aware of this or can act on it as well.

And again an observation. From our work is lately we were working on a subject or on a question, and when we asked for data on the subject. So what has already been done before on that we discovered that there has been conducted a study exactly on that topic that we were working on.

So our question was, so how was the outcome? What did you do with that data? How can we build on this? Because this is, for us, super important. We do not come in and start from stretch. We always build on something and no one in the room could answer that question. So the. So this is what, it's just one example.

I observed that lots and lots of data are gathered and collected, and maybe sometimes people feel when the data's here, the work is done. But this is not the case. When the data's here, the work just starts because we need to make sense of the data. We need to interpret the data, and we need to, and we really need to act on the data.

That's why we collect the data. And and as I said, it's often the data just stays in the little team and is not shared across the company. So this will be my suggestion. Share your data that you gather and ask for data as well. The last one is more an aspirational one, I would say.

So I thought about how can the two perspectives inspire one another and how can we do our work better as brand specialists or as service designers? And for brand, I would say the powerful question to ask would be, what the real customer needs and issues are, because I feel you can learn a lot from that.

In terms of that like brand and marketing, they're often focused on what can we do differently? What can we add, right? What can we what else do we need to do? Focus on this differentiation. But sometimes. As we see in the delivery gap, the company like fails on delivering on the basics.

And so understanding these real customer needs and issues, you can really focus your resources on the right things. And I also you, through these insights, you can also probably tap as a brand into new fields and into new customer segments, identify new customer segments. Taking this perspective on as brands could be really valuable.

On the other hand, Service Design should ask how can we incorporate our unique identity into the customer experience? Because services get more and more similar, especially in fields like insurance, as I already mentioned or in the finance. Sector services get very similar and it's hard as a brand to distinguish their experience from others.

And I think here's an, here's a, an opportunity to find out how can we do it differently. Maybe also for ideation. So if we think, okay, we are doing this properly, we are making it really easy for our customers, but maybe what else could we do to make this service and this experience differently than others?

And this, again has a value in it, right? Just a short example. Also for my private life, this is also not a future client, but it's gala Axis is the I think the biggest e-commerce platform in Switzerland. And it's for everyone who's not from Switzerland, it's like Amazon in the rest of the world, and their promise is, or their claim is almost everything for almost everyone.

No focus. No, not really narrow. They're delivering for lots and lots of people. And two years ago, what I found interesting as an example here, two years ago, they went into mobile communication or telecommunication. And they could deliver on their promise even in this completely new field.

Not very obvious that e-commerce and telecommunications are go together, but in this new field, they could deliver on their promise almost everything, for almost everyone by making a super simple, super straightforward offering with three products that is extremely easy to grasp, extremely like simple, down to earth.

And I think with that they can cover. I don't know, maybe 80% of the needs that people actually have. So again, they could deliver on their promise in a completely new field. And this is what I wanna say. So how can it, how can we inspire, how can we find opportunities by taking over the other perspective?

With that, I would say it's not easy bridging branding and Service Design, but if we manage to do it, then the case and the proposition of it is that we are, that we contribute to closing this delivery gap and create value, not only for businesses, but especially for people. And I hope I could give you some hints on how to do this in our daily work because I feel we are really trying hard and we are really aspirational on that.

Thank you so much. Obviously a round of silent applause as we are all muted. I really appreciate your take on how to bridge disciplines. I think, as you said in the introduction, it's beautiful when. People can use their past lives and bridge all of the aspects that they have explored and then suddenly bring it together, be it being a home gardener and bringing it with with Service Design or being a copywriter.

And then use that also in those approaches. So I'm very curious for the questions. Of the people that are here, and we already have one. So what I will do is I will use all the questions from the chat and I will read them out loud. But if you have a question and you are happy to ask the question directly with your voice and face, then please just raise your hand in the feature of Zoom and then come to you.

We have a first question for you, which is, first of all. Some congratulations. Thank you so much Valentina. With metrics what metrics can measure whatever your service experience matches your brand messaging. Do you have some thoughts around this idea of metrics that cover both Service Design and branding?

What we talk about or.

I'm very can I say, how can I say this? I'm a bit, I'm very suspicious around, for example, the NPS, the net promoter score, let's say, because with metrics like the net promoter score you just measure how it's perceived or if it was good or bad, but not what's behind it. And I think what's super important is that we understand.

The why behind the data and so that we can really, so that we can really act on it. If we don't, if we have an NPS and I and we say, okay, I take again this Kop example because it's super easy, and they ask me when I go out, is it good or bad, and they say it's bad, and then what do we do this.

What do they do with this measure? They know, okay, I wasn't satisfied, but I do not know why. And so I think it's very important to combine KPIs or the metrics with qua with qualitative data. To find out what is truly behind, behind the metrics, I feel. So I don't, I cannot suggest a certain metric that would combine both because as I said, brand works with NPS brand works with with brand trackers, for example.

That also contains qualitative data. But usually I feel you really need to, you need to really need to dive into the, into people's, into people's experiences and find out the why behind, behind the KPIs. I think that's the answer that I will give. Thank you so much. That's, I think this is quite a beautiful way of adding the why question to any of these metrics, with the smart people.

You see some smart companies use the NPS because it's quite quick and and efficient. And then they have the but why. Did you say that? And I think there you can then go quite deeply. So I really appreciate that aspect. Thanks so much. We have Juliana, let us know your question.

Hello Valentina. 

## Addressing the Question on Service Experience and Brand Story

for me the question was more about, because you were speaking about metrics, but do you have some tools or frameworks that you use to make sure that, the service experience reflects the brand story? Question. Sorry. No. It's a perfect question. 

## Frameworks for Customer Journeys and Organizational Alignment

There are tons of frameworks out there, I have to say. And we work with different frameworks. We often work with journeys for sure. And I think with, in the end. There's also the concept out there that we need to design the whole organization along the customer journeys.

So this would be, I don't know. I know organizations that try that, try to go there, but it's really hard to switch the whole organizational structure to be aligned on this end-to-end processes and on these, on the, on this customer focus. But I think this would be really be, I really want to dive into this even more and try to work with organizations on that because.

We see that they're usually still structured in silos and in this little, in, in these little teams. And that's what I'm, that's my whole point, right? Talking to each other, sharing data across these silos. But if the silos disappear, so what's the alternative? Then? The alternative would be organized along the journey and really flip the whole organization so they can serve the customers that you've identified, like your most valuable customers, other frameworks that we work with is the Kano model. I dunno if you know this one. It's, it says, basically it's a pyramid and it says at the bottom you have the basic needs. In the middle you have the performance factors. And on, at the on top you have the excitement factors. And what you need to do is, as a brand or as a company, you need to understand these basic factors.

Hygiene factors we say in German, I don't know if that's an English word I can use, but it's like the basics that you need to deliver so that your customers are not frustrated. It's about if you do not deliver on these customers will be frustrated, then you have the performance. Yeah, exactly.

And on top it's these excitement factors that you need to really understand like what is going to be an excitement for me as a customer, so this would be another model that I could suggest. Yeah, and there's other models out there, but these, so these are the two that I would say we regularly work with. Yeah. Thank you so much. 

## Bridging the Gap Between CX Experts and Brand Service Designers

So we move to the next question from the chat someone says, thanks Valentina. What's your view on customer experience experts or brand service designer about bridging the gap in mutual understanding and delivery?

Can you read the question again? Yes. And I, sorry. And I can also reframe it a bit in Yeah. In the understanding that they have. So what's your view on how CX expert customer experience experts can also bridge the gap in mutual understanding and delivery with, for example, branding people.

So as customer experience is not exactly the same thing as Service Design. Yes. How do you see customer experience, people working well with branding and maybe customer experience, people working well with Service Design, lines. 

## The Role of Service Design in Different Countries

Yeah, I don't know what like what what your experience or where this question exactly comes from.

But as you could as you could understand in my talk, maybe I do not make this big distinction between Service Design and. Customer experience. And also, I don't know how it's in other countries, but in Switzerland, I don't know any company that has a Service Design team. Some have, of course, but the companies we work with, like the team is called CX or product.

This is the place where Service Design happens. So this is just on the, like namings and stuff. So I do not care too much about the namings. I have to say I feel it's, a lot, lots of times we are just talking about the same things I would say. And so I have no not no other suggestions other than these what I showed.

We need to work together and we need to try to align by talking to each other by sharing the data by creating this mutual understanding of who we are and who we designed for. I think I could not give any other suggestion on that. Yeah. And depending on the country and how people define customer experience versus Service Design is always a bit of a difficult thing.

But I know that in some regions, people have this distinction where Service Design also has a big focus on like digital logistical stuff, the backstage stuff. Where in some countries, again, they would make the difference where customer experience is much more about the focus on the customer and less on how it's made.

And in these cases, again, depending on the country then a good question for a customer experience guide to a Service Design guide is okay. But how do we manage that in the backstage? Like, how do we make it so that employees don't want to kill themselves while they have to make this happen?

And, but I think in general, one beautiful way of thinking about it is as you said, I think Valentina is to ask the question what do you need? In your world, you know what is really important for you in your world, and that works for it. That works for hr, that works for everyone just asking the question.

And as you also showed that, sharing the things that you are excited about where say, oh, we learned about that. I think that could help you guys too. I think having this genuine kind of excitement of what you learned in your field and sharing it further can also be something that is quite quite supportive.

One thing that I want to add, but not to this question, but in general it's, I need to remind myself of the things that I just said all the time because it gets. We forget so quickly, and we are in our work and we try to deliver. We have deadlines, et cetera. We have nitty gritty stuff that we need to deal with and we super easily forget about the higher level of things.

And today I am fully aware that I showed a super high level of the topic. But it's actually, it's a re a reminder to myself and to I in the end to all of us that we. What we are actually doing here. Yeah, absolutely. And these are important principles or big ideas to, to have somewhere on a sticky note next to our screen to remember what we're trying to do.

Indeed. We have another question from Lely joining us from Iran. The stage is yours. Thank you for the insightful topic and presentation. I have question about like how does your role in in, as an in-house service designer differ from consultancies in this issue? Have you found one environment to offer more like leverage for aligning branding and Service Design?

I can just talk from this consulting perspective because I didn't have the other role in, I'm since a long time and I'm in this agency field, so that's why I mainly have this external perspective on things. But of course I do work with CX people in companies, the question was about the leverage, right?

So I think what we can bring in as as an agency is always this outside perspective and probably experiences with other science that we had. We can bring in this, I think this is our our, one of our biggest asset that we can bring in. On the other hand, like people that are working in the organization, they really have the leverage to on, on, on being on this topic for months and years.

Because we, as an agency we often have a budget and we have a project. We come in and we do the work and then we go out. And often, and this is frustrating sometimes, because we do not see what happened afterwards. How was the impact? Sometimes we have, at FutureWorks we have clients that we work with for years over years, right?

Again and again. But often it's a very project-based work. And it's super interesting because you can apply stuff that you learned over there. You can apply here but you never you never. Get to the nitty gritty stuff that needs to be done in the end, which is super important. So again, I think both as needed.

If you're only in this little, I don't know. I don't, are you in-house or are you are in house I guess, or what is your role? Both of them. Oh, but as a consultant, it's super difficult, I think to align these two things together. Yes. I would fully agree on, I would fully agree on that because you need to talk to the right people within the organization.

If you. You need to talk to someone who has decision power. And if you are aligned with this person on what needs to be done and that things need to be aligned then you have a big chance on having an impact. But if you're like working in a small team that has no, not really connection to, to, to leader or you feel that it's not aligned, then it's going to be really hard.

## Handling Brand Positioning and Service Quality Mismatches

Thank you for sharing your experience and we have a question from someone else in the chat who asks, what happens when great service doesn't match brand positioning? Do we change the brand promise? Or change the service? That's a nasty question. I like it.

Remember the Kebo example that I showed. So let's assume, because I haven't been there and tried it. So let's assume this Kebo is really great, but the brand is not it's nothing special, it's nothing fancy. Then the question is, do I really, do I need to do something about it? Maybe not because this is exactly the message that I wanna.

I wanna give, but the question is if it's not in line, right? So if the brand is not in line with the service

If there's a problem, then you need to do something about it. But if there's no problem, why should it take action? I always like to see it from this perspective. With everything we do, we try to create value. And if there's, so my question back would be what is the problem?

Yeah. And I think you, you showed something quite strong in the start with this loop thing. Where there is this thing where you deliver something, at least you have a promise in mind of that you want to keep. Then you see if it works, it doesn't work. And sometimes you will have this moment of thinking, shit, we made it too big of a promise.

So let's use the promise. Or sometimes it's just, ah, we really want that promise and we need to change something. The. In my personal experience I would say it's usually easier to reduce the promise. It's it's a good thing in general to have very low promises and and and have quite beautiful experiences out that come after.

That's something that is quite life. But but I see how your graph is giving us this idea of saying that data, that piece of feedback can really serve. Both teams and could be an interesting point where, why choose, maybe it's both a reduction of the promise and an, and a betterment of the experience.

And then you have an a better experience kind of moment where people then come from, oh they promised A and we got A, B, and C. Wow, Valentina, that's a great service. It's also interesting if you like, we work mainly for established companies, right? As you could see, but.

If you work at a startup, you need to build up that brand. So then you start with the service or whatever it might be with product or whatever it might be. And you need to build up that brand. And this is just another like loop that I showed. I said we start with the brand promise, but maybe it's the other way around.

You start with the offering and then you need to build up that brand. But again, I think you build up the brand through the experience or through the service and not vice versa. And yeah, indeed. 

## The Importance of Understanding and Creativity in Service Design

And I'd be curious to know so you're someone who has, many different lives you've been a copywriter, you are a mom you are like so someone very involved in the community.

You've worked in branding, you work in Service design. What is something maybe from. Your past career in copywriting where you say, this saves my butt so much when I do Service Design work, where it's the skill that you see that maybe classical service designers you look like, and say, I can do that.

You can't. Are there things like that where you say, oh, this is something that you, that service designers could learn and will be benefiting them? Yeah, I have two things in mind. So the first one is what I would say, no bullshit. Like I'm, I think I'm this kind of no bullshit person, and this comes really from my work writing lots and lots of stuff.

And also the, what I, what do I mean with this? No bullshit. What I mean is that I can't write the text or a headline if I don't understand the subject. You can, but I was always like, my aspiration was always to understand what I'm doing here and to try to to really dive into this topic and then through the text, or whatever craft right you try to make to bring it to life.

And so this I really wanna understand what this is all about. I think this is why research. Spoke so much to my soul because it's this understanding and trying to dive into a topic. So this, I think it's what I learned in, in, in copywriting. Understand what you're saying, and then.

Then the rest will come by itself. And the other thing that comes to mind is what I said with the creativity. In, in advertising like it's always this couple of copywriter and designer that work together on a creative concept or on a creative idea. And and you always like when I write headlines or when I write copy in this field.

I I try to find this creative moment, this moment of surprise. This moment of now I have you. And this is all about storytelling. And I think also this is, again I'm trying again and again to do this. It's, I'm not always successful with that, but that's the aspiration that I offer something that catches attention and that offers a surprise or that offers a thought or that offers something.

And I would see this as the creative part of copywriting. And I think these two things I take over into the Service Design life. I love it. Especially when, we have always this idea in Service Design for years there was this idea, oh, seamless experiences, it has to be perfectly functional, et cetera.

And, and one quality that comes from copywriting that I see a lot in copywriters is that no. Don't do it. Seamless. It's gonna be boring. That makes add some lows, add some highs. And and I think it's quite interesting to, to also think about surprise element, where in Service Design we're like no, don't surprise people.

Let them know everything that comes so that they are reassured. It's it's like a baby, too much babysitting and the copywriter will be like, Hey, if it's a good story there is a bit of a surprise silently, something that comes out of a box. Yeah. And really love this approach that we can bring a bit more playfulness, more creativity back in that seamless, perfect experience.

Wonderful. We have other questions and now we have a very romantic question which is, was there a moment in your career where you thought, this is why I love combining branding with services, and or maybe you received a very happy feedback that motivated you a lot. Do you remember what was that spark that made you.

Wants to bring that duo together. 

## Valentina's Career-Changing Project and Insights

Yes, there was definitely a moment, and it was a project it was a project that I conducted I six or seven years ago, I think that kind of changed my, my, my career a little bit. And and again, it's happening again and again. The project was about, we were commissioned with the question of how can we attract.

It was about the profession. It was about a certain profession and that do not find enough people anymore. And the question was, how can we attract the people or how, what's the problem actually out there that we do not get these people anymore Or because yeah, they need, they need the people to do the jobs, right?

And they don't find them anymore. But the shortage, how can we overcome this? And there was a question from marketing. It was it, and it was not from. Service Design, or it was like, what can we do with communication to overcome this problem? And we conducted a huge piece of research, which was interesting.

I think it was my first really big research project, and the outcome of that research was that we can do stuff with communication, but not only, so it's not enough to just do a campaign or just say that it's this way. You really need to make. People feel it. And I think this was a huge point in my perception of what communication can do.

And I do not want to make it small because I still believe in the connection of the two things. I see the strength of both, and I hope I could make my point today on that. But it was for me, the moment when I saw, okay, impact, we need to find. Where's the impact Probably. The campaign is not the answer.

And then we need to go look somewhere else. And I think this is when, this was a huge moment in my career when I found out, okay, maybe I need to look somewhere else for opportunities to have impact. And also it's very, it's much more interesting like to look for where's the solution and not, we wanna change that.

Let's do a campaign, but we want to change that. What do we need to do? That's a beautiful love story that you gave us here. So I imagine that there are a few people, who are coming from more Service, Design, background watching this and they say, oh, this is good. I want more. What are your suggestions for people who are maybe new to branding, copywriting, communications on maybe.

Books, people to follow websites podcasts. Is there some places where you say this, these are interesting ways to get slowly started in that world that give you like a first Google search so that you can of, can get started. That's a tough one. And you're allowed to use your peers from yes, please.

I just wanted to say my two colleagues from FutureWorks Lot and Philip, please feel free to, to share and I mean everyone else who's in the call who has who has great great resources to share. I think I need to really. I don't know because since I'm so long in this field, and I see how fragmented it has become, I must say.

If you wanna, if you wanna find out on branding in general, there's tons of stuff out there on, on LinkedIn and stuff, and of course it's always hard to distinguish the good content you need to really, finding orientation in this field is, is really hard. But then it gets quickly, it gets super fragmented with, social media and.

And all that software, I have to say, I'm not an expert on that. So maybe, I don't know if other people have resources to share here, like how to start or how to dive and, I'm also offering to, to talk contact me on LinkedIn and I can see if I can find something or we can just have a chat or whatever so I can offer this, but like spontaneously, I have no, no suggestion here.

Maybe someone else.

As people slowly prepare to raise their hands, to give a suggestion, I the one that I will give I'm gonna give you one, which is go back to the classics. People who brought things really back in the days when there was no internet. I think it's hugely quite quite interesting. There was there is one guy, david Ogilvy, I quite known. Obviously. So that's definitely one of the classics. But looking at the classical copywriters is maybe something that can be quite interesting in addition to, the new and fancy things. It's always nice to see like, where did it start?

I think it's quite something interesting. And we have a, I mentioned classical, but not mad men. Very good. My last question for you today will be, this one is do. 

## Final Thoughts and Community Involvement

So you gave a lot to the community today. You shared a lot of your ways of thinking, your experience, your love stories, your hate stories with with insurances too.

And my question to you is, what can people do for you? So you gave them a lot. Is there something that people can do for you to help you out? What I really appreciate. What I already mentioned at the beginning is this, I feel very much in good company in this community. And I think what I wanna say is just like sharing stories, sharing stuff, reaching out to each other inviting each other to events and conferences.

I think this is something that I really appreciate, like connecting on LinkedIn. Hey, how are you doing? Let's, let me know what's, what you're thinking about and that stuff. I do this more and more because I really feel part of the strong community and if the community lives through people who do this as well.

This is what I would ask for.

A big thank you to you Valentina for. Taking the time to prepare yourself for today, for showing up for being of service for the community. It's something that I truly appreciate, especially I know you personally and and you always were in a position of, oh, I don't like stages. It's not my place, blah, blah, blah.

And and. And you really, took, did this in a service perspective and not in a in a show off perspective. It's something that I deeply appreciate and I think it's also deeply felt. So thank you so much to you Valentina. Thank you. Daniele, you always pro. Providing this platform and being such a, an engaged member of this community is really, someone needs to do it right.

A big thank you to you Valentina, for all your insights, for all your time. Thank you to all of you for your questions and have a wonderful rest of the day. Cheers. Bye-bye.​