Designing relationships – 
get out of the box your clients see you in

As clients transform themselves using a new commitment to customer relationships,
designers must do the same, argues Ralph Ardill, founder of The Brand Experience
Consultancy and former strategic planning director at Imagination. 

Picking up where last month's breakfast left off, this event looks at the fundamentals
of designing relationships – not just with clients, but with colleagues and collaborators too.

“People think relationships can’t be designed,” says Ralph. “In fact, the skills you need to
design relationships are the skills you already use to design things.”

Come and hear why business needs a single unifying principle covering relationships
with clients, staff and suppliers, and why agencies need to see the client increasingly as
‘customer’. In an informal interactive session Ralph will draw on a successful track record
of collaboration with designers and invite you to share your own experience.

He’ll also touch on the key factors that can kill your business, asking why clients fire
agencies and exploring what we can do to present our strengths in a fresh light.

“The factory model is crumbling. More and more clients are outsourcing, partnering and
working flexibly just as we do. So there are massive opportunities in the current climate.
Recession is an open invitation to innovate, but it does require us to change fundamentally –
not just the shop window but the truly important stuff behind it.