Embracing the Narrative of Furniture Design
By drawing on the words of CEOs, founders and heads of design, manufacturers have a proven personable tool to radically increase online engagement.
Manufacturers might be great at making furniture or lighting products, but this doesn’t necessarily make them natural born content machines.
In fact, most manufacturers seem to have fallen into the same trap: they’re pumping out a steady stream of written content which fails to capture attention online.
From social media posts on LinkedIn or Instagram, to paid content on design websites, written content in the design industry more often than not comes with an air of superficiality, conflating everything into neatly packaged categories labeled as ‘minimal’, ‘functional’, ‘aesthetically pleasing’ or ‘sustainable’.
A lot of the time, written content is farmed out to freelance writers or PR companies, but in doing so, a lot of the brand’s core message is diluted and the content ends up sounding a little dissociated, a little generic.
It comes perhaps as little surprise, then, that this kind of content gets little engagement - despite these companies potentially having thousands upon thousands of followers.
The antidote to all this is a simple yet effective one, and yet it’s surprising that hardly anyone is doing it:
Give the founders, CEOs and heads of design the chance to produce personable content with the human touch - and watch in amazement as engagement skyrockets.
Personal over generic
The fact is this: consumers of online content connect more with individual voices and stories than with generic company voices.
If we look for a moment outside the realm of design, it's no coincidence that content written by individuals gets much higher levels of engagement than those written anonymously by generic company voices.
In fact, studies have shown that 64% of social media users are likely to engage with the kind of content written by individuals and thought leaders more than generic texts written in the company voice.
Just look at the massive engagement of Musk or Zuckerberg posted content over official Tesla or Meta posted content, and this is plain to see.
So my question is this: why aren’t design manufacturers taking a leaf out of this book and employing the same tactics? After all, it’s these personable voices which could provide the secret weapon for generating engaging content.
Embrace the narrative
The furniture, lighting and associated fields are all about the narrative. Products, like people, have a story to tell. So what better people to tell that story than the founders, CEOs and heads of design themselves?
I for one would love to see the founders of young furniture manufacturers post content on LinkedIn about, for example, the development process behind a new chair.
I’d also love to hear about the trials and tribulations of the next generation of leaders taking over the family business and trying to put their own creative stamp on their parents companies.
This would give a genuinely personal (and dare I say it vulnerable) element to content, an approach which could strike a chord with more readers, and would certainly help those eyeballs stick around for longer than merely posting attractive photos with generic text.
Can’t write, no time
I’m assuming that founders, CEOs and heads of design have many valuable things to say. And I’m also assuming that they don’t necessarily have the time or capacity - let alone the writing skill - to put pen to paper, which potentially leaves an abundance of juicy topics and ideas languishing unrealised in their heads.
Fortunately, this need not be an excuse, for there is a very simple solution: get a ghostwriter to help ghostwrite articles and online content. It’s as simple as that.
While producing ‘thought leadership’ content might sound a bit too Silicon Valley for the design industry, there’s nothing stopping us taking a few selected leaves out of this proven book.
Because, at the end of the day, personal narratives resonate. And as consumers of online content, we can’t help but get drawn into reading something which has a subjective touch.
To conclude, I’d say this: we need to start embracing the narrative. We love a good story. Manufacturers, give it a try, and maybe you’ll start to see the benefits of greater online engagement.