I was recently on vacation in Orlando, Florida. Sitting in traffic on highway 192, my family and I had come to a stop under an overpass bridge that looked to be newly constructed. It had the requisite steel and concrete that made it structurally sound. But it also had palm trees and pineapple patterns stamped into the concrete wall sitting next to our car. The wall had been constructed of integrally mixed colored concrete with a couple of different hues making a pattern between the sections of the wall. It was, obviously, put there for the enjoyment of poor saps like me, caught in traffic on this particular stretch of highway. "When did bridges become artwork?” I thought to myself.

When indeed, did everything become artwork in our society? There has been a shift in the way people think in America. There was a time when a bridge could just be structurally sound and it was enough. We did not pay much attention to the way it looked. That has changed. Not that people expect the bridge to be functional, they do, but they also expect it to look good. This is a key concept in the way we market products. In the book, A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink calls this new way of thinking the Conceptual Age. In the Conceptual Age we live in, a client wants to visualize all the possibilities that the bridge could look like. A highway commissioner may put together a panel of people from the community to brainstorm different ideas. An architect will try to match the conceptual ideas of the client in a stunning piece of artwork that stretches the limits of possibilities for the bridge. When they like the "bridge conceptual artwork,” it is sent on down the line and some poor contractor is given the task of making the bridge look exactly like the drawing. The bridge really becomes a piece of 3-D art, worthy of some museum. The final structure will be judged by all who pass by as being worthy of our viewing. What it looks like becomes more important than what it does in the Conceptual Age. Pink describes this as one of the new six senses: Design over Function. He says, "It’s no longer sufficient to create a product, a service, an experience, or a lifestyle that’s merely functional. Today it’s economically crucial and personally rewarding to create something that is also beautiful, whimsical, or emotionally engaging.¹”

So if you are selling a product that works well, but is about as attractive as a monkey’s butt, you may want to rethink the aesthetic aspects of your product. If you are providing a service that is crucial to the function of your client’s business, you may want to consider what is seen (i.e. your web site, your company vehicles, your corporate offices) as a crucial component of selling in the Conceptual Age. Customers will always demand that what you are selling work correctly. But in the age in which we live, what it looks like is king.