‘Yo soy Betty, la fea’ from a Product Designer perspective
Most of us, specially us living in Latin America are familiar with Betty, the character that captured the heart of many with her charismatic and clumsy ways, but most of all, with all her brilliance and financial knowledge.
For those of you who doesn’t know Betty, let me put you in context of what this is:
Yo soy Betty, la fea or simply Betty, la fea (Ugly Betty) it’s a Colombian telenovela that ended up being the most successful telenovela of all time, winning the Guinness Records in 2010.
Its original version was broadcast in many countries with great success, including throughout Latin America, and enjoyed great international success, being broadcast in more than 180 countries, being dubbed into 25 languages and having at least 28 adaptations around the world, being the telenovela that has had the most adaptations.
Well, having that clarified, it’s time to tackle this article and the relation between this telenovela and Product Design.
The story, in short
This story its about Beatriz Pinzón Solano a.k.a Betty, played by Colombian actress Ana María Orozco, a shy and clumsy girl considered aesthetically ugly, that enters to work in a fashion company called Ecomoda, as her third job after a series of studies of economics and experience in banking.
The story is based on the contrast between her looks and her brains, and how she is able to sort a series of obstacles and detractors and earn her way within the company into a position of management and decision making.
Administration changes within the company
Betty enters Ecomoda a few days before a change of command happens between Roberto Mendoza (Kepa Amuchastegui) and his son, Armando Mendoza (Jorge Enrique Abello), who’s taking the President position on the company.
Ecomoda is a well-known clothing company, owned 40% by the Mendoza family, another 40% by the Valencia family, and the remaining 20% by minority shareholders.
Armando, to win the position of President had to compete with Daniel Valencia (Luis Mesa), his step brother, by proposing a Business Plan that would make Ecomoda grow under his command. Their proposals were voted and Armando’s came up as the winner due to the vote of Marcela Valencia (Natalia Ramírez), his wife to be and Daniel’s sister (he proposed just to get that vote), although they all knew that Daniel’s proposal were (by far) more viable than Armando’s.
The Business Proposal
Armando won the presidency with a one-year business plan that was unrealizable due to miscalculation.
He stablished impossible short-term goals in terms of revenue and profits and when he realized that — thanks to Betty and her business analysis, his ego drove him to take desperate actions in order not to lose to Daniel and give up the presidency (if not met the goals he would’ve to leave the presidency of Ecomoda).
He maked-up balances, hid information, reduced costs with poor quality materials and produced a third-class collection that resulted in a heavy drop on their sales and a really difficult financial position of Ecomoda as a company.
Collateral damage: The Product
As we know, in the show, Ecomoda is a clothing company that sells designers clothes to its clients. Its well-known designer, Hugo Lombardi (Julián Arango) is the creative mind behind the designs that people love and buy so much.
His designs positioned Ecomoda as one of the top contenders in the Colombian industry and also allowed them to make plans of opening a store in Palm Beach, Florida.
The experts left behind
One of the things Armando did, along with Mario Calderón (Ricardo Vélez), his Commercial Vice president, was to reduce costs at max in materials and fabrics, without consulting Hugo, the designer. Armando, Mario and Betty attended showrooms with suppliers to see and touch the fabrics in order to close deals, again, without Hugo.
They entered the field of an expert, without being one.
Of those deals, the result was an enormous investment in poor quality fabrics and materials, such as plastic buttons, that heavily affected the final product.
Despite Hugo’s efforts for reverting the situation (even Betty’s warnings without being an expert in fashion clothing), Armando’s blindness didn’t allow him to see the deterioration of his product despite the clients complain numbers rose up from 1 to 50 per month.
That’s still not representative, Mario said.
And they continued the production until they were forced to withdraw it from the market.
Listening to clients, a happy ending
After a lot of drama, tax fraud, beauty queens and parents who have to come and fix the mess their children have caused, Ecomoda enters a stage of accelerated financial recovery. All thanks to Betty’s commercial strategy by listening to clients:
Offering fashion and color advice to the company’s clients directly on the stores to cover their pain points, by helping them to choose clothes according to their body type.
Main teachings that Ugly Betty left us in terms of Product design
Product design is the process designers use to blend user needs with business goals to help brands make consistently successful products.
Product designers need to have an eye of the product. They need to understand how it works, how it behaves and what it does, before doing anything else.
We know that our protagonists are not designers, but you don’t have to be one to have a user-centric thinking and approach to a business or service. Considering this, Ecomoda and its leaders didn’t follow the principle of considering user needs to deliver a better product, but instead they focused only in financial goals without a user-centric approach. They acted by themselves and left everyone else behind, including the experts in their field.
So, with this conclusion we can learn that:
1. You don’t have to know everything
If it wasn’t for Betty’s financial assistance, Armando and Mario, who both had marketing expertise, would have sunk along with their ship.
2. The support of your team is essential
Betty had a group of friends that were called “El cuartel de las feas” or ‘Ugly barracks’ and without them, she couldn’t have accomplished many of the things she did. The Barracks saved Betty in many times when she was in trouble and even saved a fashion show at the end.
3. Invest in quality
Well says my mother “Cheap is expensive.” Just as lowering the quality of the fabric material was a bad idea, so was searching for materials with smugglers. Trying to save money, lose much more. Don’t be afraid to invest in quality. Find quality employees and train them. These investments will eventually generate savings.
4. Communicate and delegate to experts
One of the main mistakes of management was doing things without discussing them with the rest of the team. Mainly, without asking the opinion of people who really know about the subject.
5. Listen to your clients
As we know, Armando’s strategy was based in financial goals only and users were never there. He didn’t realized the importance of the quality in its fabrics so he never dimensioned the impact the reduce in quality would mean for his company. At the end, thanks to Betty and her listenings, they ended up following the correct commercial strategy to boost the business up.
