We created a brand called “Northern Trail Outfitters” years ago to use for email demos and email best practices illustration. Our Nordic colleagues (Minneapolis) were responsible for the company name and outdoor product offering of everything from parkas to hiking boots to kayaks. The brand could be personified by Sean Penn in a kayak searching for a deep mystery in the wilderness to (my favorite) George Clooney stranded in Moose Lake with a yellow parka as a float device next to a befuddled Hoosier marketer lost on a photo shoot (me!!). 
Can you imagine the opportunity to take a fresh look at your brand and design from scratch? What if there wasn’t an internal review process, legacy ideas of what the brand should be, and design-by-committee input? The Design Team at ExactTarget loves our opportunity to keep the value proposition of Northern Trail Outfitters fresh and compelling, with best design and email practices covering every pixel of the email. It may not be corporate reality, but is an incredibly powerful process to undertake for performance evaluation and optimization.
Have you given your design team a chance to put aside unproductive corporate design baggage and ideate a fresh view? Design is a discreet talent that can flourish with a little freedom. Performance-driven design leverages this talent with performance strategies. (o.k. – George Clooney in our yellow parka may be all we need, but Sean Penn is a worthy A/B test split)
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