Stay Authentic and Look Forward

“Keep Calm and Carry On”— five words, a global marketing phenomenon.

The stunning newfound (oldfound?) commercial success of the retread of an obscure 70-year old British public service advertising poster merits some analysis and deconstruction, especially as the mysterious allure of brand revival continues to captivate marketers everywhere. What can we learn? Plenty.

First, however, some quick background is in order, particularly for those not already familiar with all this “Keep Calm And Carry On” hubbub. In 1939, on the eve of war with Nazi Germany, the British Ministry of Information commissioned the design and production of three advertising posters for purposes of maintaining the morale of the British people once the bombs started raining down – which they figured might make some folks a bit antsy. One of these posters carried a message calling for a stiff upper lip, in a quintessentially British way: “Keep Calm And Carry On,” it read; all type, accompanied by a smallish icon of the British crown. Clear message, no frills.

Innovate and Market Effectively Against Big Brand Budgets

There is not one marketer out there – large or small – who isn’t thinking about ways to be more innovative with less money. Unfortunately, the mid-tier marketer – with a proportionally smaller budget to work with versus the big brand guys – sometimes has to work harder and smarter just to keep pace.  And while no one can outspend the big guys, in today’s environment working more nimbly is the key to success, which in some ways can actually give the advantage to the mid-tier marketer.

Here are four ways to potentially outsmart and outmaneuver the industry giants when it comes to innovation and marketing:

1.    Introduce concurrent systems of new product innovation. The giant brands are so heavily saddled in go-to-market processes that it may take them years to introduce minor line extensions. Launch hurdles remain high, risk aversion is the rule, and truly breakthrough ideas are the exception. Launching a truly new product in a major CPG company is an increasingly rare occurrence. More and more, these big companies are line extending to death, but not offering consumers any significant innovation. By contrast, the concurrent model engages all stakeholders simultaneously in the new product development decisions from the onset of a project to meet customer needs with innovative, quality products of compelling value designed to be delivered cost-effectively and faster than the competition.  In their white paper, “Cost Effective Innovation” Frank Hall and Paul Collins present a persuasive argument for the benefits of those companies embracing the concurrent approach to innovation:

The 9 Secrets of Human and Brand Longevity

Dan Buettner’s “Search for the Fountain of Youth” which was featured in both National Geographic and Adventure magazine about his research on human longevity and his travels around the world to study the world’s heartiest humans, identifies ‘The Power Nine: Secrets of long life from the world’s healthiest humans.” It is a captivating look of the common practices of these cultures and how they sustain life. What’s even more fascinating is that the Power Nine can be directly applied to your brand to help make sure it’s healthy and sustains a long life expectancy:

1. Move. Find ways to stay active. Humans need to stay active. So do brands. Brands are a living breathing entity that are impacted and affected by every day aspects of life. An inert brand is a brand that is destined to die. An active brand is one that continues to understand its place in the global market, it knows its close in and fringe competitors, it understands new and emerging trends that could help shape and evolve it and stays in touch with technologies that can impact it and help it adapt.

Private Label Update: Innovation Driving the Next Wave

As impressive as the evolution from a pure price proposition to “comparable to major branded quality” has been, the next wave of Private Label brand building in the grocery channel is currently swelling and the impact promises to be even more dramatic.

High-level marketing strategies, retail consolidation, and increased focus on comprehensive brand building are driving Private Label to new levels of sophistication and consumer loyalty. Given these ambitious new heights (and in the absence of deep media spending) Innovation – through new product development, positioning, branding and packaging – is now assuming the central responsibility in driving this next wave of driving growth.

Up to this point, the evolution of the Store Brand has followed a steady trajectory, with four distinct waves of development:

First Wave: Generics Era – A strict price/value proposition provides a cost alternative for consumers, but lower cost, sub-standard quality and crude or minimal design development creates an impression of inferior product quality that lingers to this day. These First Wave products are still an important part of many Store Brand strategies, but overall appearance and product quality—while still reflecting value—have improved considerably.

8 Ways for Bringing New Life to the Qualitative Focus Group

The traditional consumer qualitative group setting, long considered the most dynamic and reliable way for marketers to maintain the pulse of their consumer, has lost its’ favored status amongst many consumer researchers – and for a various good reasons. While still a “go-to” device in every marketers tool box, the focus group setting can often feel staged, with consumers increasingly marketing conscious and less candid in their responses. Conversely, ethnography and other in-context techniques have opened a pathway to garnering a more unaffected view of the consumer and thus the tendency to yield more ‘natural’ insights.

Worse yet, some believe that bias – of the moderator, questions, samples and reporting – has severely distorted the reliability of focus group based qual research, and in turn impacted decisions based these findings. Beyond that some suggest respondents  – increasingly conscious of the qualitative process – are further disconnected from their internal “truth.” Despite these valid protests, the focus group clearly isn’t going away – it is simply a far too critical resource for every marketer in order to maintain a highly accessible touchpoint with their audience. This isn’t to say, however, that there aren’t some very simple ways of optimizing the whole affair.

While the process of plucking consumers and putting them in front of two-way mirrors may seem increasingly unnatural, there are certainly ways to make the most of the focus group setting. By employing some smart techniques, consumer qualitative can be more than highly productive – creative moderators and consumer researchers are bringing renewed energy and, in turn, more meaningful insights from this setting.

The following are 8 ways for bringing new life to the qualitative focus group:

Moving Beyond Words: The Power of Dimensionalization

The power of the word is undeniable. Yet, in the world of innovation, branding and communication, words alone are one-dimensional, and, ultimately, products, services and brands are rarely communicated in one dimension. To bring conceptual opportunities to life—vividly and actively—the need exists to move beyond mere words: engaging both visually and verbally, evoking multiple emotions and thoughts.

Because in truth, consumers will never read those carefully crafted 50-word positioning statements. And Creative Briefs? Creatives, god bless ‘em, won’t read them (really). And that 86-slide report designed to infuse your staff with refined enthusiasm, and increased clarity. Yeah, you guessed it – it will likely put them to sleep around slide 22. That stunningly brilliant Consumer Research report… you know, the 80-page one with the snazzy cover, filled with massively brilliant cross-tabs, charts and tables? Well, great insights are only as valuable as their ability to be effectively transmitted and (more importantly!) received and perceived.

Five Techniques To Integrate Consumers In Innovation

Consumer-driven innovation is not a new idea.  But it’s a powerful one. It’s a methodology that has slowly evolved over the past dozen years and is getting more and more traction within many channels, categories and sectors.  Consumer-driven innovation is not allowing consumers to design your product or service but to be involved within the entire process of new product/service innovation.  There are many ways for marketers to leverage the incredible insight and perspective that consumers have to help shape, optimize and validate new ideas and concepts.  Following are 5 different techniques involving consumers to consider as part of your innovation approach:

1.    In-situation consumer  observation. While getting out of the focus group room and using more empathic research techniques such as ethnography are more commonplace today, many marketers need a subtle reminder about the powerful insights that can be garnered utilizing in-situ research.  Observing consumers going through the purchasing process in-store or opening/installing/using/disposing of a product at home can yield innumerable unmet and unarticulated needs. Documenting societal factors and key influencers can be a giant treasure trove of insights and learnings. This type of research should be part of every innovation project.  Most importantly, consumers are not telling you how to create a new product, rather, through observational techniques, subtle opportunities, gaps, and needs are realized helping to inform the innovation process.

Stuck with Smucker’s: Overcoming the Curse of a Bad Name

In an increasingly cutthroat marketplace, a name can define the difference between consumer acceptance and trepidation, success and failure. With the proliferation of products, the degree of physical distinction and perceived superiority diminishes – and in a large product category, technical superiority is usually a myth or short-lived. Toss in a less than optimal name to this mix and it’s easy to understand why new products (or old ones with horrible names) have high mortality rates.

It’s tough enough to make it out there, never mind with a name like Smucker’s. But what if you are stuck with Smucker’s? Is it all doom and gloom or can you still manage to put in a Die Hard performance and take charge of the market? Sure you can, if you follow the rules of bad name survival, which are namely these:

Make the Best of It
Think about Aflac. The only name worse than Aflac is their real, formal name: “American Family Life Assurance Company.” Yawnsville. But Aflac didn’t care. They made the best of it, used the acronym and a duck to generate some real character for the company.  It’s the same with Geico (a pretty pathetic name) until they used the Gecko. That was a stroke of name-association genius.

Randomness, Coincidence and Innovation

There are two criteria that define randomness: that the variables will be represented in equal frequency, and secondly, that the order is impossible to predict.  While computer algorithms can effectively simulate randomness, mathematicians will tell, that the second of these criteria – unpredictability – is impossible to prove. Thus the occurrence of coincidental strings on your iPod Shuffle can give rise to the sort of suspicions which have long fueled message boards and forums debates on why, for example, “Eno’s ‘Baby’s On Fire’ only plays on an odd number” or “my favorite songs appear on playlists more often.” (Conspiracy theorists suggest that the latter is the result of Apple monitoring your preferences, psychologists, conversely, might counter that listeners are simply more conscious of their favorite tunes.).

Randomness and coincidence are forever engaged in the cosmic dance – as explored in this tidbit from Psychology Today:
“When University of Tennessee psychologists gave students random, computer-generated analogies, the undergraduates had little trouble coming up with the “logic” behind nonsensical phrases like, Horse is to time as stone is to book. However far-fetched their interpretations, the students nonetheless seemed to believe that their explanations were reasonable, reports Michael G. Johnson, Ph.D.”

Back to School: A Look at Innovation Curriculum

While Innovation as an academic discipline is certainly an extremely new concept to many college curriculums, in many ways the approach is being adopted in a very traditional – and highly dichotomized – way.  Academia, not unlike the business world itself, has had the tendency to polarize the study of innovation into either an arts driven or business pursuit. Traditionally, MBAs armed with PCs on this side of campus, Mac-toting Industrial Design majors and BFAs on the other side – and never the twain shall meet.

On the creative side for example, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) offers a double major in Product Design and Innovation.  The design centric program is built around “Studios” created to provide a fundamental understanding of product development and innovation. While balance is part of the philosophy – the program, according to the course description “combines the sophistication of Rensselaer’s building science curriculum with the vision of the humanities and social sciences disciplines” – the approach clearly “lives” primarily in the design world.