|
Suggestions on refocusing innovation
By: Cara Woodland, Robert Morais, Arnold Spector
In Aesop’s fable about the goose that laid the golden
egg, the goose’s owner became impatient waiting for
each golden egg to be laid so he killed his goose, anticipating
that her insides held solid gold. Instead, he found only her
internal organs. The man’s impulsiveness ended his ability
to get more golden eggs and ruined his life.
For certain business organizations, the goose and the golden
egg is a metaphor for a marketing fear. Companies whose success
is based on a single brand are worried that any attempt to
line-extend that brand — get more eggs out of it —
will cannibalize, diminish or even end its golden life cycle.
Their approach, defined by Ricky W. Griffin in the Fundamentals
of Management as a single-product strategy, can sometimes
be effective. Conversely, it holds significant risks, especially
if customer needs change or the competition is more aggressive
in the marketplace. It can also stunt the growth of a brand
that customers would be highly receptive to purchase in other
forms. The question for apprehensive companies considering
moving away from a single-product strategy is how to do so
without killing the brand that has yielded so much gold over
the years.
To innovate or not
A major manufacturer of global consumer and household products
faced this problem. For decades, this company marketed a well-recognized
brand name with strong customer awareness and chose not to
line-extend that brand. Management was torn. They were concerned
about diluting customer perceptions of this “icon”
brand but they were faced with competitors increasingly encroaching
upon their territory and the product line was losing share
of market. Should they innovate and expand the brand name
to new domains or continue their single product strategy and
hope their brand retains its market share? In the past, the
safe choice seemed to be a holding pattern; now the loss of
equity was becoming too great a threat. Ultimately, management
concluded that they wanted to better understand customer perceptions
of their brand and identify what, if any, new products could
be introduced under the brand umbrella.
In order to break their paralysis, management chose a two-phase
process, combining research and new product ideation. The
research phase drew upon the technique of applied ethnography.
When applied to market research, ethnography involves entering
into the end-user’s natural environment — home,
shopping setting, or place of employment — to gain a
more realistic understanding of their attitudes, behaviors
and needs, and to better comprehend the context of product
use. Phase II of the project would use this understanding
as a springboard to develop potential new products that would
increase their brand’s market penetration.
Show the reality
The value of ethnography was its ability to show the organization
customer reality rather than customer reconstruction from
memory via a focus group or survey. Sites were selected through
an intensive process of a recruiting screener, pre-site visit
homework and a phone interview. Research teams were designed
to be cross-functional and experiential, with team members
from the sponsoring organization and its advertising agency
participating actively in the site visit while a trained ethnographer
led the respondent interview. This approach provided the organization
with real-life experience with their customers and made the
field team more connected to, and responsible for, representing
their customers’ needs.
On-site observations produced insights that could not have
been generated otherwise. For example, during one site visit,
the field team visited a custom printer and observed that
his technician, who had a variety of similar products at his
disposal, chose the brand that was closest to him. When asked
why, the technician explained that this brand was most convenient
and that he did not want to take the time to walk across the
room to get another brand, even if it might yield a better
result. This simple comment was an eye-opener to the marketing
team; their icon brand was not worth taking the time to walk
10 extra steps!
Data analysis
The goal following the research was to amass recurring themes
and key insights, and then determine which of the themes and
insights were within the company’s strategic focus.
Themes from the research were determined through clustering
the research data and then defining the top customer needs,
drivers and motivators. From the ethnography, the organization
received resounding permission from the consumers to extend
the brand line. Indeed, customers expressed an expectation
of the company to expand the brand and were surprised that
it had not yet done so. Based on this finding, the organization
determined that new product expansion was essential to avoid
long-term share-of-use erosion. The organization received
the needed assurance that there was an opportunity, and a
safe one, to expand its golden brand beyond its current single
product line.
Insights into action: the innovation session
The next step in the process was to create new products and
marketing strategies from the research insights via an innovation
session. A cross-functional team was brought together to participate
in the brainstorming process. This team included the field
researchers, external marketers, consultants, new product
development professionals from non-competing industries and
creative people from within the organization representing
multiple functions. Those involved in the session were consistently
reminded to focus on the customer through the use of customer
profile sheets, which encapsulated each site visit into a
one-page overview of findings. Additionally, the session centered
on ideas which would be consistent with the company objectives
while also protecting or extending the icon brand’s
equity.
The session was divided into two parts. The first segment
entailed a large group exercise to brainstorm beginning ideas
and concepts for products. The second part of the session
consisted of a smaller core team from the sponsoring company
to sort through the ideas to create a portfolio of platform
areas and appropriate next steps. The large group session
produced hundreds of seed ideas and concepts enabling the
small core team to isolate 11 key platform areas to move to
the next stage of development.
The innovation session was more practical and productive because
ethnography was completed beforehand. The ethnography provided
the targeted themes and insights upon which new product ideas
could be built. Additionally, the sponsoring company’s
participation in the research and analysis led to ownership
of the research insights and a responsibility to represent
real customer needs.
The outcome
Since the innovation session, the company’s management
has shown intense interest in expanding the brand. The session’s
platform areas are now in further testing and development.
From the beginning to the end of the project, the organization
learned a number of valuable lessons. The team discovered
the value of having a well-documented, actionable process
for implementing research results before entering into the
field. The step-by-step process gave them the freedom to focus
on the important phases between the beginning and end product
rather than trying to jump immediately to the end product.
Combining ethnographic research with the ideation and concept
generation process produced an end result of greater breadth
and value because ethnography yielded a more informed way
to be imaginative in product idea generation.
Throughout the project, the team learned the value of nurturing
the process rather than focusing on the end result. Most importantly,
the project helped overcome corporate paralysis and reassured
the sponsor that their beloved goose could lay many golden
eggs and that both their company and their golden brand would
be safe from harm.
Source and Copyright: www.quirks.com.
Not distributed for commercial gain. |
