Why don't I like asking consumers questions? Because I've been exposed to almost forty years of the best and brightest market researchers at companies from Procter & Gamble to Pizza Hut who ask questions. In all that time, the answer to every question only reconfirmed things we already knew - basically reinventing the wheel, which, if I was to focus on advertising is why so much advertising bores or desensitizes us. I found that no one could ask a question they didn't already know the answer to. When new generations of managers asked questions at these companies it was so they could learn everything again for the first time. In companies like Leo Burnett Advertising in Chicago, I've actually seen senior client service executives collect, secret and destroy the work of predecessors to protect their current position from better answers found before their time. I found that when you ask questions, you don't get the voice of the consumer, you get the voice of the inquirer through the question being asked - a form of bias that has led companies from General Mills to General Motors astray, or at least slowed or reduced their innovation return on investment. The root of all this doom and gloom? The fact that none of this question-asking ever stimulated respondent's minds - be they client or consumer - so that they could respond in surprising ways beyond their current frames of reference to hasten the pace of successful innovation and generate a consistent stream of important new disruptive technology and manufacturing patents and consumer new product concepts. So where's the beef? That is, where is the answer found? In processes that proactively stimulate consumer and client minds rather than those methodologies that reactively collect and measure data. In processes that create new knowledge, rather than in those that pre-ordain and then sell syndicated or predefined trends (i.e. Cocooning - let's write a book as a self proclaimed guru then go sell the answer to everyone so they can pull the trigger at a target at point blank range and go nowhere) data such as the existence of new subcultures of our population such as Thrivals or Basics or Adventurers - all those psychobabble social and behavioral target audience definitions that have put the brakes and blinders on so many brands by limiting their appeal through their contrived application (i.e.: Type A Strivers shilling for Cadillac). Or all those touchy-feeley product design firms who observe the here and now creating new Swiffers that do nothing more than replace old mops and refrigerators. Making the old look new. That's not innovation.
Showing posts with label innovation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label innovation. Show all posts
Thursday, June 05, 2008
My innovation beef with market research
Why don't I like asking consumers questions? Because I've been exposed to almost forty years of the best and brightest market researchers at companies from Procter & Gamble to Pizza Hut who ask questions. In all that time, the answer to every question only reconfirmed things we already knew - basically reinventing the wheel, which, if I was to focus on advertising is why so much advertising bores or desensitizes us. I found that no one could ask a question they didn't already know the answer to. When new generations of managers asked questions at these companies it was so they could learn everything again for the first time. In companies like Leo Burnett Advertising in Chicago, I've actually seen senior client service executives collect, secret and destroy the work of predecessors to protect their current position from better answers found before their time. I found that when you ask questions, you don't get the voice of the consumer, you get the voice of the inquirer through the question being asked - a form of bias that has led companies from General Mills to General Motors astray, or at least slowed or reduced their innovation return on investment. The root of all this doom and gloom? The fact that none of this question-asking ever stimulated respondent's minds - be they client or consumer - so that they could respond in surprising ways beyond their current frames of reference to hasten the pace of successful innovation and generate a consistent stream of important new disruptive technology and manufacturing patents and consumer new product concepts. So where's the beef? That is, where is the answer found? In processes that proactively stimulate consumer and client minds rather than those methodologies that reactively collect and measure data. In processes that create new knowledge, rather than in those that pre-ordain and then sell syndicated or predefined trends (i.e. Cocooning - let's write a book as a self proclaimed guru then go sell the answer to everyone so they can pull the trigger at a target at point blank range and go nowhere) data such as the existence of new subcultures of our population such as Thrivals or Basics or Adventurers - all those psychobabble social and behavioral target audience definitions that have put the brakes and blinders on so many brands by limiting their appeal through their contrived application (i.e.: Type A Strivers shilling for Cadillac). Or all those touchy-feeley product design firms who observe the here and now creating new Swiffers that do nothing more than replace old mops and refrigerators. Making the old look new. That's not innovation.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Innovation Gone Wild
Innosight's President Scott Anthony made an interesting post on Harvard Business Online the other day about Innovation gone overboard - questioning to great extent whether replacing a car key with a wireless pushbutton constitutes "innovation." I couldn't agree more that it does not. But then Scott asks the question, "How do companies get to this point? How do slim and marginal improvements in product performance become dubbed innovation?" I have long said that innovation is an over used term. And managers eager for recognition apply the term liberally to any step forward. But what are the underpinnings of their thinking? Well here it is.Have you ever watched a group of 11 and 12 year old boys try to earn their fishing merit badge in the Boy Scouts? They remain interested in the merit badge counselor's instruction for about two minutes, then the boys drift off into their own worlds. Called back to order, the counselor asks one of the scouts to "watch" him tie the knot again and the boy, unable to tie the knot, or innovate, looks away. "No" says the couselor, "watch." And the boy glances as the counselor specifically shows him how to tie the not. Again the boy looks away before the task is completed, and struggles ten minutes longer than all the other boys before completing the knot successfully.
If it is this difficult to learn how to tie a knot with the instructor present, showing you how to do it for free, imagine how difficult it must be for an adult to innovate without additional supervision. Like the young Boy Scout, it is hard to pay attention and simpler just to take the easy way out. Trial and error. Which is why the pace of innovation is so slow and why the term innovation gets tattooed on every product upgrade. Only a few years ago Procter & Gamble would label it's products "new & improved," an ultra this or concentrated that. New & Improved has simply been replaced by the word innovation - today's marketing buzzword.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
The 3 Innovations
I have been asked by a prestigious MBA School's professor to proof an advanced copy of his book. And while the author does an excellent job of describing the problems and symptoms, he like others are yet to tell you "how to do it."There are three Innovations in Business.
1) Technological Innovation, typically patent driven, which is why companies grow in fits and starts and breakthroughs are fewer and farther between;
2) Product Design Innovation which more often than not is practiced simply by making the old look new - i.e. turning mops into Swiffers - which is easy to copy and does not sell an incrementally greater number of redesigned mops;
3) and the most underutilized and least understood Innovation
Perceptual Innovation® leading to Perceptual Monopolies® that enable companies to:
A) Leapfrog competitors with ideas that change thinking rather than changing things with expensive and risky capital technology investment;
B) Change consumer habits and practices;
C) Reverse the effects of mature product and category (or industry lifecycles - every company's challenge in fast track consumer packaged goods categories and automobiles);
D) And, if you're a company such as Starbucks, Chrysler, GM, Ford or Home Depot desperately in the need - turn mature earnings companies back into rapid growth businesses.
This all speaks to C-level execs who are the leaders in charge of innovation driving the growth of their company. It sure isn't Chuck in product design or Larry in manufacturing/R&D.
We have a process that will readily identify the Perceptual Monopolies® you desire, if you have a competition in you that does not want to see others (rivals and competitive brands) succeed - work that also enables you to point your company's future development of technologies in the proper direction.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Knowledge Takes 25 Years To Reach Procter & Gamble CMO Jim Stengel's Brain
Procter & Gamble Global Marketing Officer Jim Stengel talked about consumers, creativity and CMO tenure in an interview in a recent Strategy & Business Reader from Booz Allen Hamilton titled "CMO Thought Leaders: The Rise of the Strategic Marketer." You can access more of his thoughts here http://www.strategy-business.com/cmoreader ... But here's what I have to say ...
Well Jim, Thanks for hitting the nail on the head...again. Back in 1980 - 1982 Calle & Company was proud to be the very first new product and product positioning company to let Pampers and Procter & Gamble know that disposable diapers didn't just stand for dryness. By pioneering and repositioning Pampers as "Pampers Phases Developmental Diapers" in the very early 1980's we introduced size five to hour glass shaped disposables and convinced moms that being a toddler was just another "phase" in the "development" of a newborn or infant. And that was just the beginning of extending the brand's equity, arresting over $1 billion in toddler migration to Kimberly-Clark Pull-Ups that year. What we found curious was that by the end of the 80's P&G had dumped the initiative, or sent it into hibernation, until recently, apparently rediscovered again.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Act and Think Small to Win Big With Killer Ideas
If Leonard da Vinci hadn't taken a risk, he would have painted the Sistine Floor.This post was stimulated in response to a CMO strategy article written by Peter Murane, president-founder of BrandJuice, a brand-strategy and innovation consulting firm based in Denver.
...But over the last 45 years creating breakthrough brand positions and new products, I and others have seen a dramatic lessening of those in business with an owner/executive or founder/executive mentality. Someone to grab a bull by the horns and run with it.
If you call Clorox and ask the receptionist for, "the leader in charge of innovation driving the growth of your company" all you'll get in response is dead air. If you ask for the CEO (they are that person) his assistant will send you to Phil (name changed) in packaging design. "Oh, I see, Phil in packaging design is in charge of the growth of Clorox." If you reach a brand manager, most prove unable to bypass or negotiate the management barriers and politics to a better idea. Old marketers will tell new marketers to test anything new in marketing they want, as long as it's not actually a better idea.
Innovation checkmate.
Let's just redesign our packaging, labels and delivery systems and call that innovation. Whew! Got that job off my desk. But making the old look new isn't innovation. It's everything above what you are supposed to do that counts.
I heard a saying once. "The first 40 hours a week you work goes for survival. It's everything over that that goes for success." And the sad truth in large companies is, we just see too many 40 hour efforts - even if you do work an 80-hour week.
Positioning strategies and new product breakthroughs are like ten-speed bikes. Most have gears they've never used. And so you fall short. Like the antagonist in that really great funny movie A Knight's Tale with Heath Ledger says, "You have been weighed, measured, and been found wanting."
Innovation stalemate. Or then again, maybe we're over thinking all of this. MAYBE THEY JUST DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO IT.
Back to you oh painters of the Sistine Floor.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Multi-Dimensional Creativity®
Multi-Dimensional Creativity ® is a linking process that creates the conversation of creativity in consumer minds, the critical mass of connected thought that is not available until stimulated into existance through the use of custom-created product potentials creative materials. This proven consumer-creative processes sees possibilities before they become obvious.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Disruptive Data Technology
How to succeed without asking consumers any questions.
Disruptive Data Technology ® is a proprietary data-creation tool exclusive to Calle & Company. www.callecompany.com The revolutionary data-creation process stimulates consumer minds with over 10,000 Product Potentials®, eliminating the pitfalls and poor traditions of question-based marketing. This proven system of invention, innovation, and information makes companies more valuable by generating proprietary marketing intelligence that can help you launch more successful new products and brands and get a foothold in new markets when tackling and toppling market leaders. Project owners charged with creating sustaining innovations profit from new not commoditized data, a distinct advantage over a company’s normal diet of day-old data-salad. Do you like to feel the thrill of insight when a solution that had eluded you, or straightforward problem solving suddenly becomes obvious? Here are many other good reasons why top companies employ exclusive Disruptive Data Technology.
· Jump Start! The process exposes target audience consumers to over 10,000 Product Potentials®. It gives everyone so much more to talk about than what they already know.
· Confidence! More CEOs are satisfied with their innovation ROI.
· Proven! By 100 companies including P&G, J&J, Pepsi and Frito-Lay.
· Experience! It takes less time to learn everything for the first time.
· Effective! Pound for pound marketing solutions deliver more-bang for the buck.
· Excitement! The process releases right-brain top-line creative and strategic endorphins.
· Collaborate! The process quickly builds conviction and consensus with everyone on the same page.
· Enthusiasm! We reveal deeply hidden, never before seen product features, functions, benefits and category attributes.
· Resurrection! DDT® turns poor concepts, bad ideas and line extensions into mega-marvels.
· Clean Sweep! DDT® is a proven clutter buster and differentiator for advertising and positioning strategists.
· Communicate! Americans fear public speaking. Exclusive Consumer-Creative® materials ensure everyone’s 100% participation.
· Work Out! The process exercises creative muscles that otherwise get flabby.
· Accountability! By asking consumers no questions they can tell you no lies.
· Level the Playing Field! The process eliminates focus group leaders who try to impress by pretending to be smart.
· Culturally-Influential® Insights! Reach far beyond linear trend, brand map, laddering, needs segmentation and agency reviews.
· Integrity! Consumers create. Someone else does not do the work or thinking for them.
· Awe! Answers are so obvious they’re not obvious. Solutions are abstract and more engaging, not forced or contrived.
· Freshness! DDT puts you a day ahead of consumers, not a day behind. In-Market solutions stay fresher longer.
· Allegiance! Consumers will not surf past ads as if they were 10 years old before they were new.
· Smart! The process won’t waste money reconfirming or reinventing the things you already know.
· Forward Thinking! Gathering and measuring data about things that have already happened is reactive. This process is proactive.
· Inquisitive! We all ask questions. We all ask the same questions. We rarely ask new questions. Afraid of looking dumb younger marketers won’t ask questions. Are we asking the right questions? When you ask questions you don’t get the voice of the consumer you get the voice of the inquirer through the question being asked, a form of bias that will lead you astray.
· Time Saving! A career’s worth of experience can be had in six weeks - much less than a lifetime.
· Patents! Deliverables are proprietary, not syndicated. There are no contracts. No retainers. No obligations for free proposals.
· Pragmatic! We don’t believe the words “SELL” and “SUIT” are 4-letter words.
· Work Ethic! DDT® proven faster and less expensive than any other business development activity. It gets things done.
· Commitment! Few people are pragmatic top line right brain creative thinkers. They need the help of our proven Abstract Dimensioning® and Multi-Dimensional Creativity® stimuli materials to jump start innovation.
· EASY TO REACH! 714.244.9511 24/7
Email: future@callecompany.com Web Site: www.callecompany.com
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