Kamcity Library - Breaking Through

We’ve all seen it or heard it and most have probably been guilty of it (I’ve certainly got my hand up). We’ve sat in meetings claiming a ‘truth’ because the company universally accepts it (usually driven by a leading decision maker). These are amongst my top 10:

“The strategy is totally wrong, the design looks awful and as for the advertising” (normally a newly appointed brand manager who wants to make a quick impact and move on!); “The consumer only buys on price”; “We tried that before (which normally means “we’d have to totally re-organise and its bound to fail anyway”), “Retailers simply won’t let you walk into stores and place displays unless you have the agreement of the buyer; we’re wasting our time”…

Strategy Erosion

“Ouch!”. I hear some wincing…or I should. The fact is that we rely on past experience to inform our decision making whilst the political climate within the company (who holds sway: Sales? Marketing? Operations? Finance?) helps determine what obstacles can or can’t be overcome. We have to refresh our thinking on a regular basis as consumer trends, product perceptions, production capability etc. move on.

A particularly useful mantra during my formative years at university was “successful strategies erode over time” although I have always thought that “customer and consumer insight relevance erodes over time” is much more pertinent for Sales and Marketing professionals as these drive our commercial strategy.

As consumers come to accept new/premium products as part of their every day repertoire, so they lose their lustre. Over time, today’s premium product will become tomorrow’s mass market and (if you get it wrong) the future’s “has been”. Consumer quality or service expectations become raised such that either you re-engineer your product to exceed these expectations or you lose out to new and/or contemporary brands & products that do so. You only have to think of the life cycle of most Christmas presents to know this is true…or take a peek at canned goods, frozen foods or, in a different arena altogether, Alitalia if you’re used to flying British Airways.

As your customers become more attuned to the latest category thinking, so they expect to see it reflected in your approach. It is an interesting insight that many excellent products fail to achieve listings simply because the suppliers cannot talk the relevant retail patter – the retail world would be significantly less bland if they could. Take Tesco for example. You might think Dunnhumby data to be expensive (and I can’t really disagree with you) but, quite frankly, if you’re not using the insights that can be generated from this exceptional source, you can’t expect to be sitting at/near the top table for that much longer.

Getting Naïve

The fact is that unless we challenge our strategies and each other on a regular basis, our thinking becomes atrophied and introverted; we start to ignore market signals. So get naïve. Always begin with insights - consumer & retail - and I strongly recommend that you approach the task from the perspective of a new market entrant. In other words, ‘rip up’ all past research and presume you know nothing about your consumers/shoppers, competitors or your customers at all and then commission two key research programmes.

The first, focused on your trade customers, should identify their current thinking about your business and benchmark your performance on a host of relevant attributes including, but not limited to, competitors; customer service levels; understanding of customer’s business; capability to deliver; effective use of shopper and consumer insight; NPD pro-activity / success record, quality of account management and clarity of business vision/plans.

The second should be focused on the consumer. There are a number of ways to do this but (having clearly defined your objectives) I suggest starting with in-depth interviews, receiving an initial debrief, re-orientating, and then developing a clear brief for focus groups. Segmenting the focus groups into clusters works well as it allows you to learn and then feed in amended/alternative material (e.g. merchandising concepts, new brand/product concepts, brand positioning statements, advertising ideas). The final element should then be a piece of quantified research based on a usage and attitude survey.

Make sure you identify the right agencies. Some seem to think they should only feed back what the consumer thinks, others over-intellectualise their deductions and some seem to feel that they can be selective rather than take the time to organise and feed back all they have learnt. If you have ever had a doubt about one of the agencies you normally use, then don’t use them for this research – it is too important.

Cost/Benefit

You’re probably thinking, rightly, that this is going to cost you the better part of £50,000 and it may well do. However, as a one off cost that will then form the basis of your customer / consumer thinking for the next three-five years, it is a valuable investment and I can only say that we have always been surprised and grateful for how much we have learnt. Use it to inform your commercial relationships and your commercial organisation. You will be able to create consumer filters for your NPD programme, clarify your brand and communication strategies and it might even drive you to redefine your asset base. Your category presentations to customers will have a new and enriching source of insight and your competitors will be left scratching their heads in your wake.

Keep It Going

Having made the start, you may as well go the whole hog and encourage your leadership team to introduce a Naïvety Process into your daily work programme. Choose some key business issues and keep asking why until you have identified a solution that might even be “Ignore it” or “Stop doing it” (now how many of us have been brave enough to recommend that kind of solution…?).

More pragmatically, you are no doubt endlessly searching for the next new product or brand idea and bringing in so-called Naïve Experts can be a great way of breaking open your thinking. For example, if you’re developing a new coating system for a meat product, invite a tailor to describe how they style and cut clothes; or invite a cake maker to your next discussion on developing a children’s food – this might seem bizarre but experience has shown me that it can pay off handsomely. After all, you only need one great idea…

So if you really want to get under the skin of your category, understand where you are and where you could go, there’s few better ways than getting naïve.

By Richard Nall - Managing Consultant, Hawden Leigh, February 2006

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