Posts from — August 2007

Marketing research for new products and services has got very slapdash over the last decade.  Too many studies are quantitative and ask people what they want by way of products and services.  Customers often don’t know  and the result is high levels of product failure.

What organizations should be doing is trying to understand what customers want to achieve, and how they themselves measure that achievement.  How many music lovers , for example, would have claimed  in research to have wanted an iPod shuffle facility: but what they do want is to hear music that enhances their mood.  Shuffle has an odd serendipity effect that does just that. 

When given the opportunity to invest in Trunki BBC  Dragons’ Den entrepreneurs turned it down flat - “no call for it” they said.  But the invention (10 years in development) has become one of the best selling luggage products of the summer of 2007; it keeps children entertained and solves their problem of standing amidst a sea of legs in boring airports queues. 

Marketing research should winkle out people’s problems and emotional triggers.  As an extreme example Jack Daniels has used MRI scans to gauge the emotional response of whiskey drinkers to various environmental contexts eg pub, at home.  Insight thus gleaned can be given to your staff, or better still, customer communities, to think about creatively.  Quick quantitative surveys really don’t cut the mustard. 

The  Dublin Writers Museum is an inspiring place, as long as you see past the ‘chip on the shoulder’ regarding the English: it also has a fantastic cafe!   A central theme is the crucial role played by the art of Celtic storytelling in Irish history: building communities, inspiring action, upholding values.   I was reminded of this recently when a friend commented that today’s media would rather cover their front pages with stories of fatuous celebrities, than real stories about the heroic lives of our servicepeople in foreign wars.

But ’twas ever thus, the national media have always been ringmasters of the circus,  whilst families and communities have been the real guardians of the flame - “Let us now praise famous men, AND our fathers that begat us”  chides Ecclesiasticus

A growing number of businesses are now rediscovering the art of  community storytelling, particularly in the small and medium size business sector (SMB),  to  align their organizations culturally with a set of values.    One telecoms company has what it calls ‘the legend approach’ - every month it records and lauds in a book  acts of extra special service to customers.  For example, a staff member who worked all night to get a customer’s network up and running for the next day.  Other staff are encouraged to applaud and celebrate such behaviour - and in so doing maybe be inspired themselves. 

In the end, great books, great deeds, give us a common currency,  but it is the ordinary people around us, with ordinary lives, doing both ordinary and extra-ordinary things who really inspire us - let’s sing their praises.

For those involved in corporate strategy and scenario planning - here is an interesting idea to debate.  Niall Ferguson, Professor of History at Harvard www.niallferguson.org, is of the view that Malthus’ theory of population control due to limits in the food supply (Principle of Population), was not, as we have supposed, wrong.  Far from breaking free of the problem of feeding growing populations,  the countries of the world have been in the upswing of the feast/famine cycle for the last 250 years;  but we are all due to go into a downswing.

The population of the world, he says,  is due to pass the 8bn mark by around 2025, and 9bn by 2050; but the ability of world food production to keep pace is questionable.  Currently food yeilds are 3 tons per hectare, but to feed even 8bn people yeilds will need to be 4 tons per hectare.   Meanwhile,  a number of factors are conspiring to put a ceiling on food production - including low prices and a switch in land use to bio-fuels.   Whilst one swallow does not make a summer, the IMF have recorded a 23% rise in world food prices over the last 18months.  In the UK food inflation was 4.8% in June compared to overal inflation of 2.4%, and the forecast trend is even greater due to the recent bad weather - abnormal factor or long-term trend?  

So the debate to have,  is what effect would this have on consumer demand, corporate social responsibility and world trade?  And what would that mean for your market and organization?  Making poverty history may need a little more effort and innovation than wearing a wrist band.