Category — Insight Skills

Proctor & Gamble have been experimenting with social media since 2001 when a plummeting share price led them to conclude that they needed market responsive R&D. They set up their ‘connect and develop’ programme, and detailed a group of ‘technology entrepreneurs’ to search out new ideas, and connect with “the majority of the world’s consumers” – a tall order. They then left them to work out how to do it. The result is now a huge bank of workable social techniques that gives P&G competitive advantage and which, as a by product, has reduced R& D costs by over 20%.

It is, perhaps, prophetic that one of the great 20^th century mass consumption, product marketing brands, is now doing the same with 21^st century relationship marketing for mass innovation. For as manufacturing moves to lower cost economies that is where Western competitive advantage lies. Sustainable business is why socialising with customers in the long term is of enormous value. Rather than the one way ticket of ‘go to market’ channels and communication media, we have to create the return on conversational marketing and web 2.0.

Whilst William Blake campaigned to free people’s imaginations from the slavery of command and control authority (see below),  his acolyte Samuel Palmer envisioned the warmth, harmony and intimacy of community.  Like Blake, he was not successful in his lifetime,  again because he did not market his work well,  but his early Shoreham and later art still has the power to reach out to us today.   His early work could well have been the inspiration for Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings; whilst his later paintings are worth studying for what they say about the importance of environment and community values to our well being.

Use examples of his work in innovative brain storming session on improving staff experience.

Art has been a key medium for ‘change’ in past centuries, so art history makes you realize that there is little new in the world.  Whatever we are trying to do,  someone has probably attempted before,  thereby providing a source of learning.  I was reminded of this on a visit to Cambridge  this week to study William Blake and Samuel Palmer - artists of the Romantic era who lived through the last huge economic change, from agricultural to industrial society.

Blake was a social visionary reacting against the deductive rationalism of  Isaac Newton and the Enlightenment.  A way of thinking that reduced everything objectively to it’s smallest part to be analysed,  but which often seemed to miss the bigger picture;  and, more importantly discouraged people from using their imaginations; cutting them off from their emotions.  Not so different then to the way businesses today have reduced everything down to a process and forgotten the need for spontaneity, relationships and experiences.

Blake’s answer was to take familiar stories of the day,  from the Bible,  Dante, and Bunyan  and rework them in ‘art’ to criticise ‘poor practices’ whilst demonstrating good ones.  The irony is that whilst his work was mainly overlooked in his time,  quite possibly because he was a bad networker and did not market well, his ideas to inspire imaginative thinking and individual spirituality are taking centre stage again in 21st century business .

The Tate in London has an art room where you can take a party to look at a small set of requested paintings - the staff are very knowledgeable.  A good way to inspire some creative thinking for your 2008 plans - and just what Blake wanted to achieve.

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.