Mastery or Originality? Do both.

In the book The Opposable Mind, Winning through Integrative Thinking by Roger Martin. There is a section on Mastery which is counting on one's skill and experience to attain a certain level of competence to complete a certain task. And Originality which is about creativity and creative thinking. Both can be nurtured through the grinds of failing forward and experimentation. The more we try, the more we fail and also succeed.

Martin argued that the way to go is to have both Mastery and Originality combined in order to create breakthroughs solutions. What a revelation! Let’s apply this on branding.

Brand managers are always faced with the constant need to seek new ways to position their products to continuously maintain relevance to consumers and stand out from the crowd. These managers probably have the qualifications and experience to do so. Commissioning rigorous market research and sifting through these data and charts to make the most informed decision. If anything goes wrong, there is the research report to fall back on. It’s safe.

On the other hand, branding may dive straight to Originality. Creativity that stems mostly from  intuition.  Such creative elements are then mostly left to the creative folks.

Notice the problem? Products fail to take off because of either extreme inclinations.

What results is a polarisation of either overly rationalisation or abstract. Are we able to combine the two? I sure hope so. A new breed of MBA courses that include design thinking modules are already in place. Hopefully to produce design thinkers who are capable of tapping into analystics and creative thinking at the same time. 

What about you and me? Time to start?

Please leave your comments, if any.

Market Research versus Brand Research

Many of my clients are confused over the two, and when to use these services. There are numerous Market Research firms out there that offer market research services that guide and inform clients to make the best decisions. Most of the time, solutions are not provided; recommendations, at most.

Brand Research is more specialised and focused – mainly, qualitative measures to achieve the desired depth, and it is the understanding of how tribes (or potential ones) perceive brands. The Brand Strategist will then use these insights to craft brand-positioning strategies. In this case, the Brand Strategist comes out with a solution for the client. Action-ability is the essence of brand research; it is engineered for a solution.

Be it a Brand Book or even a Design Brief to architect a new brand experience, the brand researcher needs to have an exploratory mindset when designing the research study; and later on for formulating recommendations. As such, a brand researcher needs to engage his exploratory and integrative mindset more than a typical market researcher who analyzes and reports findings. If we argue about who provides more value, it really depends on what a client is really after: to inform or to invent?

Please leave your comments, if any. Thank you Enrico for your editorial inputs. Much appreciated.

Apply Design Thinking to Branding

Design thinking and branding are two different yet related concepts. Both are ways to solve consumers’ needs and wants. Their synthesis could result in an impactful way of how we look at branding and achieve brand differentiation. Branding is a way to tell customers about products and services; what brands stand for and why do they matter to customers. It is ultimately about creating and managing perceived value.

Design thinking (IDEO) is an approach that involves exploring diversion thinking (think multiple ‘what ifs’), prototyping and storytelling before arriving at the solution. There are actually much more than this and I only extract the essentials for this post. Design thinking is a highly collaborative and possibilities-first way of solving problems. It is about bringing ideas and experiences to life through story telling. This approach is on the way to enhance business processes, health care and even social problems. I am a fan of design thinking and branding. So why not combine the two. I believe this synthesis will elevate innovative thinking in brands. Try Change by Design by Tim Brown on design thinking approach to find out more.


Here is my attempt to combine the two. 


One the star qualities of design thinking, is the visualisation of ideas or prototyping to bring out the essence of solutions proposed. For example, if IDEO needs to design a new surgical tool (Pic B), this is how a quick prototype (Pic A) can be assembled to get a feel about the shape and form factor. Primitive yet it tells a powerful story. Hold it and you know what this idea is about. Further discussions formed around this prototype are a lot more impactful.

Pic A: Prototyping the tool

 Pic B: Final product

Lets apply design thinking to branding. For example, a mock up corner of a new Food Republic theme, complete with empty stores but with applying authentic thematic design elements. All these to test out the new brand experience. The idea is to simulate and test the brand experience through immersion and participatory thinking. Clients can also take part in this exercise and go through their ‘consumer’s experience’ together with designers and brand strategists. Ideas are added and/or refined along the way in this prototyping environment. The end result is a brand experience that is closer to reality and what the customers will go through.

Design thinking has essentially allowed branding to be lot more experiential driven, exploring innovative solutions that could not be thought about on paper or on computer screens. Critically, experiences are assessed, discussed and gauged at the pre-launch brand design stage. 

Market research has taken a stab at such new product development (NPD) work through conducting surveys and focus groups. The missing ingredient I discovered has always been the lack of brand/idea immersion or letting the ideas play a role in consumer lives. Hence, the insights gathered tend to lack depth. A brilliant idea may lack the legroom to fully reach its full potential and risk getting buried rather quickly before it can see any light.

Additionally, diversion mindset (‘what ifs’ come first) from design thinking is also another powerful tool to elevate brand differentiation in the current fiercely competitive landscape. We want our brands to be Purple Cows. 

“A Purple Cow, though, that would really stand out. The essence of the Purple Cow -- the reason it would shine among a crowd of perfectly competent, even undeniably excellent cows -- is that it would be remarkable . Something remarkable is worth talking about, worth paying attention to.” –Seth Godin  

Purple Cows are remarkable and worth talking about. Design thinking can help you achieve that.

Please leave your comments, if any. 

Power of observation

Observation can be an extremely useful skill. Seeing is different from observing; they are distinct. Observation goes beyond just merely using our eyes to make sense of things, people or the environment. Observatory eyes question and probe consumer actions. Hence, people may see same things but draw different conclusions depending on which technique you use. 

Good news is we can all be trained to become keen observers. Keen observers usually have the upper hand of situations. Imagine yourself deciphering more of any given situation instead of simply glazing through them. You would have thought about questions and answers ahead of others. The mind is already in forward thinking mode with an advantage.

In market research, its everyday musing to know what is going on in the market place and most importantly, how consumers behave and why. It’s an intriguing, interesting world out there that constantly changes. For some, it is a livelihood. Anthropologists have been observing people’s behaviour for years. Making notes and hypothesis on human behaviour, they are the observation experts. This profession has even spun off ethnography research which is applied in market research where focused observation entails a large part of it.

How about if we apply this to marketing?

Ivory Tower Marketers

Ivory Tower marketers plan, strategize and hold meetings. They spend a lot of their time in office doing this very often. Too often in fact. I call this Ivory Tower marketing; up there and losing touch with their customers. Dedication of their time knowing and understanding consumers by walking the ground is absolutely crucial. If one loses touch with consumer needs, no amount of marketing budget will work. If so they decide to engage a market research firm to survey it, splendid. However, we know such requests seem frivolous for today's lean marketing budgets. The most effective choice will be to just simply apply observation techniques on their customers.

Let’s do a simple seeing vs observation experiment taken from IDEO social innovation toolkit. I highly recommend this to aspiring social innovators doing R&D. Social innovation is talk of the town today. Hope it stays this way with initiatives like SIP. 

What are your observations of this person dressed in yellow and pink?

Seeing: This lady dressed in yellow top and pink pants is hanging her clothes at her back alley. A person is walking towards her.  
 
Observing: This person (gender unsure, could be a guy with long hair?) is holding up a pole in the air, very close to some clothes on hangers. This person is dressed in yellow vest and pink pants, standing in an alley and someone is approaching her. 

Some of you might be quick to point out that she is just hanging her clothes. Her upright pole is a tool to help her achieve that. Try looking at the picture again. Can we really make that conclusion? Our associative minds will be quick to note this down; Upright pole + clothes at back alley = clothes hanging. 

For all we know, she could be using this pole to poke something, signal to someone and a hundred different other possibilities. We can’t simply conclude she is hanging clothes. Did we observe the end of the pole? Again, observatory eyes are ready with questions and probes without quick conclusions.

My point is that observation takes more effort but its worth it. We need to question ourselves and the subject to make better sense of situations. Best way is to expand the frame of this picture or simply ask this person. 

Try turning your vision around by observing instead of just seeing. Your world around you may be alot more interesting that you think and that is where opportunities are. For example, I observed alot of Singapore MRT commuters do not like the in-betwen carriage space, here is my account.

Please leave your comments, if any.

How Asian technology brands stay ahead.

Speed to market. Yes, that is their strategy to roll out products faster than their competitors. Their speed to quickly churn out many products at a rate that is unmatched by other European or American brands. Their strategy involves gaining market share by rapidly flooding products with new models every 6 to 8 months.

How is this speed-to-market affecting market research? Definitely. The traditional design research which involves understanding user needs, creating new concepts and rolling them out has been shortened significantly to meet market needs and capture market share (top priority now). Being the number one market leader by sales figure speaks the loudest.

Many designers are rolling out concepts quickly and hoping that one of the many models will wow the consumers. Not your typical European brand product life cycle. Are consumer needs measured? Probably but I suspect not really in-depth. You would probably agree some smart phones look really alike to each other. Speed to market is killing innovation. Do we really need a crystal keypad from LG? My take is that Asian brands are not aiming for a big leap in innovation but a series of refinement till they get it right. I hope not at the expense of consumer needs and wants.