Design Thinking: A different approach to innovation in business.

I had the opportunity to participate in the Design Thinking seminar at Continuum earlier today. It is a process for working together as a team to develop truly innovative products and services across any industry. For those of you following this line of thinking in the industry, my impressions will be of no surprise.

Wow! I’ve had lots of experience with market planning – the process for developing product roadmaps and new innovations based on market data, but this is all different. Marketing planning relies on the disciplines of business thinking. Design Thinking, while acknowledging business thinking, is much more about being in tune with your target customers and their needs. I love it!

The process is all about the needs of the customer. It also details an exciting and refreshing method for working together in teams to analyze the problems at hand and interpret it so you can understand the larger problem at hand. Your team then works through a series of “what if” scenarios. Then you jump right into experimentation – what will actually solve the problem. Finally, you bring the process to the whole company so you can show them what you have done and gain consensus on the right solution.

It is a healthy process that can bring some truly innovative ideas to any organization. If you haven’t heard of this – read more. There are several books I am finding on the internet that look to have solid information on this. More importantly, try it! I can see a million possibilities for Design Thinking across clients’ businesses and organizations I belong to. Check it out.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Messaging

Marketing messages are literally what separate your business from your competitors.   Having a clear, distinct position, a customer-focused value proposition, and supporting proof-points make up the basic elements of any organization’s messaging.  Most everyone knows this, yet many fail to implement messaging well.  So how do companies fall short in developing their messages? 

There is usually not one answer.  There are many contributing factors that can make or break an organization’s ability to deliver a clear message.  What follows is an introduction to the seven most common mistakes companies make in developing and delivering their message.  Over the coming weeks, I will look at each of these sins in more detail, and ideas for overcoming them.

Sin #1: Target everyone, speak to no one
It is so much easier to just lump everyone together and hope that one of your messages sticks.  But they rarely do.  At least a simple level of targeting is needed to appeal to the distinct audiences you market to.

Sin #2: No customer insight
Organizations of any size or type must use customer data or research to help them shape their messages.  This one sin is responsible for all of the puzzled looks customers have when they don’t see how a company, product or service helps them solve their problem.

Sin #3: Marketing to yourself
Whenever you find conversations about your customers using words like “we” and “I,” then you should take a step back.  Chances are you are convincing yourselves that you have the right answers and avoiding engagement with your customers.

Sin #4: Complexity over clarity
A clear marketing message should catch your customer with a provocative, actionable statement, and then reveal the details of the product or service in layers.  Not all at once.   Complexity creates confusion, and confusion creates hesitancy. 

Sin #5: Here’s the solution, but what’s the problem?
Many organizations like to paint pictures of the perfect world their product or service will create if used.  But customers want to see organizations relate to them – understand their problem.  Customers want solutions to be presented in the context of their problem. 

Sin #6: Differentiate, the same as everyone else
“Only.”  “Award-winning.”  “Unique.”  These words carry little effect anymore.  Customers are skeptical.  Rule of thumb – if you find your differentiator claimed by a competitor, then it is not a differentiator.  It is confusing.

Sin #7: Inconsistent messages
Customers like consistency.  Brands are built on it.  While every company should alter their messages to target specific audiences, that does not change the core message, the core message needs remain intact across your tactics, whether printed, displayed or spoken.

Next time, I’ll talk a bit more about each of these sins and how you can combat them in your organization.

Setting expectations means no surprises.

An ill-timed surprise will hurt your business when a potential customer is making a decision around consideration or preference for a vendor.  In business decisions, no one likes surprises.  Yet, so many businesses deliver surprise messages month after month in product releases, company announcements, and management updates.

The last words you should want your customers to think is, “I didn’t know they were going to do that.”  As a prospect, surprises create hesitation.  From hesitation comes doubt.  As a customer, surprises can feed mistrust, disillusionment, and sometimes anger. 

Whether it is good news or bad, it is far better to set an expectation for what is coming so customers can adjust to the idea.  Then roll out whatever promise you have made.

A simple example is with rental cars: 
Several times I rented cars from Dollar Car Rental.  Each time, I went online, and ordered a mid-sized car with a picture of the Dodge Charger.  Even though I read the caption under the picture saying “or equivalent mid-sized vehicle,” I would still be disappointed when I showed up and they gave me a mid-sized Honda (no offense Honda).  Dollar showed me a Charger, setting my expectation for one.  Then delivered something else.  Needless to say, my trust for the company fell to the point where I bid adieu to them.

Then take Hertz.  Pay a little more, but they promise the car in the picture is the car you get.  They set the expectation, and then I show up to pick up the car and wahla!  I get what I expected.  Who knew this was a “premium” service I had to pay extra for.  All the same, it feels good, so I pay the extra amount.

Granted, this is a very consumer-oriented example, but do you think the emotions are any different when you unexpectedly change a product release date, or change around your management structure, or suddenly release information that affects your customers?  They are one and the same. 

Set an expectation.  Deliver on it.  Then remind contacts that you delivered on time.  Plan your marketing messages ahead of time, and push them out in timely communications with your prospects, customers, partners and employees.  It will add to your credibility by building trust that what you say, you deliver on.  The trick is, you have to reliably deliver on it to earn that trust.

Differentiation is dead.

Every business school, from Harvard, to Sloan, to Hult teaches the same principle – find your unique competitive differentiator and then use it as leverage to grow your business.

Problem is, there are rarely any true differentiators to be found.  In fact, the majority of businesses are based on a plan that most of their competitors could fulfill about as well as they do.

What is a true competitive differentiator? 
It is a technology, service, or feature or that only your company can claim because it is so different from competitors that they can’t touch it. 

Of more than 20 clients I have worked with in the past year, only 2 had true differentiators.  And guess what?  Of those 2, neither could claim it cleanly as their competitors were already claiming similar results (even though it was not true).   

So differentiation for most businesses is dead. 

Instead, take a different tact – find distinction.  One of my early mentors in brand strategy, Doug Crites-Moore, taught me that distinction was a key alternative to differentiation. 

What is distinction?
Distinction is a unique position in your market that no competitor currently claims that is relevant and engaging to your target audience.  In short, it is what gives your company a distinctive voice in the market.

Example:  Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts both sell coffee.  Neither has a true differentiator.  Each tried, but the other would do a “me too” right on top of them and boom, they were matched again.  So each developed a mantra, or position, that gave them distinction:

• Starbucks used “A great coffee experience.”
• Dunkin Donuts used “A great cup of coffee.”

When considering their target markets, each makes sense.  Starbucks is aiming at the experience if sitting in a comfortable space, getting work done, and having a cup of coffee.  Dunkin Donuts is clearly not trying to get you to hang out in their stores, but for those that need a reliably good cup of coffee while they are traveling from point A to point B, there they are.

I believe finding a distinct position is a far greater tool to use in marketing your business.   It leads to clarity about who you are and what you do, and when done well, competitors will have a hard time trying to copy what you’ve done.

-Steve Halling
  Brand Strategist

Getting startedI

I’ll start this blog by breaking all of the rules.  

• I have nothing new to say.
• I will pose no controversial themes or thoughts here.
• This will serve absolutely no value to anyone other than me.

At least I am honest.  

I am not new to either blogging or the business.  What is new is our efforts to market our business, philosophies and experience to a broader range of clients.  If my old friend, William Arruda (noted personal brand expert) were here, he would tell me “it’s about time, Steve!”

My intention with this blog is to tell it as I see it.  While this may not add up to curious, insightful posts all of the time, it will certainly give people in this community a sense of what I stand for.  

-Steve

How do you define yourself?

As I’m working on a marketing plan for a client, it strikes me how these five words can strike fear and doubt into so many executives – “How do you define yourselves?”

It is a painfully simple question, but the answer is so important. 

Many hours can be spent on this question.   In workshops, when I ask this question, the initial answer client’s give is often the most honest.  Someone in the room inevitably blurts out the answer, and I write it down.  Then someone else inevitably adds that the first definition is too limiting, and provides a different definition.  Often a much broader one.

To give an example, I once worked at a very large company where the executive in charge decided how to define our business.  His definition was the equivalent of defining a bakery as a “flour, water and eggs mixed together and baked for 12 minutes” business.  Much easier to say, “We are a bakery.”   His answer created confusion.  Customers wondered what we were talking about.

Why all of the confusion?  Many people, and companies, want to appear to be more than they are.   They get caught up in internal thinking, strategic thinking and politics. 

For lack of a clear definition, companies broaden their definition to a higher level in an attempt to cast a larger net.  As with my example, this only ensures that no one will have any idea what they are speaking about. 

So is this a complex question?  It does need to be.  Customers are looking for a simple answer.  They are tired of trying to sort out what companies actually do versus what their Web site says.  Give them a break – give them the simple answer.  Save the complexities for internal documents.

One obvious question lies in waiting – how do you define yourself, or your business? 
If you are using more than ten words to define yourself, then you should do some editing.  Write back to me and tell me your definition. 

-Steven Halling