#01 LOOK DOWN
Is there an opportunity for your company to access the market at the bottom of the population vs earnings pyramid? How can you develop new products and services for developing markets? Think end-to-end. This may involve business model, supply chain or manufacturing innovation as well as new product development.
#02 RULES? WHAT RULES?
What are the 'rules' for your category? Challenge yourself (or your team) to think about how you can break or bend them (selectively) to create a product or service that stands out from the crowd.
#03 ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?
Even unique products have the potential to be replicated, and brands are realising that a key area to differentiate and innovate is around service and customer experience. What are the 'pain points' for your customers that you could turn around to surprise and delight them? How should your brand manifest itself in a retail or service environment?
#04 TAKING BABY STEPS
Innovative products and services often require consumers to learn new behaviours, or modify existing ones, and often this can be
a barrier to adoption. By focusing on making the whole consumer experience intuitive and simple, this barrier becomes much lower as consumers are happier to make the small and easy change to use your product or service. What are the barriers to behaviour change in your category, and how can you create simple, intuitive user experiences to overcome them? Think of new ways to overcome them — then simplify, simplify, simplify.
#05 HELLO HALO, GOODBYE GUILT
More and more consumers talk about wanting to do the 'right thing', be it healthy eating or caring for the planet. They may be happy to pay a little more for a product or service that helps them do this, but they don't want to compromise on the benefits it delivers, be that delicious high-quality food or the perfect clean. What are the things your consumers feel they should be doing, and what are the barriers stopping them actually doing them? And how can you remove these barriers with your products?
#06 GET INTREPID
Guiding inspiration and discovery is an important role that brands can play in consumers' lives, and new products and brands in particular can do this very successfully. What does 'discovery' look like for your consumers or for your category? How could you incorporate it into your product or service offering?
#07 LOVE ME FOREVER?
The nature of ownership is changing — no longer is it a choice between traditional 'forever' ownership or by-the-day rental. Now consumers are defining the terms that make sense for their lifestyle and needs, and savvy innovators are tapping into this change, creating products and services that fit neatly into consumers' lives (see above). Do consumers need to own your products 'forever'? What could short-term or shared ownership look like in your category?
#08 PEOPLE POWER
Getting consumers involved in new product development instantly engages them with the brand and creates word-of-mouth buzz. It also gives you direct insight into what they want from your products, their associations with your brand and of course their ideas. How could you get consumers involved in your innovation process? Is it about developing a single new product or some more permanent changes to your innovation and consumer engagement model?
#09 NOT THE MARTINI PRINCIPLE!
Too many brands and products try to be all things to all people, for all occasions, creating a lack of clear consumer understanding about what the purpose of the product is. Think of Martini's 'Any time, any place, anywhere' strapline. By targeting a specific occasion instead, and owning it convincingly, products and brands can develop a really strong identity and role in the minds of consumers.
#10 BELIEVE IN YOURSELF
Consumers aspire to own premium brands and products, but for most of us, the hefty price tags ensure they remain firmly out of reach. However, recent years have seen the growth of a more 'accessible premium' — bringing higher-quality products, with aspirational branding, to mass market consumers. What does premium look like for your brand or category? How could you bring it to the masses and still maintain its cachet?
Daniella Betts is an innovation specialist at brand consultants The Value Engineers. For more information, visit thevalueengineers.com
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