Rewriting the innovation playbook

Blog Roderik Sorbi – Senior Client Consultant

There is often talked about the categories and domains brands want to find themselves in. But how can brands connect to activations and innovations in a strategic way? These innovations must be looked at from both the connection between the proposition and a category entry point people have, as well as how strong the domain is where the brand is already positioned. These are 2 strong perspectives that should be taken into account. But these strategic studies are often very factional and incredibly boring for a respondent. They don’t have enough strength to inspire marketers to activation and innovation.

A number’s game

These U&A studies leave us with a ton of data. Therefore, it almost seems to be a numbers game. And in only few cases they lead to sources of inspiration for marketers. Whilst it should be the time to make strategic choices in favour of the brand, which help build the brand strategically from CEP’s, but should offer inspiration for innovation and activation at the same time. It’s this triangle, the combination of inspiration, the strategic perspective from the brand and identification of the white spots, that aren’t sufficiently organised. The road to activation and innovation should be organised differently.

The triangle

DVJ looks at U&A studies from a fundamentally different perspective. U&A is all about conducting a study where data is as pure as possible. You want to ask people about the last occasion where they’ve bought your brand or product. By using storytelling, we ask people to provide us with these fresh memories. Leaving us with three major advantages:

• Because we ask respondents to write down several memories themselves, we notice them holding on to that occasion much better when completing the rest of the questionnaire, which results in much better quality of data.
• Because we use single source storytelling, we can always look back at the type of occasion and what people’s situations were and the scores and evaluations they provided.
• We get access to hundreds of stories that bring the moment to life and can serve as an inspiration for marketers.

Next to that, we also ask for the salience of the brands per occasion, so you can identify the mental shares and mental penetration of those brands much better. This way, brands can prioritise CEP’s. The study allows brands to excel in this triangle and marketers to accelerate in the innovation process.

Hotel rooms

An example of this is when I presented a workshop. Marketers of the brand came over to the main quarters in the Netherlands from several different countries in Europe. Beforehand, we had placed the storybooks in their hotel rooms, accompanied by a letter from the innovation manager and me to welcome and enthuse them for the workshop. The letter including a request if they could read a couple of the stories from their own countries as preparation. Later in the workshop we would look back to what the most interesting strategic CEPs and platforms were for their brand. We noticed the employees being a lot more active during the workshop and already having found some inspiration after reading the stories.

Rewriting the innovation playbook

With these types of studies, it’s not just about delivering the report, it’s about actionability. Unfortunately, we still see bulky reports that are difficult to fathom. Which isn’t conducive to the attention span of marketers. By implementing the CEP in combination with the stories we gather, we can provide a lot of direction and more inspiration to marketers. So, we can begin rewriting the road to innovation and activation sooner.