You’re definitely going to see this as a key theme to what I hope to explore here – that in the quest to get ahead, most companies and brands find themselves mired in cultures and processes that actually can only truly accomplish keeping up. And keeping up is what they can do when the engine is firing on all cylinders.
As part of their quest to keep up, most companies and brands spend significant resources on ‘keeping their finger on the pulse’ of their consumer. This is usually done with only the best of intentions, and with a goal of responsiveness. But responsiveness is taxing and time-consuming. What trends do you watch? Which consumers do you track? How do you know what’s important to respond to and what is not? It’s classic Stephen J. Covey stuff – what is important, and what is urgent?
For many brands this results in what I think of as chasing consumers, following them around. A lot of fads in strategy, planning, research and brand management are reinterpretations of ‘responsiveness.’ The strongest brands – and we all know who they are – live and breathe the worlds their best, most influential, most discerning customers experience, they interpret the signs and signifiers of that world, and they think deeply about how that leads their product development and how it leads the consumer to the brand or product.
In other words, they anticipate problems and solve them; they anticipate changes and adapt to them; they, simply, make good things and treat people with respect.
My friend and former colleague Susan Coghill (now of The Campaign Palace in Sydney) noted this WARC article about Coca-Cola’s quest to get ahead of the curve and to ‘shape change.’
“It’s not about following the change as quickly as possible – that’s being reactive. It is about helping your company to shape change.”
In order to achieve this goal, consumer insights specialists will need to radically rethink their traditional techniques, which typically emphasise understanding previous or present behaviour.
“We spend 80% of time on ‘rear-view’ research – brand-health tracking, validation, and risk-avoidance research,” Sthanunathan stated.
“On top of that, we spend 80% of our remaining time debating report cards. And, whether it’s good data or not, it’s all about explaining the past.”
“No company has become great by using the past to predict the future. Companies become great by dreaming of the future and then taking the company there.”
Definitely worth a read-through – but more importantly, worth a meaningful debate about what it will mean, day-to-day for brands and companies. Time to get beyond whether to do things differently and start figuring out how. And then of course, you have to commit to it. But that’s a post for another day.