Developing concepts for your brand or business can be challenging, particularly because a client “lives” the brand every day at work. It only stands to reason that some adherence to company bias is unavoidable. The client is heavily invested in the product or service, and it becomes extremely difficult to maintain clear neutrality.
To help alleviate this bias, consider having an outsider help immerse your client team for better ideation. Although a variety of approaches can be used, here are three sure-fire ways that an outsider can help you develop a fresher, more creative perspective on your business or brand.
1. Casual Client Led Interviews – I often ask a client to conduct some informal interviews with friends, family, or colleagues who do not work in the business. It does not matter whether the client follows all the appropriate guidelines for asking unbiased or leading questions. My goal is to ensure that he/she is hearing, from a neutral source, something potentially new about the product or service to prime the pump prior to the session.
2. Product/Service Experience – The nature of the client’s business will determine whether “real-time” experience with the product/service must happen before or during the session. What often happens with clients is that they might not even use the product or service they sell. As such, they need to reacquaint themselves with the product or service with what I call “a new set of radar.” Often as part of an ideation session, I’ll ask the client to use his or her product. This same experience can be duplicated for a service business. You can have the client call his or her own service or a competitor’s customer service line and evaluate the experience. Or you ask a client to mystery shop several competitors’ stores for a particular product or service or be a mystery diner for a restaurant.
3. Watch In-Context Product Usage Videos – Often clients have lost touch with what their consumers are really doing with their product or service. Occasionally a refresher on what is happening is appropriate. This is particularly helpful when a product may be used in a variety of applications or across different countries. If the marketing engine for a product is based in one particular region, like the US or Europe, it may be staggering to realize that assumptions that are true for one region may not be true for all.
So the next time you are facing that daunting task of developing new concept ideas, you should consider client immersion to more effectively leverage the knowledge and intellect of your team. At the end of the day, if you are armed with better information, know more about your consumer’s experience, and have added a healthy dose of reality to the marketing approach, everyone is in a better place, and you are geared up for innovation!
