Innovation

“It’s not the things we look at, but the way we look at things”

The question is, how can we promote innovation on a regular basis and harness it throughout our professional lives for ourselves, or the collective benefit of our companies and our customers?

When we look at great innovations; The invention of the electric light by Edison, the development of the television by John Logie Baird or more recently the Macintosh by Steve Jobs. We could easily deduce that innovation is the result of hard work and the intuitive mind of one man (or woman). There are many examples of great innovations that originate from one individual, to quote Thomas Edison himself; “Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety percent perspiration”:

Betty Nesmith for example, who in 1951 had the idea to put some white tempera into her nail varnish and use the brush to correct typing errors. Of course, we now know this invention to be Tippex.

Earl Tupper made food storage containers. But when he met Brownie Wise the synergy of the two minds came together. Brownie proposed, that Earl should sell the containers at ‘parties’ and as we all know, party selling made Tupperware into a household name.

Innovation itself is of course by no means new, the word ‘innovate’, can be traced back to 1440, where it comes from the Middle French word “innovacyon” meaning “renewal” or a new way of doing things. However, one of the classic problems with innovation is that, like the booster stage of a rocket, innovation often burns brightly for a short time, before tailing off and dying away. We can observe this phenomenon when we look at great innovators, often we see that there is a peak of their creative genius. Had Mozart or Buddy Holly or Jimi Hendrix lived longer would they have continued to be so innovative? In later life, some say the late Elvis was never quite the mover & shaker he was in his youth. The brilliant football career of George Best, also eventually was to burn out like a shooting star!

With these examples in mind, we may wonder, if creativity declines with experience? In fact it’s said that an individuals peak can come at any time in their life, and may even be reached twice, for example; Darwin wrote the origins of the species at the age of 50. Maurice Ravel composed his ‘Bolero’ at the age of 53, and Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States in 1981 at the age of 69 after previously being a successful actor, more reciently, Arnold Schwarzenegger has managed to master three careers in one lifetime, body builder, film star and now politician.

W. Somerset Maugham had this to say on the subject....“Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than the young”.

Clearly, when we can manage innovation, and innovate collectively, extra benefits occur, and the law of synergy kicks in (1+1 = 3). So it makes sense that we all need to exploit the power of the collective mind and to learn how to make better use of innovation and synergy, if we are going to continually innovate throughout our careers.

One way of creating more opportunities for innovation in the design process, is to be less formal in the way design companies and marketeers work together. In the past clients created strategy & designers designed – I believe that in today’s world things really have to be more flexible, after all, as Betty Nesmith showed, a good idea can come from anyone. Therefore, it becomes important for all participants in the process to understand the mechanics of creativity and innovation. To do this, it may be useful to examine how the process was defined in one of the earliest, and I believe still most valid, models, attributed to Graham Wallas in 1926, when he proposed a four-stage process:

Preparation (definition of issue, observation & study)

Incubation (laying the issue aside for a time)

Illumination (the moment when a new idea finally emerges)

Verification (checking it out)

Wallas’s model suggests that creative thinking starts with purposeful preparation and ends with analytical verification, suggesting that creative and analytical thinking are complementary. The implied theory behind this model also suggests that creative thinking is a subconscious process and cannot be wholly directed by the conscious mind. Freud also reasoned, in his original “The levels of consciousness theory*”, that our brains function on different levels. The conscious level, which is the receptor of information, the unconscious level, on the face of it dormant, but packed with information, and in between the preconscious level, which draws on both of the other levels. It’s this level that provides a major source for our insights and inspirations.

Understanding this, we might apply Sigmund Freud’s theory to the 4 generally accepted steps in Wallas’s creative process; 1 Preparation 2 Incubation 3 Illumination and 4 Verification, and propose how the creative process could pass through different levels of the conscious mind.

1 Preparation = Conscious level (Intellectual area), Where we take in the details of the problem to be solved and define the objectives for success.

2 Incubation = Low down in the preconscious level (Emotional / logic/ reasoning area), Where we give our brain time access it’s storage area, data bank and expose the problem to other influences around us.

3 Illumination or Inspiration = Higher up in the preconscious level (Emotional area), Where we give our right brain full access to our stored information and allow it to experiment and innovate without inhibitions.

4 Verification = Once again in the conscious level, where we check and analyse our innovations and measure them against the information and objectives we established in phase one.

Many of us have to innovate on a daily basis as part of our profession, therefore, knowing that the ability to innovate is enhanced when the full power of the brain is accessed (rather than just the conscious level), means we can create methodologies to maximise our ability to innovate.

Whether you are striving for individual or collective creativity, it is necessary to be aware that creativity is made more difficult in a hectic and stressful environment and that deliberately building a period of reflection and introspection into your thought processes (gained here in the incubation period), can be essential. For it’s only by employing all the different stages of the process that we give our brain the space to exercise the whole of our consciousness allowing us to promote pure innovative thought.

Rowland Heming©

* Search : “Freud's The levels of consciousness theory” for various papers

2010, for me it marks 40 years of being at the sharp end of branding and package design, working with many marketing teams in large and small companies and at all levels both nationally and internationally, so now seems a good moment to look back and to take stock of what has become of our industry. Well, guess what, I’m not as impressed as I thought I would be! In-fact, I’m amazed at just how much mediocrity I now see around me when I visit stores and supermarkets.

You see, I remember a time when marketeers and studios were bold and creative, when there were people in companies making decisions, without being terrorised at the thought of consumer reaction. These were people who brought new ideas to the market, by taking risks and creating new and dynamic branding and packaging, brands and package designs like Tide, Nivea, Coca-Cola, Martini, OXO, Budweiser… are just a few of the many we still talk about today that were created by these great pioneering folks.

So how come everything looks so much the same today? What ever happened to all that enthusiasm and talent that we all started out with? Where are all the marketing big ideas and the design creativity that we all talk about in all the marketing and creative blogs, books, articles and social networks? It seems to me that today, the great branding cases that we do all talk about represent only a small fraction of what’s out there, we can probably even find most of these great examples grouped on one or two packaging websites: But what has happened to all the rest?

I think it’s time for us all to stop listening to what we say, and start looking at “what we actually do!”

Come-on be honest now, you know I’m right, I’m sure most of you young marketers and packaging designers reading this can agree that your best ideas usually end up on the cutting room floor, deleted in the studio process for being too far-out or rejected on the client side, by worried marketing managers who want to “play it safe”, and “please the consumer at all cost”. This indecision can be seen in the way many marketeers today engage a design studio by “hedging their bets” and asking two, three or even four or more of them to compete for the simplest of jobs, and in consequence, indecision can also be seen in the way studios have a tendency to “play it safe”, so as to be sure to be in with a chance of winning! – It’s a loose-loose situation for the brand!

For instance, I bought some dog food the other day, here was a real example of ‘playing it safe’ it was absolutely crammed packed with tables and text, I’m sure it covered every angle and whim of the dog owner’s thirst for knowledge, but clearly, there was no way that I (or I suspect many other dog owner’s), were ever going to read all that stuff. I’m sure if I really cared, I could find all that on the website in any case, so why is it all on the pack! A pack is supposed to do the job of attracting and convincing its target audience in a few seconds, its not supposed to be a book!

Look around you, it seems to be a common occurrence once a profession becomes ‘mature’, we take our eye off the ball and mediocrity creeps up on us everywhere. Take the cinema for instance, we have to wait for independents to come up with a “Notting Hill” or a “Train Spotters” not the big studios, likewise in music, it has always been the wild youth who create our new music at grass roots level, not the mainstream record producers of the big labels. Why? Because it seems the smaller independents are prepared to believe in what they are doing and are prepared to take risks and as a result they change the paradigm.

As we move into the second decennial I think it’s time all of us in the branding community take note of all that is happening around us and learn from this original ‘independent’ style of thinking. If we do, I’m sure we can use this opportunity to take the lead, bring back the spark of creativity and breath new life into our brands and into our profession.

There are those that will tell you, that there is nothing new, that it’s all been done before, but don’t listen to them – this is only to choose the path to mediocrity. Because the good news is that this is definitely not true, there is always a new way to look at things, new un-discovered territories to explore. But, and here’s a real note of caution, once we are enlightened, once we have that ‘eureka’ idea, if we want it to see the light of day, we all need to be brave enough to stand behind it, ‘go with it’ and take a risk.

There’s an old saying that says ‘a good Idea is like a frog, you can dissect the thing, but it dies in the process’, so the last thing we need to do is to over analyse and test every idea until we reach the common denominator and the group thinking of “current consumer behaviour”, ‘category norms’ etc… that then convinces us that we are doing the right thing, when in fact, we are often just reducing the big Idea to a small idea (or even no idea).

2010 has arrived and now we are all looking for signs of hope as we leave the disastrous 09’s behind. But our hopes will only be realised if we become capable of looking at our brands and packaging with a new perspective, of course common sense says we need to be cautious and careful with our brands and respect the relationship they have with consumers, but if we can become bolder in our actions and believe in what we are doing, we will succeed in bringing ‘real’ innovation to the market that will inspire our people and our customers and most of all, ourselves. So, lets not let 2010 be just another ‘graveyard of good ideas’, we have a real chance to make 2010 different, I’m convinced we can make this happen by all working together to bring our brands to life!

© Rowland Heming

Now is the time to believe in your brand

Recession always increases the market share of the retailers, and as supermarkets and hypermarkets become more established, the battleground for brands has become more intense. Supermarkets have had years of practice and understand how to exploit their shopping environment to the full, by using strategic price positioning coupled with brand portfolio management and refined design techniques like bold graphics, design structure, ‘colour blocking’ and effective versioning etc. to achieve the maximum stand out and effect on shelf.

If brands are to survive in this environment they will need to play in the same league (after all they sit right next to supermarket packs on the shelf), brands will have to learn to embrace a more holistic approach to package design by understanding the role that effective packaging has in creating a bond with consumers.

Packaging is the face of a product, it says who you are, what you offer, it positions a brand and informs consumers of the benefits a product offers. In the long life of a brand, the relationship between the brand’s packaging and its consumers creates a bond of trust that can transcend generations. But at the same time we need to be aware that consumer’s lives evolve and a brand packaging must reflect this evolution in it’s own evolution too. To stand still is to go backwards, as everyone else is moving forwards.

This is why as we move into 2010, I believe that packaging design must demand a much higher priority within brand companies and why in order to survive in the competitive world of the supermarket, brand companies need to be aware of the value of packaging to both the company, the brand itself and it’s consumers. This in-turn means allocating a higher level of management resources that can understand the importance of package design and drive and support the process internally at a very high level.

Just as senior management need to be involved in the process, key to success is also about accepting to work with professional design experts who understand how brands can navigate within the modern sales environment and who can bring expertise from both sides of the fence, international experience coupled with local knowledge. Experts who can help elevate a local brand’s packaging to the same level as their competition and reassure consumers that their brand is keeping up with their own evolving lifestyle

The future of brands, lies in the hands of the brand owners, now more than ever, is the time to reassure consumers with highly professional packaging. Clearly, the winners will be those who invest in their brands and their brand packaging in 2010 and the losers will be those who don’t.

Rowland Heming©

Brands - What went wrong?

Have you ever wondered how retailers are able to produce such great packaging and why is it that some major brands seem unable to ?

After all, major brand companies employ the top design companies, the same design companies who are also designing for the retailers. So why is it that for some, their packaging is less innovative than retail packaging? Are the design companies working in a different way for the major brand companies, or could it be that there’s something wrong with the way major brand companies are working with design companies ?

The truth is that over the past decade, brands have seen themselves as being under threat from retailers. Retailers have been able to get their products to market, cheaper, quicker and, let’s face it, with much a more adventurous creative approach. Whilst brand manufacturers have been stuck in the mire of efficiency, cost cutting and rationalisation programs. Some have shown a reluctance to invest in full scale design projects and have shown a lack of investment in 3D development. In an attempt to reduce the cost of the design process, there has even been a move to shift artwork out of the design studios into the repro-house, with the result that many times the final design is interpreted without reference to the marketing objectives or the values so carefully built by the design studio.

It seems that some manufactures have been concentrating so hard on looking for their efficiencies, that they have missed the point, that, “the consumer has moved on”, and now is looking for innovation, humour, sensitivity and product values rather than just, the still important, but sometimes bland brand values.

A good example of innovation and humour from Marmite

Whilst all this has been going on, retailers have taken a far more enlightened approach, stepping back and letting the creatives do what they are good at. They have also been listening to their consumers and letting them have their say and as a result, retailers have benefited from the development of new approaches to creating package design.

Far from the early ‘white products’, packaging which lacked emotion, were price orientated, superficial and usually with a poor visual communication, or the copycatting which went on shamelessly in the subsequent period. Today, retail packaging has come of age and is enhancing the richness and quality of product values. These values have also, in turn, been transposed by consumers to their perception of the whole store.

To achieve this, retailers have given their designers more creative freedom and the designers have responded by developing packaging that gives far more importance to emotion, and clear visual and verbal descriptions of the product, rather than as in the past, just focussing all the communication on the brand name. By using emotion in this way designers have been able to demand the consumers participation and, as a result, provided them with a reward. This has made retail packaging distinctive and memorable, communicating a mood and a feeling which the consumer has interpreted as a benefit.

The results are now history, retail brands are now recognised by the consumer as a creative, viable and acceptable alternatives to the major brands, retailers have grown rich on the benefits of this new participative, rather than dictatorial, approach. The design work created for them has also been recognised for it’s creativity and innovation, picking up just about all the major design awards going over the past 20 years.

So why is it that some brands are not benefiting from this same kind of creative service from their studios?

We all know that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Likewise creativity in packaging can be stifled by too many layers of management and decision making. Many brand manufacturers, who are serious about wanting to remain the consumers preference and viable in this new Century, have changed their working methodology, others need to re-think their packaging strategy:

- These Manufacturers need to exhibit more innovative and creative leadership when handling design projects, getting closer to their designers and their consumers.
- They need to recognise Package Design as a viable investment, not just viewing it as an necessary expense.
- They need to give creative freedom back to the designers, good ideas need to be recognised and immediately tested with consumers, not analysed in the board room and dissected until they die. Or fiddled with until it becomes yet another a camel.
- Their Marketing Managers need to dare to be different, they must be willing to challenge and become committed to real brand transformations that will be recognised and appreciated by consumers.

Consumers associate package design as part of the product they buy. Package Design therefore must be seen by manufactures as a viable investment in the brands future. This means that decision making for packaging should be elevated to the highest levels of the manufacturers company, creating direct lines of communication between company leaders and the creatives. Design projects should be properly funded, under resourcing a design project may save on today’s project costs but may end up costing the brand dearly in future lost sales.

It’s only by elevating the importance of packaging and allowing direct communication between the manufacturer, the designers and the consumer that brand packaging can hope to compete with the already well established, and fast growing, retail brand environment. It’s time to re-assess the values we put on the image we project to consumers through our packaging, to learn some lessons from the success of retail packaging and to re-evaluate the importance of the overall role of packaging as the brand and product communicator.

Rowland Heming ©

Title image courtesy of Freaks & Geeks: http://www.myspace.com/freaksandgeekstheparty

Shopping: A risky business?

More than 74% of consumer purchases in supermarkets are made on impulse. At any one moment during the shopping experience, consumers may be surrounded numerous brands all screaming for attention. Consumers respond to this situation by developing techniques that allow them to navigate all the risks involved in shopping.

In the search for information consumers use their conscious minds to gather information from outside sources and influences and their sub-conscious minds to process information already stored in the memory.

Whereas, the information gained from outside sources, is manipulated by marketing, publicity and design, the information already stored in the consumers sub conscious mind is made up from three different influences:

Social influences, like reference groups, opinion leaders or family and friends.
Individual influences like Gender, age, personality etc…
Psychological influences like perception, motivation, knowledge, beliefs and attitudes.

So by the time consumers enter the supermarket their heads are spinning with needs, attitudes, emotions and beliefs that have either been discerned for themselves or have been cleverly introduced by those good people in marketing and advertising. On top of all this, consumers are also further influenced by two other major motivations;

Rational motivations:
Convenience, comfort, dependability, time savings, economy or health advantages etc..

Emotional Motivations
Prestige, social approval, recognition, power, curiosity, romance etc…

So how is it that some brands consistently win the battle for attention whilst others remain un-noticed? What is it that some brand owners know that others don’t? How can they possibly find a way through all these influences and inherent confusion in the consumer’s mind, and how is it that they can influence shoppers to choose between one brand and another?

This is where understanding the risk factor comes in.
When a product/brand is well known, the purchase decision making is less critical, it involves less risk and therefore it is easier. However, when a product or brand is new or presents a new concept, the risk involved in the purchase decision becomes higher. The end result is that consumers feel an immediate need for more information delivery, and if this is unfulfilled, they may even switch to another brand that offers more familiarity.

During the shopping experience consumers tend to respond to this risk, in general by creating ‘brand portfolios’, choosing brands they know, or have experienced in their lives (family, friends and other experiences). Here consumers create a familiar territory for themselves and eliminate the risk factor, making decision making, and therefore the shopping experience, easier.

As consumers progress through the supermarket they look for familiar visual clues that help them to find what they are looking for, these are expressed in category codes, types of presentation, packaging similarities and product colours etc.

This is why, when considering the reason for purchase in a supermarket environment, ‘effective packaging’ is a critical factor in the success of any brand. It is also why designers need to be aware of all the rational and emotional motivations that may be influencing purchase decision making. Packaging needs to take into account the level of risk that is being proposed to consumers and address information delivery accordingly.

Designers and marketers both need to question, ‘how much risk consumers have to face?’ and determine the criteria for minimising the risk factors that will influence purchase. To do this, designers need to understand the different levels of risk present in any purchase, which govern the difficulty of decision making, for example:

Routine decision-making occurs when a product or brand has a low risk factor for consumers, because it may be familiar or there is not a high financial risk involved. Here, there is less of an emotional involvement and therefore less need for in depth decision making.

Medium decision-making occurs where a product or brand is unfamiliar or is something that is not purchased on a regular basis. These purchases demand some limited investigation and therefore more emotional involvement, resulting in an augmented risk.

In depth decision-making is reserved for major purchases that pose a very high financial or emotional risk. Typically these will be rare purchases and/or will influence life-style, new brands too may fall into this category. Here, the need for information is at a premium.

Each of these states require a different level of information delivery and visual stimuli in order to help consumers understand the product, its attributes and benefits.

So, shopping remains a risky business for both the consumer and the brand, with so many brands trying to sell their products and with so many promises and offers to understand, it’s no wonder we find consumers cocooning themselves from attack. Clearly however, it’s the brands that understand the purchase decision-making process that are more likely to win the battle.

What can brand owners learn from this?

1 Existing brands have intrinsic values that are recognised by consumers - a brand may belong as much to the consumer as to the company who owns it. These values are encapsulated in all the familiar visual clues present in your current package and product. To help minimise the risk factor for consumers there is a need to understand these visual stimuli and to protect them from erosion.

2 Brands have a privileged position in their consumer’s portfolio, this position needs to be respected so that consumers are always reassured. Changes, when necessary, should be introduced in a way that the risk factor is not augmented. Information concerning changes needs to be clear and understandable.

3 Brands need to be aware of the shopping experience, of all the visual clutter that surrounds the consumer. They need to discern how to help the consumer find and understand the product, the packaging and the product offer in a few seconds.

4 Communication needs to be simplified to the ‘core proposition’ (why should I buy this – what’s in it for me?). This should be presented in a reassuring, clear and un-cluttered way.

5 Brands should do all they can to eliminate any perception of risk in the purchase process.


Rowland Heming ©

Title image courtesy of: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net