Outwit, outlast and outplay

Editor’s note: Martha E. Guidry is president of The Rite Concept, an Avon, Conn., concept development and research firm.

Launching new products or services is often a key strategy behind building market share and meeting profitability goals. Marketers continually feel pressure to develop winning line extensions and new offerings in an environment where survival of the fittest can be a reality. Over time, it becomes increasingly challenging to maintain a significant edge vs. the competition to maintain retail space, cachet and even a place in the consumer’s mind. Thus, the need to develop high-quality, winning concepts for these new products or services is paramount.

According to Procter & Gamble, a concept is simply “a promise a product [or service] makes to resolve an unmet consumer need, the reason why it will satisfy the need, and a description or portrayal of any key elements that will affect the perception.” While the definition sounds relatively simple, creating a winning concept can be more challenging than first imagined.

The hit CBS reality TV show Survivor - with its “Outwit. Outlast. Outplay.” tagline - offers a useful context in which to study the concept development process. To survive in the world of new product and service initiatives, a savvy marketer must outwit, outlast and outplay the competition to ensure new concepts are created to succeed in the market. Hopefully, this simple framework with key watch-outs will allow you to be a smarter concept developer in your next effort.

Although I’ve referred to the audience for the concept as a “consumer,” I use this in its broadest possible sense, to be representative of any product end user - a doctor, a doctor’s patient, a business buyer of a B2B product, or the typical “head of household” consumer. At the end of the day, all these potential audiences are consumers, and the same principles of concept development generally apply.

Strategy #1: Outwit

Here, outwit is defined as being able to deceive or defeat with great ingenuity. Any concept must connect in two critical areas with the consumer in order to fit into that consumer’s life in a meaningful way:

The concept must be driven by unmet consumer needs . A solid concept development process cannot occur without a complete understanding of the important consumer frustrations and desires and how they are important, consumer beliefs about these frustrations and desires, and whether or not consumers believe that any available products or services can meet these needs. Even if the consumer need creates a new category, such as portable music when Sony created the Walkman, which later became the premise for downloading music to an MP3 player, it needs to make sense and in some way provide a useful benefit.

Several factors often cause the creation of concepts that are too internally-focused. First, the R&D people in the organization may develop a product or service or find a technology that they see as irresistibly exciting, and they “find” (or create) a consumer to whom they can sell it. Typically, this becomes the “tail wagging the dog” syndrome, where marketers scramble to create a compelling way to convince the consumer that the product really offers them a relevant benefit, in spite of what they may know about the consumers’ needs. Second, time pressure may prevent the concept development team from thoroughly reviewing previous consumer research, or the amount of research is so daunting and overwhelming that they don’t give it the attention it deserves. And third, many organizations don’t want to spend the time and/or money to do the research to fill in their knowledge gaps or to gain the foundational knowledge they need prior to developing the concepts.

The concept needs an emotional connection . Understanding and leveraging the emotional hook provides a context that allows the product or service to fit meaningfully into the consumer’s life. Often the overt focus on the features and benefits creates a relatively flat concept in the consumer’s mind. In addition, this sometimes simplistic approach may become vulnerable to competitive pressure, due to the ease with which these areas can be duplicated by the competition. If a brand can own some emotional space, it taps into the consumer’s value structure and tends to tap into their wallet as well.

During development, qualitative research is critical to identifying the array of potential emotions that could be leveraged. Exercises such as a collage, laddering, analogy, visualization and personification completed during the research session can help generate the necessary consumer imagery and feelings.

Strategy #2: Outlast

Outlast is defined here as the ability to endure longer so as to overcome a challenge or opponent. This relates to understanding what you stand for in the consumer’s mind and being able to own that space for the long haul vis-à-vis the competitive context.

The concept must fit with the current brand equity . In the classic animated movie The Lion King, Mufasa tells his son Simba to “Remember who you are.” This axiom is not only true in the Disney universe, it is an essential directive for any business that wishes to develop concepts to reinforce an existing brand’s equity. Unfortunately, product development efforts often go astray when the team gets excited about the possibilities and the potential of a newfangled idea that actually may not fit with the consumer’s expectations of the brand. The internal momentum behind the idea puts blinders on the developers, leading to concepts that do not fit with the brand promise, resulting in a failed launch.

It is critical to collect information about consumer perceptions of the brand before development begins. The process of understanding the brand’s strengths and weaknesses, its current image, what makes it different and what the brand actually can (or can’t) own in the marketplace can’t be shortchanged. Armed with this knowledge, the development team can screen out duds and develop ideas that truly leverage the brand’s market position.

The concept must consider the competitive environment . For a product or service to take advantage of its competitors’ vulnerabilities, the marketer must have a clear understanding of its competitive set. Without this up-to-date understanding, a company may find that its positioning is not sitting in marketplace “white space” and consumers will not consider the product or service to be a unique offering in the category. Unfortunately, time pressure to “get something to market” often causes the development team to rush, or even skip, this important step.

Whether through primary or secondary research, the smart marketer will take the time to become thoroughly familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of its competitors’ offerings, as well as identifying potential substitutes for its potential product or service. Also, remember that the marketplace can significantly change over time. Don’t expect that information gathered three or four years ago will give you an accurate competitive analysis that is useful for today’s concept development efforts.

Strategy #3: Outplay

Simply put, you have to play better. The three areas below relate to getting the concept foundation right so the consumer understands the central idea easily and effortlessly. Basically, all potential areas of confusion must be eliminated to maximize communication.

The concept must be well-written . Although clients often are bursting with ideas they want to test, crisply communicating those ideas into well-articulated positioning concepts is often very difficult. Although many marketing and R&D professionals believe that they have strong concept-writing skills, they seldom have spent sufficient time with consumers to communicate in the consumers’ natural language, and they have little to no training in the art of concept writing. The net result is that many organizations are generally devoid of real concept-writing skills.

A trained concept writer can help your team by identifying common problems, from an unclear benefit or an insight/accepted consumer belief that isn’t relevant to the hero benefit to a concept that is missing a key structural component. Regarding the objective eye, a skilled concept writer may also hear the obvious concept flaws - poorly-worded concepts, a lack of consumer-friendly language or not enough of the right information to make the sale.

The concept must be single-minded . Beware of the old “kitchen sink” concept. In an effort to hit too many consumer touchpoints or to appeal to a large number of consumer segments, client teams sometimes will generate a concept that is laden with a multitude of choices for the buyer, where there is “something for everyone,” including: multiple insights, many different product or service benefits or several different reasons to believe a single benefit is true.

This kitchen-sink concept is pushed through the process, culminating in a very expensive quantitative test, where, because there is something for everyone, purchase intent meets the success criteria. So far, so good. But the team is in for a rude awakening when they try to translate this multiheaded monster concept into a successful copy strategy.

To be optimally successful, consumer copy must be single-minded and kitchen-sink concepts just don’t fit the bill. Ultimately, the ad agency must decide what single aspect of the concept will be communicated, only to find that the stand-alone idea lacked the appeal to generate sufficient volume for the product or service to succeed.

The words and images in the concept must match. Neither practitioners nor academicians can agree on whether a concept should be presented in a simple, white-board format or in a more embellished format, with pictures and language that more closely resemble a print ad. However, most can agree that the “wrong” picture can do more harm to a concept than good.

Too often, the concept and its associated visual evolve on different timing, so when the “final” concept is pulled together a mismatch occurs. This is particularly true when a written concept is properly developed qualitatively and a picture is slapped onto the concept prior to a quantitative test (only reviewed by management, not consumers). When consumers look at a picture and it doesn’t match the expectation created in the text, they generally become reflexive concept rejectors, slamming the final concept on believability, purchase intent or product/concept fit.

It is imperative to qualitatively check how consumers perceive the fit of the picture with the written concept. This simple check can avoid making a costly misstep in an expensive quantitative test of the concept.

Make the difference

Although concept development is both an art and a science, developing and utilizing strong concept-writing and marketing skills can make the difference in creating successful expressions of your ideas. You can save time, money and effort when your team is able to craft ideas that outwit, outlast and outplay the competition. The result: winning concepts that your consumers will love!