Last week I highlighted the importance of creating the right team dynamic at the beginning of any innovation exercise. This week I want to talk about creativity - the ability to think freely and ambitiously throughout the process. At no time is this more important than when you come to tell the market about your wonderful new product.
When our three teams of leaders came to the finale of the weekend, they had to pitch their business ideas to a panel of experts in homage to the successful global TV series ‘Dragon’s Den’. All three products were commercially sound. They each identified a target audience and addressed a fundamental need. They had strong functional features. They were worthy.
However, only one team presented what we used to call an advertising campaign to dramatise what their new product would do and how people would benefit. It contained a big idea that made you consider the problem in a different light. It used colour to attract our attention, and humour to connect with us as peers. It made us smile. The product itself was less well-built than its competitors, but the idea very nearly won the competition. Two weeks later, it’s still the only one I can remember.
Sadly, companies continue to innovate worthy, much-needed solutions but present them to the market in turgid ways that don’t create enough ‘stand out’. For example, the banking sector (the most poorly differentiated industry on the planet) is hamstrung by its inability to do anything but copy competitors.
In the Bible, the Lord did not tell Noah to go out and find customers for his Ark. Instead, he advised: “Build it, and they will come.” But in commerce, that’s a risky strategy.
In Africa, the failure of businesses to dramatise their offerings has had dire consequences. By all available measures, only 9 of the top 100 brands supported by African people are indigenous. They are mainly corporations: telcos; manufacturing groups; a retail chain. There’s also an airline and an online marketplace. But not one pan-African consumer brand that people would take into their homes and hearts. After 70 years of marketing heritage, African businesses still have to capture the consumer’s imagination.
Chris Harrison leads The Brand Inside
www.thebrandinsideafrica.com
