A terrific article by Mark Kingdon in ClickZ, called "What's Your Analysis to Emotion Ratio?"
Kingdon argues that you need to get out in front of the mirror and interact deeply with your potential customers to really go beyond conventional thinking in development of new products or new advertising.
Many tools analyze customers, but do we really understand them? From what I see, in most cases we don't. We observe customers from a distance, through two-way mirrors or in black-and-white PowerPoint presentations. Where's the empathy? Where's the emotion?
Kingdon shares a great idea to generate out-of-the-box thinking about customers: buy abandoned suitcases from the airport, and try to build a profile of the person who owned it. Where were they going, what were they doing, what do they care about, etc.
Here are his top tips for innovative customer-focused thinking, with a few notations from yours truly:
Stop
So many of my corporate clients are in a frenzied rush -- if it weren't for the jam-packed off-site meetings, they'd have no thinking space at all
Reorient your research process so your analysis-to-emotion ratio isn't
50:1. It can be tough to get inspiration from tables of numbers. If you really want to get into motivation -- which is the only thing that really counts -- one good observation is worth an inch of Cerlox.
Challenge your beliefs
It's almost a given that today's conventional wisdom will be tomorrow's ancient history. Remember when no-one thought grandmothers would use e-mail? When no one would pay $4.00 for a coffee or $5.00 for a toothbrush? The competitor who will be out in front of you will have challenged the conventional wisdom you couldn't get past. So suspend your judgement -- ask yourself why you believe something is true. Ask what could change this truth to a falsehood?
Be open to inspiration
At any time as we move through the day, we can be a participant, or we can ask ourselves, "what am I seeing?" Just being a mindful observer of events around you can yield surprising results.
Among my other favorite activities: pick up magazines you never read; go into stores you never go into; talk to people riding public transit; talk to other customers in the check-out line; watch a television show you would never watch; go through the direct mail and try to figure out what the research findings were about; listen to a call-in radio show; read the letters to the editor; read some blogs that you would never read.
And if you're nervous about looking weird in front of your boss, you can always hire someone to take the hit for the flaky stuff. (Hey, it's all part of the service, okay?)
But like the ad says, "Get out there"
