Voices: the CMB Blog

You might not know it from the constant attention lavished on startups, but some of the most established and largest companies in the world are amongst the most innovative—they routinely out-innovate their smaller peers. Where they falter is in failing to bring these game-changers to the marketplace without diluting, complicating, or killing them.If you have doubts about what I just said, here are two of my favorite examples that illustrate the issue really well.

Ever wonder why despite inventing the concept of cellular phones and having a virtual monopoly on telephones, AT&T had to acquire McCaw Cellular Communications in 1993-94 for $11.5 billion? OR better, despite coming up with filmless photography in 1976 which dominates the world today (think of cellphone cameras, selfies, instagrams, Snapchat, Google Maps) Kodak today is a bankrupt company (the hyperlink is a great read by the way).

It’s not the lack of ideas that hurts large organizations the most. It’s not even the lack of awareness of implementation hurdles. It’s the inability to forge consensus, a constant focus on responding to immediate pressures and meeting short-term goals (both organizational goals and employee goals) and lack of sufficient communication across autonomous business units that play spoilsport. You could describe it as a lack of push to the “Strategic Intent”; a phrase popularized by the late C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel in 1989 (strategic intent is an ambitious and compelling dream that energizes, providing the emotional and intellectual energy for the journey to the future. It has 3 components: Direction, Discovery and Destiny). I call it a lack of push and not a lack of intent because these organizations have these 3 D's, at least on paper.

Being a strategy groupie, I've spent a lot of my time specifically focused on innovation (both because the sheer volume of content that's been published on the topic recently, and the nature of my current assignments), I’ve decided to put down some of my thoughts on paper starting with a short list of questions (by no means exhaustive) that will help people think holistically about innovation and avoid some of the pitfalls:

• Does your organization have innovation goals? What percentage of your organization’s revenue comes from breakthrough innovation, what percentage comes from incremental innovation and what percentage from existing products? How is success measured?

• How do we define problems the market faces? (Note that I consciously use the word” market” and not customer)

• How are target customers defined?

• How is the innovation execution process handled?

Innovation is hard. It takes a lot of effort and patience and failure can be costly and even catastrophic, but the upside can be rewarding beyond expectations. In the coming weeks, I will attempt to expand on each of these questions with examples and my views on why it has or has not worked for specific large companies.

Abe is a Senior Project Manager, strategy junkie, and CrossFit enthusiast. He's recently taken up snowboarding so watch out if you're headed to the slopes.

Last week’s Chief Strategy Officer Summit in NYC (#CSONY) was an electric example of brand strategy in action. If you didn’t get a chance to attend this year I highly recommend making the trip in 2014. In the meantime, I want to share some of the big questions we marketers and strategists need to ask ourselves and our organizations this coming year...and beyond:

• Are you continuously focusing and refreshing your brand?  If your customer can’t rattle off what your brand is about, chances are your messaging isn’t streamlined enough. Jennifer Dorian, Chief Strategy Officer for Turner Entertainment Networks, passionately described the big decisions they make as they 1) keep their brand properties crystal clear and 2) continue to evolve their brands. Dorian argues that brands need an “essence;” some of Turner’s brand essences: TNT=Drama, TBS=Funny, TCM=Classic Movies. TNT, anchored by Law & Order, embodies drama with programming that focuses on the line between good and evil, passion, and the willingness to take a risk—they’re the stories that make life interesting. TNT is continuously developing original compelling programming that makes drama come alive for viewers (their new show Mob City is a great example). The outcome of their efforts, to focus and clarify their brands? 25 consecutive periods of growth. What are you doing to keep your brand focused and fresh?

• Which target audiences will you “double down” on? OK, you’re a successful brand with a devout following and yet you know you need to make calculated big bets to claim your unique positioning. South Street Strategy’s Mark Carr was on hand to talk about thinking deeply about your target audience, and your brand’s playbook for actively engaging them. South Street Strategy and CMB, helped the Tauck travel company go from business decisions to successful new product launch with a focused innovation approach. Hypotheses abounded for how to grow and refresh the nine decade old company—intergenerational travel, kid focused, teen trips? CMB and South Street partnered with Tauck to explore people’s life goals for relaxation and for travel. The tram then used a quantitative approach to prioritize areas with greatest appeal. They unearthed the “engaged traveler”—those interested in cultural immersion, moderately active, and seeking adventure. Based on this, Tauck launched and optimized the Culturious brand, a highly successful set of tours geared to active Baby Boomers. You can learn more about our approach here.

• Are you engaged deeply and passionately enough? Let’s be honest with ourselves, that 30 year old degree from a pedigreed school is looking pretty stale. Digital natives (yup, kids) are supplementing their education with experiences and experiments that are really immersive, both in and out of school. Tanya Van Court, Discovery Communications’ SVP of Partner Marketing, spoke about how the number one non-fiction media company in the world’s Discovery Education brand is re-purposing its content for the classroom.  Discovery is inspiring curiosity and critical thinking with exceptional content delivered in classroom length snippets. When I was a kid we took a bus to the next town to visit the library and scour microfiche for an article from the decade before. Now, these digital natives are actually interacting with materials from the bottom of the ocean to the furthest reaches of our galaxy, all before breakfast, and often just for fun. They interact with content differently, they expect access to current and relevant info and they crave personalized experiences. As Discovery Education disrupts the business of textbooks, watch out world, these digital natives are going to be out in the workforce soon and they combine a lot of passion and outrageous curiosity. Is it time to examine your company and your personal brand through their lens?

• Is your brand under Caesar’s control or is it spawning fleets of scientists?  Intuit’s Bennett Blank shared his view that “designing for delight” is everyone’s job.  We all need to have deep customer empathy to uncover unsolved customer problems and to think flexibly so we can build durable competitive advantage for our companies. Intuit’s goal is to improve their customers’ financial lives so profoundly that customers can’t imagine going back to the old way they did things. Of course, the makers of TurboTax, Quicken and Mint.com know a lot about making exceptional products and continuously innovating.  Blank contrasts two types of leaders—the” Caesar” and the “Scientist.”  The Caesar’s goal is to win (and not to lose), and to be right. The scientist however, bases her ideas on evidence, has a “do it now” style, and a willingness to be enlightened through trial and error, experimentation, and data. Scientists get results that can be characterized as “discoveries,” while the Caesar sits around worrying that he might get stabbed.  Intuit is frequently and rapidly experimenting so it can deliver “more better ideas” into the earlier part of the innovation funnel that can actually delight the customer. 

• What’s “long-term” mean for your brand? Quite possibly the conference planners most intriguing decision (or lucky collision?) was pairing Rebecca Keiser, Strategy Administrator for NASA, with Gary Liu, Global Ad/Product Strategy for Spotify. Gary talked about how Spotify’s strategy needs to expand to address the “further future,” and when he talks about the further future for Spotify he’s talking about 6 months away.  NASA, on the other hand, is thinking about the year 2030. Spotify uses word like “throwing together” and NASA word choice like “forging.” It was a great reminder to think about what long-term means for your brand and the decisions you need to make.

So, what questions will you ask yourself, your team, and your organization, as you look to 2014 and beyond?

Julie is an Account Executive at CMB, she's definitely a "Scientist" not a "Caesar;" you can follow her on Twitter @Julie1research.

It is human nature to love a good story, and it’s no wonder that for centuries storytelling has been a powerful force for human learning, change and advancement. As business strategists, we use stories in a variety of ways in both strategy development and implementation.In strategy development, we often learn from case studies—stories of relevant successes and failures as well as analogs from other industries—to help inform our thinking on problems we are helping our clients solve.

In strategy implementation, we use stories as a catalyst for organizational buy-in and change. The most effective business leaders we work with are expert at communicating a vision with clarity and passion and guiding organizations to implement strategies using stories, ongoing dialogues and narratives. They don’t simply make edicts or repeat the same message over and over. They use their influence and credibility to communicate intentions, future direction and strategies, and invite everyone to participate, interact, and become part of the continuing story. 

Good stories are memorable and engaging and completely believable. They connect us and help us understand and relate to others, whether those others are involved in telling the story or simply listening to it. When leaders want to rally teams and employees to implement new initiatives, they need to be authentic and communicate with conviction and energy in order to gain trust and commitment. By carefully crafting and honing messages and stories that they share and adapt over time, leaders become more effective at connecting and teaching,  guiding and motivating others through implementation successes, challenges and setbacks.

If you are interested in this topic and related research, below are some of my own favorites, from people I’ve worked with or learned from recently:

• Guide Innovation Through Storytelling  Rob Salafia and David Sollars aptly call themselves story archeologists. Their process really is about digging underneath the outer layer of the what’s and why’s behind change, to help business leaders uncover their own narratives that will motivate and engage larger audiences. South Street recently worked with Rob and Dave in facilitating a large innovation workshop at a top 5 U.S. health care insurance client.

• Strategy Made Simple - The 3 Core Strategy Questions  John Hagel insightfully points out in this blog post that “the ultimate form of differentiation is a compelling narrative—a unique and unfolding opportunity for the audience that invites their participation to help shape the outcome.” This and some of his other entries discuss modern strategy and the role of an ongoing narrative that’s focused on external audiences, not the executive suite.

• Conversational Intelligence, by Judith E. Glaser. This book is a great place to explore the cultural transformations that companies must go through in order to embrace change. Big hint here: it all leads back to how company leadership approaches change and the narrative around it.

What role do stories play in your willingness to get on board with change? Can you identify one strategic issue where storytelling can support your goal?

Jennifer is a Director at  South Street Strategy Group. She recently received the 2013 “Member of the Year” award by the Association for Strategic Planning (ASP), the preeminent professional association for those engaged in strategic thinking, planning and action.

Originally posted on the South Street Strategy Group Blog

Kristin Vincent, VP, Product at Marvel Entertainment, has been helping the 70-year old company re-define itself in the digital age. Not knowing much about comics when she joined the company in 2011, she quickly gained credibility and influence with her fresh perspective, insights and actions related to the company’s “Re-Evolution” digital strategy, which officially launched in March 2012.At a recent conference, she shared the principles Marvel has used to evolve its comics business so that fans continue to love their experience with comics, while traditional print and new digital formats and channels co-exist and thrive at the same time:

1. Proclaim your intentions – Declare what you want to do and communicate this publicly. This not only creates anticipation and excitement, but it builds internal commitment and accountability.

2. Develop new products with connections to existing products – This approach helps to minimize cannibalization, reassures existing customers and channel partners, and adds excitement to established products. Marvel gave everyone who bought a print comic a free digital version, and created an augmented reality application to be used with the print version to get additional behind-the-scenes information.

3. Challenge the most basic assumptions you have about your products – For Marvel, this meant re-thinking what a comic is, beyond traditional attributes such as paper booklets, panels, and pages, to seeing it as serialized graphic storytelling with excellent graphics, opening up new “Infinite” comic possibilities that rethink what a comic page means

4. Partner with users – Marvel used listening labs and usability testing to understand how fans experience comics. It brought fans in and used flip video cameras to record them in real world scenarios using comics and computers to understand pain points. Marvel also got fans to register to become Marvel Advisors to test products and provide input to their development pre-launch. Kristin says that as soon as the executive team watched a one-hour video highlighting all of the user issues and opportunities, it made a huge difference in helping to change the culture and continuing the effort to innovate

5. Develop a roadmap that starts small and builds – Marvel started with one comic in a plastic polybag with a code inside for the digital download. Now users get a free digital download with all $3.99 comics in print

6. Balance user requests with bold new ideas – Marvel re-launched Marvel Unlimited (a subscription program that gives users unlimited access to over 13,000 digital comics) but also sourced and introduced “Project Gamma,” an innovative new adaptive audio technology. It will be a cool new way to experience digital comics where the sound will change as you move through the story.

7. Fail fast and pivot – Marvel had to take a promotion down on the first day when demand for free downloads was so great that the third-party servers it was using crashed and fans couldn’t buy digital versions for two days. They corrected course and used this failure as an opportunity to show customers they cared by being honest and transparent.

8. Re-evolve –Marvel enhanced its print products with digital, and is using new formats.

In 2012, the innovations helped Marvel achieve triple digit growth in its digital business while keeping its core B2B brick-and-mortar store channel partners happy. The digital and print products complement each other, satisfying existing fans while opening up a whole new fan and user base.

Jennifer is a Director at  South Street Strategy Group. She recently received the 2013 “Member of the Year” award by the Association for Strategic Planning (ASP), the preeminent professional association for those engaged in strategic thinking, planning and action.

South Street Strategy Group, an independent sister company of Chadwick Martin Bailey, integrates the best of strategy consulting and marketing science to develop better growth and value delivery strategies. Read South Street's Strategy Group's blog here.

More and more companies are focusing on trying to better understand and improve their customers’ experiences. Some want to become more customer-centric. Some see this as an effective path to competitive differentiation. While others, challenging traditional assumptions (e.g., Experience Co-creation, originated by my former boss, Francis Gouillart, and his colleagues Prof. Venkat Ramaswamy and the late C.K. Prahalad), are applying new strategic thinking about value creation. Decision-makers in these firms are starting to recognize that every single interaction and experience a customer has with the company (and its ecosystem partners) may either build or destroy customer value and loyalty over time.

While companies traditionally measure customer value based on revenues, share of wallet, cost to serve, retention, NPS, profitability, lifetime value etc., we now have more and better tools for deconstructing the customer experience and understanding the components driving customer and company interaction value at the activity/experience level. To really understand the value drivers in the customer experience, firms need to simultaneously look holistically, go deep in a few key focus areas, and use a multi-method approach.

Here’s an arsenal of tools and methods that are great to have in your toolkit for building customer experience insight:

Qualitative tools

• Journey mapping methods and tools

• In-the-moment, customer activity-based tools

  • Voice capture exercises (either using mobile phones or landlines) where customers can call in and answer a set of questions related to whatever they are doing in the moment.

  • Use mobile devices and online platforms to upload visuals, audio and/or video to answer questions, (e.g., as you are filling out your enrollment paperwork, take a moment to take a quick—less than 10 second video, to share your thoughts on what you are experiencing).

• Customer diaries

  • E.g., use mobile devices as a visual diary or to complete a number of activities

• Observation tools

  • Live or virtual tools (e.g., watch/videotape in-person or online experiences, either live or after the fact)

  • On-site customer visits: companies I’ve worked with often like to join customers doing activities in their own environments and situational contexts. Beyond basic observation, company employees can dialogue with customers during the activities/experiences to gain immediate feedback and richer understanding.

• Interviews and qualitative surveys

• Online discussion boards

• Online or in-person focus groups

Quantitative tools

• Quantitative surveys/research tools (too many to list in a blog post)

• Internal tracking tools

  • Online tools for tracking behavior metrics (e.g., landing pages/clicks/page views/time on pages, etc.) for key interactions/experience stages. This enables ongoing data-mining, research and analysis.

  • Service/support data analysis (e.g., analyze call center data on inbound calls and online support queries for interaction types, stages, periods, etc. to look for FAQs, problems, etc.).

What tools are you using to better understand and improve the customer experience? What tools are in your toolkit?  Are you taking advantage of all the new tools available?

Jennifer is a Director at  South Street Strategy Group. She recently received the 2013 “Member of the Year” award by the Association for Strategic Planning (ASP), the preeminent professional association for those engaged in strategic thinking, planning and action.