Cool milk on the go.

The milk bottles above is a simple example of identifying a new area of usage and target group behaviour with a repackaging as a result – without reinventing the wheel. Other ways and examples are:

The important thing about innovation planning is to improve customer value rather than persuasion. Positive side-effects include full accountability (results on sales rather than ad effectiveness) and inherent PR value if done correctly. 

Change the inside.

Any agency planner who has worked with big companies know one thing: they are built for efficiency, not for dynamic change. This means the biggest obstacle for innovative thinking in marketing and communications are created by themselves. Paradoxically, it has never been more important for a company to differentiate itself. 

The problem is not about what to do, because coming up with clever brand strategies isn't that difficult – most advertising agencies can perform this. What’s really hard in the marketing world is getting it done, because for every brilliant idea there are a hundred executional bottlenecks – usually manifested by rigid internal structures and processes of companies. 

What’s needed: radical marketing thinking plus organisational change without compromising operational efficiency. Hardcore consultancies like McKinsey do some of the stuff already, but I believe they lack the creative edge that’s necessary for marketing innovation. This is where brand consultancies could play a very useful role and create true value. Turning companies up-side-down will indeed require some muscle, but in my world, it's the only real task for the brand consultancy that wants to achieve real change and not only talk about it in a nice PowerPoint.

Here are some slides (in Swedish) from a seminar that my psychologist friend Samuel Hugosson held a couple of weeks ago. The brief was simple: How can we improve the conditions under which creative work takes place?

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The slideshow does of course not tell the whole story, but there are some interesting bits in there. If you’re interested in hearing more about creativity at the workplace, let me know!

Information is supposed to be open-source, and that includes all those boxes, pyramids and arrows we use in every day work. That’s why I’ve created Open Planning Ware, a place where you’ll find branding and communication models I’ve been using or come across. There are only a few models uploaded so far, but this is a long-term project so it will take a while to grow the collection. So keep visiting.

OpenPlanningWare @Flickr

For agencies that don’t have a Planner, here’s a toolkit consisting of four power questions that I reckon will provide strategic direction to any project. If you’re able to answer the questions and your client is satisfied with your work, congrats – you just completed Planning 101!

The Swedish Standards Institute, has formed a group of brand consultants, academics plus legal and accounting specialists to join an international project on developing common guidelines for brand valuation.

The goal is to create common guidelines that are open and comparable valuation processes and results. These will make it easier for companies and stakeholders to measure and understand the underlying factors of brand value.

As I think this in principle is a good idea and also interested in what the implications for the ad industry and my own work is, I’ve done a little backgrounder on the subject of brand valuation. In what types of business issues is it relevant to value brands? What are the different approaches to valuing brands? How is it done in practice? What are the current problems facing brand valuation as a concept?

I’ve visualised the approaches, applications, processes and challenges of brand valuation in an issue tree above. This will hopefully give you better overview of the topic.

Download issue tree as PDF

Links
Pressrelease from Swedish Standards Institute
Associate professor Micael Dahlén explains

I’ve just finished reading The McKinsey Way, an insider’s perspective on how McKinsey & Co, the world’s most respected management consulting firm, manage their engagements (what we call accounts). I’m not going to review the book (you can find that elsewhere) more than saying it’s rather useful for those handling large advertising accounts and brand consulting projects.

One of the core concepts of the firm, according to the author Ethan M. Rasiel as well as many former McKinsites is MECE. MECE (pronounced ‘mee-cee’) means Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive and is the core of everything that’s communicated between employees and to clients – in presentations, emails, phone calls, dialogues, etc.

Collectively exhaustive means “no stone unturned”. In other words, nothing is forgotten or overlooked. Mutually exclusive means that there are no overlaps in the messages, arguments or recommendations that are given.

Here’s an example in branding that’s MECE:

“The new brand strategy of company X will entail a new brand positioning, brand architecture and a new advertising campaign.”

Nice and simple. Positioning, architecture and advertising are part of a problem-solving strategy, yet they are separate phenomena in terms of objective and projects.

An example of non-MECE:

“The new advertising campaign will create loyalty and increase sales”

This argument is clearly not mutually exclusive, because loyalty is related to sales to current customers. It’s not collectively exhausive either, because sales can include sales to new customers. Hence, awareness etc has not been mentioned.

I think the concept of MECE is very useful in our line of work, because it requires us to think more specific and broader about the problems that we want to solve, and it makes communication clearer and therefore more efficient.