Thinking Outside the Box

Recently a client asked how his organization could be trained to be more innovative. My first thought was that’s like asking a comedian how to be funnier. “Tell funnier jokes,” he might answer. On second thought, I realized that there are some methods which have helped me arrive at “outside the box” ideas.

Albert Szent-Gyorgi wrote that “discovery is seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.” He reminds us that there’s little new under the sun but that we make it so.

DEFINE THE BOX

The best first step in thinking outside the box is to define the box. Before you can break the boundaries that limit growth you must know what they are.

A number of years ago, new management at Binney & Smith, the makers of Crayola brand products, looked for new ways to grow the business. Competing with giants Hasbro and Mattel and other toy companies was squeezing margins and making it difficult to keep shelf space. In this case, the “box” had become Crayola’s concept of themselves as being in the toy business.

REDEFINE THE BOX

The answer was found by redefining the box. Don’t think of yourself as a toymaker, they were counseled, think of yourself as a company making products that “develop young minds.” Educational and creative products have a higher added value than do “toys.”

Sales and profits increased ten-fold as Crayola focussed on products that fit this new definition and shed sku’s that did not. They became the giant in a new box of their own definition.

DECONSTRUCTION

Another technique that leads to outside the box solutions is deconstruction; taking apart the process by which the consumer and the product connect.

Deconstruction led to a strategy that has helped V8 Vegetable Juice to new growth. For years the brand’s managers knew that people had a high regard for the product but rarely drank it. This led to the long-running advertising campaign “I could’ve had a V8!” which attempted to remind people to to drink it.

Deconstructing the process by which people bought and used the product revealed that most users bought large cans, stored them in the pantry and shifted them to the refrigerator when they wanted to drink it. Partly full cans often sat open for days or weeks before they were emptied.

It is obvious that the refrigerator is visited more often during the day by more family members than is the storage pantry. We reasoned that if people bought the product cold they would store it cold. And if they stored it cold, it would be visible and ready to drink every time someone opened the refrigerator. Campbell’s repacked V8 in beverage style containers and placed it in the chilled cabinet. Now fewer people are regretting having forgotten to drink the product.

RECONSTRUCTION

Reconstruction is another method that can lead to new thinking.

Reconstruction is what detectives often do when they want to understand how a crime was committed. Using clues, information and instinct, they reenact the event.

That is what media planners did when they launched Amtrak’s new Metroliner Express Service in the early 1980’s. Amtrak was outspent 10:1 by airline shuttles who were promoting NY/Washington fares of $49. How, with a budget of less than $5 million, could the business traveller be reached frequently enough to penetrate their awareness and introduce a totally new, more “civilized” way to get to Washington?

By reenacting a day in the life of a business traveller, the media began with morning drive time radio and newspapers. It followed the commuter to the train station with TDI billboards and met him/her at the other end with taxi-tops. At the end of the day, the process was reversed. In effect a “media tunnel” was constructed around the target when he/she would be most receptive to the message. The result was an immediate success, turning the Northeast corridor into the highest revenue-generating service in the system.

W.I.I.F.M.

A fifth technique for prodding the mind to go in unexplored territory is using the principle of “W.I.I.F.M.?” That stands for “what’s in it for me?” Anyone in the chain that connects a product to its customer needs to know “what’s in it for me?” if they help make the sale. Often people in this chain are overlooked.

Coca Cola says their customer is the bottler, because it is he who turns the syrup into a product that is put within “arms length” of drinkers. Great amounts of creativity and money go to maintain relationships with this “invisible” customer.

Ketel One is one of many new vodkas spawned by the success of Absolut. None have succeeded as well as this Dutch import. Key to its strategy was to focus on one person in the chain who could make or break the product--the bartender. Bartenders like to be seen by their customers as “in the know.” Videos and presentations were made to bartenders that gave them “inside information” about Ketel One’s “triple distillation” process that removed impurities that could cause hangovers. This was a point of difference that made bartenders look smart when they recommended the brand to status-seeking vodka drinkers. In many markets, Ketel One is now the fastest growing new vodka.

Define the box and redefine it. Deconstruct and reconstruct the buying, using and selling process. Determine W.I.I.F.M. for everyone in the chain that connects the product and the customer. And look at what everybody has seen but think what nobody has thought.