In this section we will explore different scenarios and actions that can be taken to change the gaming rules in your category and your product.
We will do it by working on three dimensions:
- Service Experience
- Medium
- Perception
Starbucks Way (Service Experience)
Time: 20 min
Howard Shultz, founder of Starbucks, transformed a bad experience like waiting for your coffee into a pleasant experience (it depends on how much you are in a hurry).
In this exercise map your customer journey and try to identify critical aspects of this path.
- Which are less pleasant moments?
- How can you change them in a pleasant and positive way?
- Can they feel special or rewarded after using your product?
It is very important to take the proper time to focus on the whole customer journey.
Inspired by Dior (Medium)
Time: 15 min
John Galliano was the controversial creative director of the maison Christian Dior.
Before an important fashion show he always created high expectations leveraging evocative invitations.
The goal of this exercise is to craft a different set of actions to build meaningful expectations in potential clients before they experience the brand.
- What are the actual consumer expectations?
- How can they interact with the brand before the purchase or experiencing the product? Just to give you an example Dior created a temporary pop-up in a prestigious hotel in Beverly Hills.
Another example is Netflix. In Italy for the second season launch of a very successful series (This World Can’t Tear Me Down) they created a temporary museum in Rome.
All these activities create an initial set of emotions and expectations for the brand and its product.
- What can you learn from that?
- What can you improve based on the previous questions and relative answers?
Galileo: time for a new perspective (Perception)
Time: 15min
Galileo with the invention of the telescope transformed how we see things providing a new perspective to the world, but most importantly he introduced a method, the scientific method.
He weeded out the old complacencies and changed forever the paradigms of innovation.
In this exercise you will investigate your category complacencies.
Why?
You need to be aware of obsolete features or practices, and start bringing fresh air to the company.
Discuss and write down:
- Which are the dominant consumer complacencies in your sector?
- Can it be changed by features or new products?
- How should your communication pinch or change these complacencies?
- What are three key bullet points which summarise the industry status quo? Is your “unconscious” customer aware of them?
Phase 4: Tactical to-do and not-to-do list
Time: Undefined
In the previous exercises we built a view of our competitive environment, of what the brand should be and potential actions to take.
In the last phase of the marketing off-site you will draft a summary and an action plan.
- Write on your post-it all the brand goals
- Cut all of them until you define the two most important ones, in this pruning process explain the reasons behind your cut in terms of relevance.
- What marketing activities are needed to achieve these two goals, from vision to tactics. Write on the post-it all the possible marketing activities you have in mind.
- Sacrifice, focus only on the two most important ones and overcommit on them. If you focus only on them how successful would the brand be?
To Do and Not To Do (Scenario Planning)
Time: 20 min
You identified where to allocate your energy. Now try to build an unfavourable scenario.
How to do that?
As exercise, write down three reasons why your marketing activities will fail.
After that, think about how to avoid these issues and write them down as a counteroffensive.
As a framework try to answer to this planning questions:
- How will you react?
- Which people would be responsible for that?
- How to train your people properly for this scenario?
Planning not only the to-do list, but also the not-to-do list is also incredibly useful in life.
When you have time watch this Ted Talk on fear setting from Tim Ferris.
I found it truly inspiring.
PR
Time: 60 min
How would you communicate the external word about yourself and your point of view of the world?
This will be part of the marketing off-site, defining the communication pillars and strategy.
In this section you have two exercises to do, the first one related to what to communicate and the second one on how you should leverage trends and news to create meaningful content for your audience.
Communication is fundamental to build and refresh memories in the consumer mind, it will connect your brand with their needs in the decision moment.
Communication Strategy
With your group write down the plan for communicating with your target audience.
You need a draft where it’s clear:
- Who you are talking to – The Audience
- Why you are talking to them – The Purpose
- Which medium you will use and how to adapt the communication (tone/length etc) based on the medium – The Channel
The ultimate goal for your communication strategy is to reach your target, and for your brand to be easy to recall in the buying process.
Content Creation
Buy 2-3 newspapers and some magazines (take some generalistic and some specific for your industry) and share with the group.
Then ask them to quickly read the highlights and based on that try to create some content for your channels.
How are these contents aligned to your brand values and communication? Too harsh, too sloppy, or they seem reinforcing your key messages, are they aligned with your ad strategy?
Think and write down team opinions and follow-up after a couple of weeks.
If you want to be inspired my suggestion is to check Ryanair communication strategy on LinkedIn and Twitter. They are simply amazing, check also their pr strategy through Google News or other news feed aggregator.
You will see a high frequency communication strategy to consolidate and protect their mental availability among consumers.
Summarise it!
Now collect all the materials from the workshop and create a summary to share with the participants.
- Who is your brand?
- Who are you challenging?
- Which will be the next three ideas to develop?
After that define how you are going to monitor and update the plan development on a bimonthly basis.
Each month you will run new tests and collect new insights, your plan is not a static object like the 5-years soviet plan
It’s hard and requires time and effort, but you need it for your survival.
Market runs fast and doesn’t wait.
Quoting Andrew Grove “Only the paranoids survive”
That’s all!
If you liked the marketing off-site posts series I really suggest reading “How Brands Grow” and “Eating The Big Fish”.
