Concepts, ideas and insights

I have worked in communication and marketing for over thirty years now. One of the major strands has been the ‘concept’. In communication, the concept has assumed overblown status. Any idea is called a ‘concept’. Yet a ‘concept’ is something different. Let me explain it this way…

Once upon a time, someone realized that clothes left lying around became dirty without being worn. To solve the problem that person came up with a new way of doing things, putting unworn clothes in a box. That concept was the cupboard. Nowadays, people routinely store unworn clothes in cupboards. An architect plans a dwelling with space for cupboards. That is an idea. The cupboards may have different colours, latches, sizes. Those are also ideas, but not concepts.

Concepts change the way we behave or see things. Ideas are elaborations on concepts or how we communicate. I have worked on a handful of concepts, but hundreds if not more than a thousand ideas. I don’t like it when people use the word ‘concept’. You are not inventing the cupboard, you are just making one. Ideas are vital, but discovering a new way of thinking is a windfall, a career highlight.

Where does the concept or even the good idea come from? The answer lies in an insight which emerges from empathy with the consumer.

In past iterations of the product-driven marketing process, the company would idealise and plan a product or service based on internal ability and capacity then launch it with brute-force push marketing. If volumes justified it the product stuck in the line-up. However, the process was tenuous, and many products would fail.

The new approach is to reduce the failure rate with value-driven approaches. The insight is not, ‘we can do this’, but ‘this solves a consumer problem, places use in a new light and / or creates some form of verifiable value for the consumer.’

To place this in perspective, consider the famed example of Colgate Foods. Although food and dental hygiene have the mouth in common, the consumer did not get the value and a vast amount of money was wasted as the products tanked.

Where does the insight come from? It might come from a hunch based on empathy with and understanding of the market, but given the cost of launching a product, the hunch is probably not good enough.

The numbers may show or appear to confirm a gap or a decline in volumes, however they do not provide the confirmation of an insight. Confirmation has to be derived from and refined on what the market perceives to be value. This might also be seen through the lens of new products entering the consideration set.

The two consecutive techniques are likely to be qualitative, followed by the design thinking process.

Qualitative might be a one-on-one process with respondents. The reason I prefer one-on-one is that it filters out group effects such as group think and suppression of ideas for group fit. It will be more expensive and time-consuming, but it will be more effective.

Once the qualitative is handled, a preliminary design thinking process might be followed. Budget permitting, it will be valuable to use two groups, to see if the results are similar. The design thinking process is not a final result but it is a way at arriving at the insight which will be taken furter in product development.

Insights and the resulting concepts are rarely inspirations that arrive from the blue. Even if they appear to, they will be a result of subconscious knowledge and familiarity with the audience and environment. Knowledge will preserve and secure the investment, if not tell you to shelve the idea.