Wide Angle

Launching a new product and want customer advocates to help spread the word for you?  See what you can learn from National Instruments’ LabView product launch (a software program for engineers).  The launch campaign, which won MLC’s 2009 B2B Marcomm Awards, generated more than 2,000 customer tweets and 80 customer blog posts in just one month.

What was their secret?  Building platforms and content around customer needs – not their own product launch.  Read More »

Very rarely does one member conversation spark a complex web of issues, but one yesterday with a senior marketer at a consumer firm in a mature industry did just that.

The firm has reconfigured its entire new product development process, from stage gates, to resource allocation, to organizational structure and ultimately, the locus of innovation – a conscious shift from incremental to disruptive.  Simultaneously, the company placed brand management among its top priorities for the year.  Our dialogue quickly turned to the intersection of the two and which was actually driving the bus. Read More »

Friday’s Wall Street Journal showed a delicious contrast in innovation approaches in side-by-side articles (yes, I’ve just revealed I still read a broadsheet from time-to-time).

On the one hand, you have P&G launching the latest, feature rich, premium-seeking version of its Fusion razor.  Blade edges so fine you need a microscope to see them.  Anti-hydroplane technology.  And an even more ergonomic grip. 

(Wait.  Backup.  My razor blade can hydroplane? On my face?  Scary… Does my auto insurance cover that?)

In contrast, the neighboring article details GE’s plans to launch a handheld ultrasound device.  Price point: under US$10,000.  Compare that to $25-50k for laptop-based machines, or $250k for a cart-based ultrasound.  Of course, the handhelds won’t have the functionality of the others, but for many situations, they don’t need to.  Cutting out features in favor of portability and low price actually opens up new markets.  That’s smart, “good enough” innovation in a tough economic environment. Read More »

One of the themes we’re picking up from Council members is a reckoning that new product development and innovation approaches are badly in need of an overhaul.  What’s driving it?  Here’s what we’ve heard from marketers at Global 2000-sized companies: 

• The recession has fundamentally recast customers’ hierarchy of needs, priorities and in some cases core values, giving rise to the “New Normal” customer
• The “Good Enough Revolution” (an important read) has demonstrated that, in many categories, the returns curve on adding new features has flattened or even inverted
• The increasing participation of our target audiences in digital and social media has presented an opportunity to dramatically reduce innovation cycle time
• The source of consumption growth is shifting to BRIC countries, which is putting more pressure on innovation processes to produce discontinuous innovation for those markets Read More »

After my gloomy 2009 retrospective, I thought I’d try for a cheery 2010 prognostication. Then I looked at the unemployment rate, continued declines in construction spending, the looming bust of commercial real estate and quickly recalled why I’m a self-described realist (others call it cynic, take your pick).

So how about an even-handed assessment of things to watch for in 2010? Even the cynic can provide that.  Here are three big macroeconomic and marketing-specific trends every marketer should follow in earnest: Read More »

What can Romano’s Macaroni Grill’s re-engineering of its tomato bruschetta dish teach us about innovation in a recession?

Most marketers are relying on price and promotional shifts to re-position their brands for value.  By contrast, savvy marketers are re-assessing their products more holistically, taking into account how raw materials and production costs interact with traditional marketing disciplines like consumer understanding and pricing.

Enter Macaroni Grill, which reported in The Wall Street Journal | Sep 16 is reworking its menu to get away from 1,000 + calorie items—its consumers want to eat more healthily.  The restaurant’s tomato bruschetta appetizer makeover illustrates recession-minded innovation at its best: Read More »