April 23, 2008

Metropolitan Insider Club

Here's the copy of my presentation I gave at Metropolitan Life, on "Outsourcing Marketing and Innovation to your Customer".

This is the blurb I used to position it:

Outsourcing Marketing & Innovation

Innovation is a hairy, woolly thing. Difficult to define or plan for. Invisible. Google counts at least 91 million results for the word. It has become the new stock phrase in corporate reporting, the holy grail for new earnings growth. Spraying cash at R&D (a traditional proxy for innovation) as compared to advertising is increasing; US stats from Ad Age[1] support this. 50 years ago: Advertising:R&D ratio was $3:1; in 2006: $1.34 is spent on advertising for every $1 spent on R&D.

But has this proven effective? Traditional approaches to innovation strategy revolve around a steady flow of goodies from the tech centre, with marketing packaging these new ideas into flashy campaigns - a one-way pipeline. Little thought to the end user experience is sought - focus groups and market research rarely yield fresh new insight or uncover new connections.

So what are the secrets of Apple and co. in getting groundbreaking products and services out there, and in doing so leave in their wake completely reinvented industries (with very little ad spend)? Welcome to the world of design thinking and the new marketing. How can organisations co-opt their customers into helping with the innovation and marketing?

Join me on a jam session through these topics: understanding what innovation really is, framing this against the status quo; why designing one's organisation from the outside-in can help to create insight conduit; how to harness the internet in transforming user-led marketing; and why redirecting funding for traditional marketing into redesigning customer experiences is the new 'R&D function'.

[1] 1 May 2006 Ad Age

PDF of slides here [1.3 MB pdf]

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