Face it. Easily bored consumers don't care that your company is in a budget crunch. They don't remember the last really cool thing you did six months ago, and they aren't fooled by generic, repurposed ideas that try to fit an analog idea peg into a Web 2.0 slot. They expect you to keep it real, keep it fresh, and keep it relevant if you want them to keep coming back to what you have to offer.
And for any brand that relies on retaining, and gaining, market share (that means you!), this means forgetting the legacy of your prior accomplishments, and continuing to design, develop, and modify how you communicate those offerings, no matter what the cost.
So how are some of the big players managing to consistently "bring it" when it comes to big ideas, big products, and big new ways of interacting in the face of shrinking budgets, fragmenting audiences, and inflexible corporate frameworks?
Creating a "people" product
In a panel discussion at ad:tech San Francisco on building great brands in the age of disruption, Joel Rubinson, chief research officer at The Advertising Research Foundation, asserted that the first step to innovation today is to put humans -- not your brand -- at the center of your thinking, and figure out how to serve them.
From a research standpoint, this is getting easier, through social networks and other mechanisms of consumer feedback. But, Rubinson feels there are still fundamental problems in obtaining information about human needs. "Research has lost its ability to hear the unexpected," he said.
Tina Sharkey, chairman and global president of BabyCenter LLC, agreed that innovation is tied in to dialoguing with consumers about their needs and wants, but she cautions against relying on their input to drive all progress. "If you spend too much time listening to the consumer," she says, "you will be sitting out there with them."
Putting your finger on the innovation pulse
In his opening statement as moderator of the discussion, Pete Blackshaw, EVP of digital strategic services at Nielsen Online, shared Wikipedia's definition of innovation:
"The term innovation means a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental, radical, and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations. A distinction is typically made between invention, an idea made manifest, and innovation, ideas applied successfully."
John Travis, VP of brand marketing at Adobe Systems Inc., agreed with the definition, though he felt it lacked the requisite spark, the excitement, and the discussion of risk taking that the topic inspires. Travis shared an example of Adobe Labs, which released downloadable alpha and beta versions of its Photoshop Lite software. He felt that by taking the risk of letting 500,000 users experience the product for the first time in this manner, it improved the product's final version, and built a community of people who felt more connected to Adobe.
As a technologist, however, Eric Feng, SVP of audience development and CIO at Hulu, was excited by the application-based definition. "For us, innovation happens every day, and it's subtle," he remarked. Feng describes Hulu's innovation process as an "underwater pyramid." "Consumers only see the tip that works, but there's a large infrastructure underneath," he explained.
The building blocks
Taking a cue from Feng's discussion of infrastructure, Blackshaw led the conversation into innovation cycles by asking about the role that social media now plays in the process.
Feng asserted that "90 percent of what you learn about a product comes after you released it and get customer feedback. The feedback loop is now real-time, which drives faster innovation cycles," he said.
Sharkey added that at BabyCenter, social media is built around affinity and specific interests. "It helps [consumers] find and express what's most important to [them], building a bridge to marketers. Information gathering is a new way to do product development," she asserted.
Rubinson agreed. "Social media is about creating a fast-learning organization. This is the new definition of research -- not through the lens of what you sell them but through their actual lives."
Travis described the involvement of social media in innovation as less of a media channel and more of a philosophy. He spoke of Adobe's process of "layered tennis" as a development tool. Adobe designers volley ideas about their creations back and forth among the team, giving everyone a chance to share and refine products from the earliest stages of development.
Moving the needle
While everyone seems to agree that participation is key to innovation, the problem still remains: Many companies may talk the talk, but they are reluctant to open themselves up to the risks and uncertainty inherent in collaboration and true change. So, Blackshaw asked, how do you begin to move the needle?
Rubinson champions the power of storytelling to gain trust, mindshare, and consumer involvement in your brand initiatives. "If you have a compelling, unforgettable story, people will tell you a story back," he explained.
Sharkey noted that true innovation has to first come within the organizational processes themselves, rather than as a tool or product that goes out to the public. Of this process, she gave two absolutes: No one person can be in charge of it, and it needs to have the proper time, space, and culture to fail fast, get people to innovate, and get everyone on board.
Blackshaw discussed the possibility that entrenched corporate culture may be the biggest hindrance to innovation. As he put it, in an environment where everyone is now doing what you do, how do you manage to make noticeable changes?
Travis agreed that this can often get in the way, and described how he used to get around the problem when he worked at Intel. He shared that it was inherent in Intel's corporate culture that the jobs that people held needed to change periodically. "Reward employees and inspire change in the day to day, and evaluate employees on innovation in that space," he said.
Speaking of evaluation, the panelists all agreed that no one yet knows the most effective way to know when the innovative changes are working as marketing business models.
Sharkey feels that effective strategies can be discovered when marketers, publishers, and creatives all sit down together to work on the solutions, in an "innovation of collective minds."
Rubinson describes it thusly: "We are enablers. Technology moves so fast that to predict what will happen 10 years out, we need to take technology out of the equation and study people." Because today's technology makes virtually anything possible, Rubinson feels we need to understand how people make decisions before we can understand the best ways to evolve our products. "Understanding humans is the best way to predict where this is all going," he said.
Jodi Harris is senior editor at iMedia Connection.