Comments (3)
Curt Mulder
Excellent article
Dave Johnson
Concise and to the point
Steve Mareel
Good article
Brand is about being different. Not better. Different.
But different is harder to put into words than better is; it’s harder to conceive. So if you ask your customers how to innovate, they’re going to ask you for something better, not different.
In fact, asking customers how you should innovate for them is asking them to do your job for you. And you’ll be rewarded by getting small, incremental, innovation ideas, not the big, groundbreaking ones.
Customers would ask for something better, not different, kind of like this.
They might ask for:
Customers don’t ask for different, because different is harder to conceive of than better is. And customers frankly don’t think all that much about your category or your product. They kind of feel like they have better things to do than come up with creative ideas for your business. They’re in the mode of solving a problem, and they might ask for a better way to solve that problem.
And that’s why no customer ever asked:
Are you asking your customers to do your job for you?
When you’re trying to innovate, listen to customers talk about what they care about in life, and what it’s like to be them, when they’re trying to solve a problem that your type of offering solves. And then think of a way to make their life better – in a way that they never could have thought of.
Excellent article
Concise and to the point
Good article
Lindsay is a Brand Strategist and Founder of Ironclad Brand Strategy, which builds brands using an exacting and analytic method. Her background as a P&L owner at Clorox fostered a deep appreciation for the executive charge: to create sustainable value. Ironclad advises companies from burgeoning startups to national corporations, including Zulily, IMDb, T-Mobile and Starbucks. Lindsay holds an MBA in Business from the University of California Berkeley, Haas School of Business.
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