Creative Inconvenience

In a recent episode of Showtime’s “Homeland” the teenage son of a potential presidential candidate is driving with his girlfriend, and in trying to impress her attempts to lose their secret service escort. This in turn leads the couple into a fatal hit and run with a pedestrian. The story plays out where the guilt ridden couple ultimately confess the accident to their parents, at which point a moral dilemma ensues.

Do the presidential parents act on what is morally right and report the incident, thus risking the presidential bid, or do they use their power to suppress any investigation? In this fictitious scenario the issue’s morality lost to its ability to restrict personal gain, and as such the event went unreported.

This dramatized example of morality of convenience, where ideals are sacrificed for gain, has roots in reality and takes on different shapes, some that lay outside of black & white moral purity.

For instance we love the entrepreneur - the creative rebel who by the very act of their non-conformity changes social behavior patterns and the standard approach to business. However the inconvenient truth is that most business ventures fail. So even as we admire innovative success and celebrate the ideals behind the success, we also tend to ignore the multitude of failures that surround those successes and gloss over the price of achieving them.

Creative innovation requires taking risks, accepting failure, rejecting convention and exploring unproven methods. Despite the fact that Corporate America has created a cottage industry on promoting the ideas of innovation and creativity, the fact is most are structured to stifle innovation. Like Homeland’s hit and run casualty who fell victim to the morality of convenience, so is corporate innovation the victim of creative inconvenience.

The 4 Dynamics Of Stifled Innovation

1. Cultural Homogeneity:

Organizations typically recruit employees that best fit into their existing culture. This creates a self perpetuating cycle where any deviation from that culture tends to be met with dissatisfaction and thus gets weeded out.

Social experiments have additionally shown that when faced with a majority point of view, individuals tend to adhere to that viewpoint, even if it goes against a believed truth. This behavioral conformity is particularly prevalent where departures from the social norm negatively impact status - such as one’s ability to get promoted.  

The result - homogenized thought with a singular voice in support of the existing order.

2. Innovation Inefficiency

In The Medici Effect Frans Johansson writes that in any given field 10% of the creators are responsible for 50% of the contributions - Picasso created 20,000 pieces of art, Thomas Edison filed a record 1,039 patents  and Richard Branson started 250 companies.

The point is that successful innovation is a numbers game of high output for minimal success with high reward. Unfortunately most companies are structured to minimize costs through operational efficiencies and to deliver consistent returns, not to absorb the loss of excess capacity in search of a home run.

3. Decision Incentives

Directly resulting from the above points, in most corporations it is more dangerous to make a bold, potentially high return decision and fail than it is to make a consensus decision and fail. As a result people tend to model their decisions to satisfy those who will be evaluating them instead of making choices based on their potential to deliver.

4. Risk Aversion Biology

Since the hunter gatherer days when unnecessary risk could be fatal, humans are biologically wired to minimize risk. Social experiments have again proven this whereby giving people a choice between a larger, less certain reward and a smaller more certain one people will generally choose the more certain, lower payout. Innovation requires risk and risk taking is not in our DNA.

Achieving innovation and creativity in the corporate sense are clearly not impossible since they happen often enough. However the next time you attempt to push creative boundaries realize that despite what people say they may not be ready to pay the price for innovation, and your ability to bridge that price gap may ultimately determine the fate of your idea.

Why Your Target Consumers Don't Hear You

I am frequently astounded by the regularity of poorly written creative briefs. There are likely multiple reasons for this, not the least of which is prioritizing speed of completion over quality of thought, but one of the most common elements I find to be subpar in a brief is the line typically titled “Target Consumer”.

If you have been in the business for any significant period of time chances are you have seen a brief with a Target Consumer description that looks something like this (I am using a female target for this example but it could just as easily be male):

Target Consumer
25 - 45 yrs old, Female, Upper Income, Upper Educated, with or without kids...

This is usually followed up with some generic “insight” that is supposed to provide depth into what makes this human being tic. You know, something like:

Insight
The challenge of trying to balance family, personal relationships, career and still find “me time” causes her to be time stretched. She is always looking for solutions that help her to balance these multiple pressures. She constantly puts others needs before hers, and is ok with that, but sometimes she just wants time to focus on herself.

The problem is the above example Target Consumer defines three quarters of the Earth. It essentially eliminates the male half of the planet and identifies an “insight” that impacts everyone but infants. Good luck trying to craft a message that will resonate with any subset of that target, let alone the entirety of it.

I think mass market brands find themselves working against these absurdly broad consumer definitions because they are afraid that in crafting programs that speak to the needs of a smaller subset of consumers, they might in turn alienate the consumers outside of that subset, and thus not deliver against the growth goals of the business which, being already highly developed, require widespread consumption to move the needle.

Aiming For the Bullseye
Often within these broad consumer descriptions we see the term “Bullseye Consumer”, which in theory is supposed to identify that smaller consumer subset, but in my experience really only helps to focus the media buy without actually impacting the point of view of the message.   

In thinking of the “Target” and “Bullseye” metaphors to describe the people we want to use our products we should consider that, much like the game of darts, when you aim for a target’s bullseye you often wind up hitting some of the bullseye’s surrounding rings, which in the consumer sense, makes up that broader target definition. Contrarily, when you simply aim to hit any part of the target, you can wind up missing it altogether.

I’ll use the sports category to exemplify that point. The people who make up the majority of Nike’s business are probably the casual athlete or the weekend warrior. However Nike doesn’t design shoes for the 5K run; they design them for marathons, because the casual athlete knows that if the shoe works for a 26 mile run it will most certainly suffice for a 5K. That is also why Nike ads depict elite athletes like Michael Jordan, and not some guy named Doug who plays in an intramural league whenever he can get out of work on time to make a game. In targeting the elite athlete in product, messaging and imagery they deliver a message that resonates with the casual athlete who makes up the majority of their business. The elite athlete is the lifestyle bullseye, but in aiming for it, you wind up hitting the casual athlete who makes up a larger portion of the overall target.

Is there risk in that by using product language and brand imagery that would appeal to a marathon runner you might turn off a casual 5K runner because they might get intimidated or feel like they can’t relate to a marathon runner’s needs - maybe. However, odds are that person probably wouldn’t have become a customer anyway, and I guarantee you that in alternatively trying to appeal to every person who runs, you will instead wind up with a watered down message that appeals to no one. Sometimes you have to be willing to turn some people off to your message in order to effectively speak to the people who will be most receptive to it.