The Creative Business Idea Book: Lessons Learned from Ten Years of Breakthrough Thinking

Lessons Learned from: TEN YEARS OF BREAKTHROUGH THINKING

Find Your Prosumers

Find Your Prosumers

Prosumers Are Vital to the Development of Creative Business Ideas

By understanding what matters to members of this group, the trends they’re driving, and their changing attitudes and behaviors, we are able to forecast how mainstream consumers will change in coming months and years.

PROSUMERS

ADOPTION

6–18 monthsInstigators

Prosumers

Mainstream

Laggards

10–20%

Prosumers Drive Trends Across Markets

Lesson

Learned

All consumers are not created equal. By

developing a way to identify and segment a

category’s or brand’s most influential

customers, strategists can make highly

informed decisions based not on where

markets are now but on where they’re headed.

For our agency network and our clients,

Prosumers are a window to the future.

Find Your Prosumers

Get the Buzz Going

Get Consumers on Board

Give Them Something to Talk About

The fact that anyone, anywhere, can create the next Internet sensation that goes viral through social channels creates an environment where brands have to push further and more deliberately into the world culture.

Lesson

Learned

The power of viral marketing lies not in

building buzz but in making consumers feel

more deeply connected to the brand. The

best campaigns offer a sense of ownership

that ties consumers in emotionally and

makes them feel they have a genuine stake

in the brand’s success.

Get the Buzz Going

Cast Your Net Far & Wide

Creative Collaboration Is Vital in the Intangibles Economy

In another era, a nation’s most valuable assets were its natural resources—coal, say, or amber waves of grain. But in the information economy of the 21st century, the most priceless resource is often an idea, along with the right to profit from it.

—International Herald Tribune

Open Windows and Doors

Build Collaborative Partnerships

Lesson

Learned

Today’s demand for constant innovation

requires a mix of collaborative contributors who

can shake things up and deliver together more

than any one of them is capable of delivering

alone. That makes it imperative to cast a wider

net to bring in more thinkers, partners, and

outside influences. That applies to companies

and agencies. And it applies to brands.

Cast Your Net Far and Wide

Make It Meaningful

The Search for Substance

Dulux: “Let’s Color”

The new consumers are ready to play the ‘brand game’ to the full, which means that simple, unidirectional, repetitive communication is over for them. Precisely because they are closer to brands and understand them and their role, they want brands to do their job: keep in touch, keep alive, keep being meaningful, keep making a difference, keep the entertainment up, be a good citizen…This makes it really interesting, does it not?

Lesson

Learned

It is our job as marketers to help clients

understand the triggers that will be most

successful in attracting customers and building

brand loyalty. In this new era, these triggers are

connected not to the outdated archetypes of

hyperconsumption but to the traditional values

people have begun to crave, including community,

simplicity, sustainability, and rootedness.

Make It Meaningful

Keep Moving

Electric Typewriter, Meet the Mac

Image credits: Chris Campbell@flickr.com; apple.com

A new brand is all promise and vision. Then a market develops and the brand builds trust by delivering on its promises. But the natural cycle of brands means that, left alone, it cannot maintain momentum. In the absence of innovation and dynamism, it ceases to meet the needs of its customers. Brands require tending. A static brand is a dying brand.

Goodbye, Nursing Homes; Hello, Nightclubs

Lesson

Learned

To retain and gain market share in any

category requires constant innovation and

repositioning (sometimes subtle, sometimes

major), building on people’s trust while also

relentlessly pushing the brand forward in

new and fresh ways. In this new

environment, “business as usual” leads only

one place: a dead end.

Keep Moving

Don’t Let Your Brand Be Boxed In

Going, Going…

Think Bigger

Generally speaking, the broader the brand values, the more room there is for a brand to grow.

Evian: “Live Young”

EVIAN’S “WE WILL ROCK

YOU” SINGLE SOLD 600,000

COPIES WORLDWIDE

Lesson

Learned

Rather than cling to old business models, constantly reassess what category and industry you’re in, whom your target customers can and should be, and how you should be conducting business. This will keep you a step ahead, always moving forward rather than scrambling to follow the lead of upstart competitors.

Don’t Let Your Brand Be Boxed In

Utilize Your Inner MacGyver… or where there’s a will, there’s a way

The Golden Age of Advertising?

Image credit: Paul-W@flickr.com

The technological revolution has fragmented the audience and made it extremely difficult for brands to reach their targets. This has forced brands to interact, to engage further with their audiences, to deliver experience, to focus on building loyalty with their current customers—in other words, to produce a more valuable and involving content beyond what their products and messages were traditionally delivering.

Mortein: “Modern-Day Ramayana”

Lesson

Learned

Never be limited by the tools at hand and what others already have done. In emerging markets especially, reaching a target through existing channels may not be possible. If a communications channel doesn’t exist, invent it. If the brand clutter seems impenetrable, find a way to get consumers to come to you. This is the golden age of advertising for those with the creativity and drive to make it so.

Utilize Your Inner MacGyver… or where there’s a will, there’s a way

Don’t Be Afraid to Cede Control

Collaboration Over Control

TckTckTck: Campaign for Climate Justice

Image credit: Greenpeace Switzerland@flickr.com

To make a difference there had to be one message, and everyone had to own it.

Lesson

Learned

The impenetrable divisions that used to be rife within the corporate world are crumbling. Businesses are learning that collaboration and sharing can accrue benefits unattainable under a traditional structure. More and more we’ll see that the strength of a creative idea lies not in how well it can be controlled but in how widely and rapidly it can be shared. Even the very best ideas can’t get terribly far with clipped wings.

Don’t Be Afraid to Cede Control

Be Social

Everyone Connected

Share This

Up until recently, traditional media were the main vehicle with which to attract potential customers. It was mainly one-way communication. Now the wired consumer is keen to engage with the brand and other consumers, through social media, before he decides to espouse a brand or a product. He wants the brand to be a statement about his personality, his beliefs, and the social group with which he affiliates himself.

Lesson

Learned

For marketers, it’s no longer a question of whether to use social media, but how and to what extent. Being part of the social conversation is essential in every consumer-facing category. No one can say with certainty how social media will evolve over the next 10 or 20 years, but we know for sure that it will be critical to the propulsion and trajectory of our most brilliant ideas.

Be Social

Get There First

In the Beginning…

Image credit: BinaryApe@flickr.com

Digital changed everything—for our industry and for our agency. With our ‘Digital at the Core’ Creative Business Idea, we took the bold step of integrating the world’s largest digital network, Havas Worldwide Digital (then known as Euro RSCG 4D), into Havas Worldwide, our main advertising and communications entity. This integration was not just in words, but philosophically, creatively, structurally, and financially. Our digital arm has been suffused throughout our company’s body. And that is driving our clients’ businesses and ours. ‘Digital at the Core’ will be our future…at least until we recognize that digital has changed everything again.

Lesson

Learned

A passion for innovation and how we build and drive it into organizations has served us and our clients well. Some of the most profitable Creative Business Ideas involve an element of the unknown—a leap of faith and the courage to do something that has never been tried before. It’s how we make good on our promise to get clients to the Future First.

Get There First

Lesson

Learned

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