Good problems and Core thoughts paul mcenany // heehawmarketing.com

Setting Good Problems

If you pose the same challenge, use similar kinds of input as others have used and place similarly functioned people from similar backgrounds who all happen to work in advertising and say go figure this out, can we honestly expect a different result than the last agency provided? Or any agency could provide?

“If we’re not feeding the creative process with well thought through, imaginatively framed problems, then we’re failing creativity.”

- Martin Weigel, Wieden and Kennedy

Why we need good problems They show us things that stand in our way. And great problems, great challenges, are most able to generate inspired solutions.   Setting the right challenge gives our work specific, solvable, knowable and achievable purpose. When done right, they show us the most commercially viable path to an end.

What is a good problem?

Client Challenge “We want to be happier.”

Meet the Johannsons. They came to us with a challenge. They wanted to be happier. So as per usual, they came up to the office so we could have a chat about their problem. It was then that we met little Jackson. He was a crier. Non-stop. The whole interview. They spoke of a time 2 years go when they were super happy. Just married. Going out all the time, but still got great sleep. They were newlyweds in love. They just want to be that happy again.

They have a baby problem. The answer became clear to us quickly. They

have a baby problem. So we briefed the creative team. The objective, the Johannsons want to be happy. Like back before they had

little Jackson. The team came back with a few options. They were all great. Dead on brief.

We were super excited to show the client. We brought the Johannsons in, did some glad handing and whatnot. Then it was time to

reveal our concepts.

“Grandma” The first concept we called Grandma. The

kid would be shipped off to Southern California to live with grandma. A simple,

but effective concept. They did not look pleased.

“Adoption” We pressed on to the next concept. This one we really thought would sell, so we took our time with the set up, explaining

our thought process. We called it “Adoption.” No dice. The Johannsons sat back further in their chairs. Never fear, our

favorite concept was still to come.

“The Pillow Case” And that’s about the time they got up and

walked out.

WTF

What is a good problem?

The Real Problem Of course, if we had just gone to their house,

we would have found a small studio apartment that they hadn’t yet escaped. As much as they loved that little kiddo, he kept them up all night and they had nowhere to

find quiet. They didn’t have a baby problem, they had a space problem. They could have just moved a little further outside of town to bigger place they could afford, or

we could have created some solutions for the home or helped them up their networking

skills to get better jobs. But now we’ve lost a client. And almost a baby. That’s why problems are important.

Problems are foundations.

What makes a good problem? •  It is understandable without much explanation •  It is solvable and measurable •  It inspires new thinking •  It provides a differentiating, brand-aligned territory •  It provides focus on the tasks that matter most

What a problem is not We need to sell more stuff. Everyone wants to sell more stuff or they wouldn’t be talking to us. Our job is ultimately to increase sales. Doesn’t matter if we’re optimizing CRM for a direct marketing client or creating a campaign to enhance the image for a brand client – we’re here to add value. Good problems go beyond the obvious.

Where we find good problems We tend to look in the same types of areas for where problems may exist. It’s a process that mixes art, science, gut and experience – narrowing where to look and looking for incongruences. When something doesn’t make sense, we stop and understand why.

Brand &

Product

Audience &

Behaviors

Market &

Environment

Category &

Competition

Brand & Product •  What do people say or think about your brand? Is this

perception the same as you would expect? •  Do they tell others about it? •  Is your in-store experience aligned with what you communicate? •  Is the internal organization aligned in support? •  Are there other points when the brand seems confused? •  Is your product being used in ways you wouldn’t expect? •  Are there time when usage unexpectedly drops off or increases?

When tasked with updating the Honda brand, W+K didn’t have to search long before finding a disconnect between public

perception and the actual culture of Honda. While most people considered Honda a safe bet and certainly high quality, they were

also bored by it. They found the car dull.

But within the walls of Honda, they found a feisty, inventive company “still behaving as though their unpredictable

engineering genius of a founder was stalking the corridors looking for engines to tweak.”

The challenge became reconnecting those two worlds.

http://bit.ly/hondacogs

Audience & Behaviors •  What is it that we want the audience to do? Now why aren’t they

doing that? •  What are there motivations for buying, both rationally and

emotionally? •  What is it that our audience wants to do that they can’t? •  Who are the heavy users? Are purchases grouped heavily within

certain audiences? What makes them different from other audiences? Are there also commonalities?

•  How about light users? Why don’t they buy more or more frequently?

•  Is the audience for your product changing? •  Is there additional value we can create for current audiences that

aligns with the brand purpose?

Nike saw an opportunity in an audience that already had high recognition and regard for the brand, but below average product penetration. High school footballers

thought of Nike when playing basketball or running, just not as much in football.

When they dug into that audience they found a competitive bunch, dreaming of what it might be like to play in the NFL.

They tracked their own stats and posted videos of themselves to YouTube.

Nike realized that they can extend their existing value within this new audience. They created the Head2Head

platform which enabled a behavior that high school athletes were already engaged in, but without the proper

tools to do it easily.

http://bit.ly/nikeh2h

Market & Environment •  Are major purchasing shifts happening? Is it stagnant? •  What else might gain the attention of our audience? •  What other products might the audience group with our brand?

Are they trending in the same way we are? •  Is there a movement or an uprising that is relevant to the brand in

some way? •  What cultural elements are popular in this market? Does that

align with the brand? •  Where are environments where the product or service is bought

most often? How about used most often? Are there factors within that environment that influence behavior?

Tesco found an opportunity in the way that many South Korean professionals shop for groceries. It becomes an

extra unwanted shopping trip on the way home from work.

Instead of adding promotions to entice people to the store, they found a time when their audience actually might enjoy a quick shop, and brought the store experience to them.

http://bit.ly/tescosubstore

Category & Competition •  Who are the major competitors? What are their strengths and

weaknesses? Who is growing the fastest? Why? •  Is there an orthodoxy that exists within the category? What

assumptions are those based on? Are those still valid? •  How is the competition selling themselves? •  Why does that audience buy from someone else rather than us? •  Are competitors investing in places we are not? Why would they

do that?

MTV launched in the early 80’s as an anti-establishment, grouchy underdog totally focused on a new form of television built around

the music video. But after 20 plus years, they weren’t playing much music anymore. They were the behemoth, giving more time to the

Real World, Sorority Life and Room Raiders than underground music. They spotlighted the fantasy life of the young and rich instead of the “we don’t give a shit” attitude that defined the

network from day one through Nirvana and Beavis and Butthead when they led the slacker rebellion.

But those kids still existed, and it’s there where Fuse found a problem they could solve.

http://bit.ly/fusebeachhouse

Tools for Problem Solving Issue Tree These are perhaps the most fundamental tools in understanding problems. The Issue tree is a diagram that breaks down a challenge or problem into smaller pieces in order to understand the relationships between those chunks. There are two types, often used one after the other, the why and the how issue tree.

Tools for Problem Solving Basic Issue Tree

Increase Profit

Increase �Sales

Reduce Product

Cost What do you want to do?

Component

Component

Tools for Problem Solving Why Issue Tree – Diagnosing problems Used first, the why issue tree begins to outline the problem. It’s best to start with the client ask and some initial work to understand their audience, brand and market. Annual reports are a great place to start for this.

Tools for Problem Solving Why Issue Tree

Under 30 charitable giving is

decreasing

Millennials are finding other ways to give.

Unemploy-ment for Under 30 increasing

What is the problem?

Why?

Tools for Problem Solving How Issue Tree – Working to solutions The how issue tree becomes most effective after you’ve determined the most impactful problem you can solve given your resources. The How issue tree starts with the question and moves towards solutions.

Tools for Problem Solving How Issue Tree

How can we increase

investments for those under

30?

Increase u30 customer

base

Increase u30 customer

investments What is the challenge?

How? Increase

advertising

Add younger

consultants

How?

Other tools Ishikawa Trees (also called a fishbone diagram) Useful for looking at a complete problem

Other tools catwoe A framework for understanding the parts of the problem. C = Customers A = Actors T = Transformation process W = World View O = Owner E = Environmental constraints

Framing Problems •  Finding the right problem is not enough. The more

imaginatively or interestingly you can describe a challenge while retaining simplicity and specificity, the more imaginative and inspired the solutions you’ll find.

•  When possible, flip the negative to the positive.

Framing Problems

Running applications are only for runners.

Make running fun for people who think running sucks, but do it anyway.

The Core Thought

Core thought

The core thought is the main idea you want to communicate with your campaign.

Core thought

Where is your audience now? Where do they need to be for us to be commercially viable?

What do they need to know about us to get there? Is this place ownable, compelling and distinct?

And there you have it - you have the beginnings of a core thought.

Saying things versus Communicating things

About 95% if human communication is non-verbal. Body language, appearance, facial expressions, these are what people react to and subconsciously remember. It's no different with creative work. The core message that arises from the proposition still matters, but it's the delivery that really matters - the brand's body language.

- Andrew Hovell

Say, Do and Be.

The Pharma Challenge You are a company in a less than trusted industry, but

you have a pretty good track record. So you want to communicate that you are trustworthy. You wouldn’t say trust me. You would do something

that communicated that you are trusted.

•  You might show other people who trust you. •  Or you might make a guarantee. •  Or you might issue a report on your effectiveness •  You may make your business practices more transparent. All of these things would communicate that they can be trusted, before they’ve said a word.

The Brand Idea versus the Proposition

Brand ideas usually find a place that’s true to what the brand represents or believes in, then matches that to something that’s meaningful or interesting to their audience. That’s essentially the value you create. It’s your vision, values and how you see the world. This doesn’t change much at all when done properly. And everything else you do should fit within that.

The proposition is another type of core idea, sometimes known as the key message, selling idea or communications idea. This is what a specific campaign, ad, website, whatever, is meant to communicate. It has to be aligned with the brand idea – but it’s meant to solve a more specific, often short-term, challenge.

Red Bull revitalizes body and mind.

Gives you

wings

Crashed ice

Red Bull Music

Academy

Art of the Flight

Project X

Culture Blogs

Red Bull Creation

Brand Idea

Communications Ideas

Simple, Stimulative and Interesting

Simple Although our final communication should be deep and complex, we need to start from a place that can be understood by lots of different people, both internally and externally.

Red Bull has Taurine, which increases physical endurance and mental alertness.

Red Bull revitalizes body and mind.

Stimulative Always consider where the ideas can go. Whether you’re writing, reading or distributing briefing documents, the core thought should feel bigger than the statement. In other words, as you write it, if you can’t think of any ideas of where it could go beyond a headline, it’s probably not right.

We make the best hammers, now $10

off at Costco. Welcome to Contestville.

Interesting The awesomeness of a core thought done well is that it’s impactful, compelling, arresting, exciting. People want to work on it. It makes someone look at something familiar in a different way. That’s the core thought at its very best.

Old Spice has a great, musky scent.

Men should smell like men.

Interestingness Fluff

Core thought So that’s the core thought. •  Think about what you say and what you communicate

as two different things. •  Be sure you understand the challenge – focus on the

brand alone or solving a specific problem. •  Start in a place that is simple, stimulative and interesting

for the team and credible and distinctive for the brand.