#Secret 1: Imperfecto — The secret behind random small wins in product innovation
#Secret 2: Nirvana — The secret of immortality in brand innovation
Located at the center of famous scenic Alishan national park, one of the coolest nature gifts — Three Generations of Trees symbolize the continuous life. The previous generations passed away and simultaneously laid a strong foundation for the third generation. Any survival question of every long-standing species never turns to how long an individual exists but how many generations our DNA can be handed down. Is this possible to create an eternal product life cycle? How and when to start/end a product? Or simply what is beyond product life? Great innovation is boundless. A product may probably go through different phases till its death but a brand can be immortal. A Hollywood blockbuster normally lasts its buzz around 3–6 months since its initial public announcement. However, a blockbuster brand as Marvel can successfully establish a movie universe occupying up to 50% viewership of US audience thanks to smart transition in plots. Marvel ‘s efforts to connect all products (in this case, movies) triggered significantly consumer engagement and simultaneously high commitment to the brand. Despite a short product life cycle, any brand can still keep the confidence to go beyond life and death with an insightful innovation strategy.
Three Generations of Trees, Alishan National Park, Taiwan
Last me “more than” a lifetime — Beyond the brand promise
Back to the romantic fairy tales, we imagined in our very first series “Love at 1st-time brand experience” and assuming that you successfully passed the first date challenge with a MVP (minimum viable product) and MVB (minimum viable brand). How long do you think the first impression will last? How should you prepare for next encounters? All the moonlight kisses and rainbow future promises are useless unless you can make a clear statement of your overall brand promise. While most people may confuse the ability to see someone as part of your future is a guarantee that he/she is the one, what actually is more promising to consumers is finding someone that has the ability to evolve and co-grow with them. A vow of possibilities we can co-live in. In a world full of distractions, being the “fittest” possibility and reinforcing your “role to play” in consumers’ lives require consistent “delivery” of your brand promise, visibly tracked through brand campaigns. A brand campaign can be generated from either product innovation or commercial innovation. The latter exploits current benefits to drive new trials via marketing activities while the former extends business horizons via product technical upgrades.
One of the most powerful commercial innovation driving $100 million incremental revenue and increasing 39% brand recall is P&G Thank-you mom multi-brand campaign starting in Winter Olympics in 2010 and continued in different installments responsively Beijing 2012 with #bestjob, Sochi 2014 with #becauseofmom, Rio 2016 as #strong, Pyeongchang 2018 with #loveoverbias. Laying moms as the primary target for any FMCG products, P&G defines this initiative never should be bound by one single event. “Thank-you mom” is not only designed to athlete moms but receptive to every mom who always considers their kids as champions. Commercial innovation lasers on existing features and enables brands to enhance their emotion values deeply. Along with on-ground activation, promotion, media, brands can truly seed its core values into consumers’ ecosystem of hearts and minds, beyond thematic viral TV/digital copy or media buzz. Unicorns are the new game changer forces driven by their fast speed in market adaptation and innovation. Game leaders, whether they are unicorns or heritage and multi-billion dollar brands, are those who master the secrets behind brand immortality.
Coming to a short-life-cycle product category as hyper-casual games or fashion, brand innovation should be seen in the new portfolio approach where brand promise is delivered consistently through each hit/design item. An online game fest with customized theme aligned with shared features of all titles can help to drive user engagement in the ecosystem, not to mention organic cross-promotion effect. However, to create better booming effect, commercial should accompany product innovation in these cases. Otherwise, brand experience will be defective. To highlight its comfy and easy-to-wear clothes, Zara successfully launched Timeless campaign in Fall/Winter 2017 featuring models aged 40 above discussing an aging impact on their personal style. It not only diversifies target audience to a new group of senior women but also supports brand position to “democratize fashion”.
Zara Timeless campaign for Fall/Winter 2017
When the young and old are in sync — Creating eternal brand — product chain
Wandering in the old jungle, we are always impressed with giant hundreds-year-old upper-canopies. Few notice decaying understory and forest floor which mainly maintain nutrients for their big siblings, also keep the ecosystem growing. An eternal product life almost cannot exist due to its opposition to natural selection rule, however, an eternal brand — product chain can. G-Suite is not a forest to cultivate in one day by Google LLC. Starting with the objective as “Google Apps for your domain” especially in productivity and collaboration, an early beta version Gmail was launched in 2004 helped better business communication. 15 years later, G-Suite stays at the forefront of digital transformation with at least 12 different products and 5 million paid businesses and countless enterprises worldwide. Every product is highly intertwined with previously-invented one. This agile design principle widens rooms for growth, simultaneously, diversify business models including pricing plans, go-to-market strategies, etc. Users are free to use Google Collaborate features but must pay domains to get a Gmail account or Drive to extend storage while business scales up to such level.
New features have been developed consequently from existing users’ engagement with current system. Facebook can stay as a leader in synchronizing the new with the old with endless additional attributes. Their music features have been continuously rolled out from Lip Live Sync, music stickers on stories to add favorite music from Spotify. This social media platform gradually evolves into a super app and also a boundless marketplace for any product category.
Facebook music sticker feature
We cannot see the forest for the trees — The “perfect harmony” brand innovation system
To holistically understand a forest system, it barely helps to see any individual tree. While you are looking too close at tangible and immediate problems, the majority are blind to the bigger and worthier picture. A botanist should investigate carefully complex components of a forest to study a specific canopy. How is forest floor formed from decaying leaves of upper canopy? What is nutrient flow from soil to top tree layers considering transmission of understory plants? Similar to brand strategist, one who desires to build a great and long-lasting brand must comprehensively understand brand innovation system to start designing. With the imagination of nutrients and water as values to consumers, this below framework sheds light to how a powerful brand innovation system is designed.
Our hints and explanations:
Understory = The driving factors for brand trials via habit-change models as communication, trade, trials
Forest floor = A strong and unique foundation of brand differentiates it from current competitor
Product innovation = New features for new market segment of needs, converting competitors’ users using product superiority
(To be continued)
Acknowledgment
We would like to send our deepest gratitude to our friends and partners: BigData Vietnam, Tesse Vietnam, MagikLab, hungkaka.xyz and Mr. Antifragile for sharing their precious insight and reference knowledge for this article.
Authors: Nguyet Nguyen (Azurie) & Hoang Ha (Sylvie)
