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Creativity
In Marketing
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K.R.Ravi |
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R. Ravi is a management graduate from
XLRI, Jamshedpur. He runs the Institute of Creative Thinking
and Personal Growth in Mumbai. |
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It
is now common knowledge that the era of ‘anything sold’
is well on its way out. Consumers have become more discerning
and demanding. We are seeing the demonstration effect at work,
with our people getting greater exposure to international trends
and demanding that the very best be made available here at terms
acceptable to them. The challenge before the marketer, therefore,
is to innovate on a continuous basis in every aspect of his
offering—the product, the packaging, the distribution,
the advertisements, the promotion et al. But though the necessary
attitude as well as the array of techniques for this are barely
available in the corporate sector (or, for that matter, in the
economy as a whole), I firmly believe the idea of creativity
for sheer survival is an idea whose time has come.
As a trainer in creative thinking I have found a widespread
attitudinal problem comprising a lack of faith in one’s
own creative abilities, a cynicism to new ideas including one’s
own ideas and a belief that creativity is for the Einsteins
and Edisons. |
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It
usually comes as a revelation to most trainees to learn that
most people are inherently creative and that their innate
creativity is smothered into virtual non-existence by a faulty
education system, a tendency to grasp the negative, and the
wrong value systems inculcated in a society that rewards conformity.Nothing
quite surprises a learner in creativity as much as a fundamental
lesson in the art of asking questions. Simple as it may seem,
interesting ideas in marketing have emerged simply by asking
the right questions. Einstein once remarked that creativity
is all about asking the right questions. Typically, it is
enough if one were to ask fundamental questions like who,
why, when, what, where, how, why not etc. Using these and
similar questions, I once helped a loss-making small hotel
to modify its systems to turn the corner. The gist of the
problem was that the hotelier found it uneconomical to have
on his payroll several cooks of various specialities when
the demand for their wares was unpredictable. The outcome
of my question-answer session was that the hotelier entered
into an arrangement with the thelawallas on the street opposite
his establishment, to supply him with a variety of foods,
thereby enabling him to cut down the strength of the kitchen
staff. The food would be acquired by the hotelier whenever
any room occupant ordered an item and the food would be served
on hotel cutlery, neat and clean!
I have found it simple and rewarding to develop a bank of
about 100 questions which, when asked in a given context,
have the potential to spawn numerous new product ideas. When
I tried this question bank on a bunch of trainees, some of
the product ideas that emerged were a refrigerator with microwave
oven attached, a pair of spectacles with wipers, an electronic
backscratcher etc.
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A
second technique of high utility and simplicity in application
is the well-known combination technique. I had occasion as a
bank executive in a nationalised bank to observe the sorry spectacle
of hundreds of people waiting for hours to pay the annual road
tax payable by all vehicle owners. In some branches, it is not
uncommon for people to queue up from as early as 4 a.m. in front
of the State Bank of India. I applied the combination technique
and suggested to the authorities to permit, on an optional basis,
the payment of a one-time road tax at the time of purchase of
the vehicle, thus saving the owner the bother of queuing up
every year to pay the tax. While this idea is in the realm of
procedures, it nevertheless indicates the possibility of coming
up with new product ideas too as indicated elsewhere in this
article.
There can be possibilities for new product and marketing innovations
through creative thinking in procedures and processes. A case
in point is the scamper technique which is really an acronym
for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to other use, Eliminate,
Rearrange. This technique led to the concept of the Teller system
in banks. The idea of rearranging the transaction in a way that
makes the customer free at the initial stage and has the bank
doing its internal work later is what the teller is all about.
Thereafter the idea of automating the teller led to the invention
of a new product—the A.T.M.
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The mind
tends to work in a routine fashion which does not help us
when we are faced with a non-routine problem or when we require
a creative solution to a problem.The very design of the mind
is aimed at helping us fit new data into a preset pattern
which facilitates speedy, virtually instinctive, responses.
This works to our benefit in most situations but is not helpful
when we need unusual responses. There is, in the words of
Edward De Bono, a need for us to come up with a technique
of idea-generation that involves breaking out of the well
trodden path of logic and analysis. Lateral Thinking is one
such technique that assists us in exploring the bylanes of
the territory as it were. The trick is to juxtapose something
totally unconnected to the problem and then see where the
thinking process takes us. The more unrelated the two items
are, the greater the possibility of generating creative ideas.
The classic example is that of a company that was in the perfumes
business many years ago. The perfumes, marketed in spray bottles,
were selling reasonably well, but the far-sighted management
felt a need to develop an innovation in the product in order
to avoid customer fatigue. A team was set up in-house to try
and come out with something different so as to make a splash
in the media. The senior executives went into a huddle and
ran into the standard roadblocks that are so familiar to anyone
who tries to generate ideas without an exposure to creativity
training. Finally, a creativity trainer was called in who
taught them the combination technique, which involves combining
the problem at hand with another object, word or picture—anything
at all which has little or no connection to the issue at hand.
One of the team members took out a ballpen and asked the team
to try and combine the two—the perfume and the pen. Several
ideas came up in no time, and the company finally settled
for what went on to be a revolutionary idea—the roll-on
deodorant! I am reasonably certain that the product now in
the Indian market, the khushboowalla pen was born out of the
advertent or inadvertent application of this technique.
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A lesser
known application of creativity in the marketing arena is
in respect of sales goals setting. I was once invited by an
organisation to advise them on techniques to boost sales which
had shown only a marginal growth over the last two years.
I called a meeting of the top executives and found what I
had expected to find—incremental budgeting or the fact
that every year’s budget was just a nominal growth over
the previous years’ achievement. The problem with this
method of budgeting, which is in fact the norm in most cases,
is that the company tends to get marginalised and finally
sickness
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sets in.
I called the salespersons to a meeting at which I asked them
how they would go about achieving a 300 per cent growth in
sales, assuming that any resources they wanted would be made
available. The group worked out several innovative strategies
based on their brainstorming unaided by the management. Their
wish list of resources was noted and the top management was
subsequently invited to examine this list. The list was discussed
in depth and pruned down to a manageable number, taking into
account the resources available. Accordingly the targets were
reduced from 300 per cent growth to 100 per cent, a target
which was achieved, setting a company record. The trick was
to let the salespersons think out-of-the-box, unhindered by
constraints, and then to examine the ideas so generated.
Few of us stop to ponder when faced with a problem that calls
for creativity, whether we have understood the problem and
whether the assumptions we almost instinctively make are,
in fact, valid. It is usually illuminating to give a group
of executives the task of redefining a problem in as many
ways as possible within a given time frame. It has invariably
been my experience that the consensus definition of the problem
at the end of the session is totally at variance with the
initial definition! Einstein was once asked how his thinking
process would work if world leaders told him that a vast planet
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Interesting
ideas in marketing have often emerged simply by asking questions.
Einstein once remarked that creativity is all about asking
the right questions
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from
outer space was hurtling inexorably towards earth and the resulting
collision, due in just 60 minutes, was sure to destroy the earth.
Einstein remarked that since he had 60 minutes to come up with
a solution, he would spend 55 minutes in trying to understand
the problem! Again, in the Indian context, the age-old contention
that the country’s problem of poverty is the result of
its huge population was restated by a creative thinker who reversed
the problem and suggested that perhaps the huge population was
the result and not the cause of the problem. This revised definition
is now well accepted.
As for our tendency to make unwarranted assumptions, I can only
refer to that great innovator, Thomas Alva Edison. The story
goes that whenever he interviewed anyone who wanted to work
as his assistant, he would take the candidate out to lunch and
ask for a bowl of soup to be placed before him. If the candidate
immediately added some salt and pepper to the soup, he would
be rejected. Edison felt that a person who assumed without verification
that the soup was short of salt and spice was not likely to
be an innovative thinker, because assumptions made without verification
kill the spirit of creativity.
An Indian marketer might like to challenge the usual assumptions
about the typical Indian consumer, and this could well lead
to the discovery of new markets. I recall reading a very significant
statistic that even a very poor family in the countryside is
willing to spend a quarter of its income on the education of
the children of the family. The by now well-known realisation
that the rural masses are also brand-conscious and are willing
to pay for quality are indicators that marketers need to recheck
their assumptions and then devise strategies for new product
development and marketing.
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