June 19, 2014

Menstrual Marketing- true genius

This ad from Helloflo, entitled First Moon Party is rare in being based on insight, executed with humour and gentleness, and relevant across at least two generations. It is singly the best bit of marketing we’ve seen in a very, very, very long time.  No-one wants to talk about periods, fewer want to broach the awkwardness of a conversation between tween and peers, parents and even fewer would put their marketing budgets on the line and bet on being funny enough to carry this off.  HelloFlo The Ideas Machine salutes you. This is a great product-  personalcare packages delivered on the right date, tailored to your needs,  the website is totally tonally in tune with its audience, and they are utterly deserving of success.

Fantastic Menstrual Marketing from Helloflo !  Check it out .

Helloflo delivery boxes

Helloflo delivery boxes

June 1, 2014

Top 5 Successful Innovation Behaviours

The Ideas Machine team has worked on hundreds of innovation projects over the years and we’ve seen how thousands of different people approach innovation.  Here’s our top 5 list of successful innovation behaviours.

1. Passion

Often used in conjunction with innovation we know, but nothing beats it in our experience.  Having the passion to make something happen is the single most important factor in successful innovation. It is what helps individuals and teams when times get tough, it is also what brings the energy required to keep a project moving to conclusion.  Moreover it is what allows teams to fail, brush themselves down and start again. Successful innovators really, really mean it.

2. Discipline

Less frequently identified by the writers on this topic, but in our view,  discipline is a crucial factor in any innovation team. Discipline, rules, boundaries and structure all ensure an innovation programme isn’t a one-off whim. Creating some discipline around the innovation process it is what makes an innovation team gel, it is what creates a plan and outputs that an organisation can buy into , and it is essential in keeping costs and timings under control. It’s absolutely no use at all to just tell folks to ‘go think outside the box’ with no framework and no structure. Discipline doesn’t mean closing the solution space down, it means you are more likely to succeed if you structure what you are trying to achieve and why.

3. Curiosity

Simple and true; being curious, not taking the first right answer, challenging your assumptions and being willing to question and go find out are what sets successful innovators apart.  Curious clients are the ones who recognise the need to keep discovering, accept a non linear hypothesis and they are the least likely to fail because they missed something.

4. Ego-free

Every team has a leader, but the leaders who create the environment for people to create and implement new ideas tend to be those who can put their ego on the shelf for a while. This is particularly true for corporate and FMCG teams –The Ideas Machine does lots of projects with large organisations – when innovation is happening within a large corporate, someone is usually tasked to ‘lead’ and often a C level executive sponsors the programme. What makes one team succeed where others fail, in our experience, is being able to leave some of the workplace hierarchy behind- to accept ideas from other departments and other disciplines- and to give junior staff a voice.

5. Leadership

Making innovation happen requires doing things differently, and often involves changes to current process or approaches – successful innovation needs leadership. This is not always about one person, over the course of an innovation process or project- different people can take the torch – when someone takes the torch, and they mean it, the ideas created stand a much better chance of becoming real. Successful innovation is rarely a ground-up thing – sponsorship at a senior level, someone to clear the roadblocks, confirm the budgets, reallocate the team resources… all of these sound relatively dull, but they are what leaders of successful innovation processes do.

We’ve called this  a top 5, it is subjective, based on our experiences – for more on The Ideas Machine case studies and approach, check our latest projects page.

May 12, 2014

Suzuki Method: Inspiration to change how we work ?

Japanese Violinist Dr Suzuki  created a new way for children worldwide to learn music. He believed that studying music leads to a more enriched life.  His methods are not about creating child genius musicians, rather they focus on applying real world observation to the learning process.

Over a quarter of a million young people now learn to play and love music using his methods.  According to Dr Suzuki, all children given the right learning environment can acquire musical ability.  He talks about love more than he talks about treble clefs; his method focuses on encouraging children to learn from each other, and work in groups as well as individually.  Suzuki asks us to consider learning music as we might think about teaching our children to speak. Music becomes habitual, interwoven with daily activities and a partnership between parent and child. We really like this bit from the British Suzuki Institute website :

“Suzuki wrote an account about his teaching method, how he developed it and some of the results achieved by his pupils. He entitled it “Nurtured By Love.” Nurtured – because Suzuki believed that musical ability lies in all children. He did not believe he was imposing a skill upon a child; he was, rather, guiding them to manifest what they already possessed. Love – because Suzuki music teaching is not about breeding musicians or inculcating skills in children. It is about the amazing results that can be achieved when understanding, sensitivity and discipline are brought together in a single field of study. The glue that binds these various elements together is, Suzuki believed, love.”

When you see Suzuki Method in action, vs the classical method of child at piano with teacher alone, practicing from books and separation of playing and theory, Suzuki’s methods seem intuitive and blindingly obvious in comparison. ( As well as being a whole lot more fun).  You can find out more about Dr Suzuki and his methodology here.

This got us thinking at The Ideas Machine, what if we apply similar thinking to the world of work ?

How often in business do we do things because that’s the way it has always been done ?

How often we ‘get through’ processes and training as a kind of necessary evil ?

How often we inflict this kind of stuff on junior staff…. after all we went through it so why shouldn’t they ?

Dr Suzuki looked at the way children learn, he looked at how they like to sit and created a ‘twinkle C’ a whole 8 notes up from the classic middle C note, and much more comfortable for a child to reach.  He thought about why children get nervous about performing, so added group learning to negate any ‘fear’ of others hearing you play from the get go.

When we are at work, when we are faced with situations, processes and training that feels irksome, tiring, or just plain bad… what’s really going on ? What can we learn from Dr Suzuki about taking a step back, thinking through some fundamentals and getting a new perspective ?

An intuitive way to nurture musical talent

An intuitive way to nurture musical talent

April 7, 2014

Dogs & Cats Takeover Snapchat

We love it when the socio-sphere comes a little closer to the real world.  Digi-land is a place where we often find ourselves in a Dorothy-like tornado of hashtags, bitly shortcodes,  jargon and apps with very, very silly names…Pet lovers on Snapchat are bringing us back down to earth.

Snapchat’s pet obsessives cut through that mess of stuff that no-one really understands and just send out pictures of their special furry companions. People love pictures of fluffy animals, and if they own one, ( a fluffy animal that is) they love nothing more than telling others all about it.

Pet lovers have been talking to their pets, sharing pictures and stories about their beloved animals for years. So it comes as little surprise that Snapchat is full of Cat /Dog pictures.  Go Pet Lovers Everywhere! The Ideas Machine salutes you.

Dogs on Snapchat

Dogs on Snapchat

 

April 4, 2014

A Few Tiny Rooms in London rated in Top 3 on Tripadvisor

London has literally hundreds of thousands of options for tourists, visitors. So what do you think the world’s biggest peer review network Trip Advisor rates regularly in the top 3 of the long, long list ? The Answer : Hint Hunt.

Hint Hunt is a live, interactive,  escape game, for 3-5 people, based around 3 small rooms, in a really small office building near Soho, London.  Gamers get 60 minutes to crack the puzzles and get out on time. Simple. And if the reviews are anything to go by they love it!

This little place beats Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, The London Eye….. rated third of thousands on Trip Advisor,  Hint Hunt is hard to find out much about ( players respect the element of surprise and don’t reveal too much in their posts).

This is a lesson, if any of us really need one, in the true power of peer review and social media /networks. Tripadvisor reviews have taken this tiny enterprise to the very, very top of the table.

Entrance to Hint Hunt

March 14, 2014

How Ideas Spread- the New Science of 'Social Physics'

Ever wondered why some ideas spread and others don’t ? Well MIT Professor Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland’s new book “Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread — The Lessons from a New Science,”  seeks to answer just that.  The theory examines the interplay between exploration and engagement. Unsurprisingly he discovers that levels of engagement, face to face interactions and connections to multiple networks are conducive to the social ‘habits’ that nurture and grow ideas.  Importantly his findings are quantitative.

“We have enough data to take all of these theories about people and innovation and good decision-making and make them quantitative,” Pentland says. “And when you do that, you find that there are some reasonably simple principles that account for 80, 90 percent of the variance in some cases.”

Another great contribution to the behavioural economics field – Pentland is worth reading because it is quantitatively robust- using the massive opportunity that access to networked Big Data provides.

Pentland's Book, Social Physics

Pentland’s Book, Social Physics

February 27, 2014

Risky Guerrilla Marketing

Would you be brave enough to advertise your job seeking site like this ?

The secret to great guerrilla marketing lies in the PR value of it’s pick up, this example did the rounds a while back, and still ranks as one of the best I’ve seen!

Does your job suck this much ?

Does your job suck this much ?

February 20, 2014

The Secret to Successful Omnichannel Retailing

Retailers’ worst fear is customers coming in store to browse, touch, feel and try, then leaving to go price hunting online – ultimately buying from an online retail competitor.  Worse, and what brings retailers out in cold sweats is a customer standing right there in a heated, well lit, beautifully merchandised store and buying from someone else via their smartphone.

Dark days,  and high pressure stuff in a world where we can bid and win on an item on eBay in less than the time it takes the Barista to serve up a latte, where Amazon delivers  whatever, wherever, whenever at the stroke of a smartphone and where price savvy customers will seek out bargains online.

Even more alarming for off line retailers seeking to maximise the value of their floorspace are apps like RedLaser ( over 27million downloads), allowing customers to scan UPC codes and see if items are available nearby and at what price- there is literally nowhere for traditional retailers to hide.

Onmichannel retailing as it is called – selling via multiple on and offline channels is not all a race for the bottom. Getting digital sales channels right can enhance an in-store purchase too – in a great article on this stuff, MIT Sloane Management Review– cites examples of both sides of the coin.  One of their stories is about a girl who can’t find what she wants in a shoe store, she is about to leave, when the assistant pulls out the ipad with other lines, more sizes to order and complementary accessories. The assistant helps the shopper get her dream shoes, delivered to her home.

Making the ‘digital transition’ to Omnichannel retailing is a necessity- the article has some excellent examples for retailers seeking to keep their customers and remain competitive. The ideas for retailers range from owning  a niche, bundling, in-store exclusives, through to on /offline promotions and synergies. Interesting, they also note the gap between manufacturing and retailing getting smaller at the back end, and the importance of personalisation, use of data and analytics on the marketing /consumer front end. Fascinating – what happens to traditional publishers when Amazon is contracting with authors direct ?

Redlaser 27 m downloads

Redlaser 27 m downloads

February 14, 2014

Is Tinder the route to love, or Such *swipe* Sorrow?

Valentine’s Day got me thinking about how all things digital are changing our relationships. When the path to true love for many lusty Tinder users involves more swiping than Shakespeare, what future is there for courting and romance ? According to  Bloomberg Business Week, Chief Executive Officer of Tinder, Sean Rad, said, “the word ‘dating’ doesn’t even mean shit to us. What does that even mean?”

Tinder insists it is a ‘friend finding’, not a ‘mate finding’ app, it offers a ‘hot or not’ option to swipe through potential ‘friends’ mates based on their picture and location. Millions are using Tinder as a quicker, instant date /mate option over traditional dating sites.  So has the path to true love becomes a numbers game ? What impact will Tinder have on dating sites like Match.com andOkcupid ?  Are the days of time consuming completion of date site profiles going, going gone when the instant hotline to love or ‘hook ups’ on Tinder beckons ?

More of a traditionalist, (and married to a wonderful man with no need to trawl the web for my life partner) I prefer the amazing example set by the Royal Shakespeare Company in the world of online love. They famously tweeted a modern version of Romeo and Juliet – a fantastic idea and one I am sure Shakespeare would wholeheartedly have approved of.  As Hockney is to the iPad, so William Shakespeare would, I just know it, have embraced the opportunity 140 characters presents. Such Tweet Sorrow ( @Such_Tweet) was an exercise that restored my faith in love and the digi-sphere.  Tinder is the more tragic.

Check out this article – covering what users do on Tinder, and how Tinder execs insist they are in the business of ‘friend finding’ not date seeking. You decide!

Finding Friends on Tinder

February 10, 2014

Do marketing people really need to learn to code ?

I was reading about Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom, a marketer by day, self taught code geek by night, now hundreds of millions of dollars the better for those late nights.The responses across the web shout out about how we too can make millons if we just learn this important new language and put in the hours.

Not necessarily so, according to Betabeat’s Nitasha Tiku, who rightly points out that the genius in many of the multi million dollar apps is based on marketing insight, not code.

Tiku also points out that there is a big difference between knowing how to code and coding well, and that coding is a specific, professional skill – not something we can all make millions from night classes doing.

The success of Codeacademy and other ‘Code for Dummies’ operations lies, in her view, and in mine, in their fantastic marketing – not in their dissemination of coding skills. Being conversant with the nuances of code, and understanding how it works is an important thing, but the best products and services will always require great marketing insights to make them fly.

codeacademy-copy

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