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Brainstorming fresh and compelling new claims can step-change the appeal of an existing brand or business, and can also guide future R&D product development work. We define a winning claim as one memorable promise you can make about a brand or a product's benefit, that grabs your target customers attention and encourages them to buy.
If you are looking to brainstorm new claims for your business in 2023, listed below are five thoughts to consider. And if you already have some claims that you have identified, but want to make them stronger, check out one of our blog reports on how to write more compelling claims.
1. Focus Claim Generation on Key Benefit Areas
The clue is in the definition.....winning claims are a compelling promise about your brand's or products benefit. Sounds simple, but before you dive into claim generation, make sure you are clear about the key benefits you are focusing on. In most cases, the benefits for focus are determined by five factors: a) the key technical benefit of your product, or any future pipeline benefits that your product can support; b) your brand equity benefit / what your brand stands for; c) benefits and claims where your competitors are focused; d) the main needs (and unmet needs) of your existing customer base, together with any new and relevant market trends; e) and any potential gaps in the market that are being overlooked by your competition. Read more about how to define your innovation focus.
2. Be Inspired by Deeper Insights and Trends
Once you have identified the benefits areas for focus, go in search of deeper insights and “pain-points” that could help inspire the generation of new claims. This might include revisiting “old research data” with a fresh pair of eyes, or conducting “social media listening” to capture additional insights from online blogs, community forums or competitive product reviews. In addition to "looking out", take time to understand deeper technical insights about your own products including how they are made, ingredients used, and any technical testing results. Many of the brands and companies that we work with have huge amounts of data that can still be relevant for new claims, however, if there are gaps in thinking, look for additional insights from consumer observational work or depth interviews. To find out more, watch this video on how to identify deeper insights to drive idea generation.
3. Encourage Broader and More Creative Thinking
With a clear innovation focus and deeper insights, you should be ready to brainstorm some winning claims. But do this in an agile way that is designed to maximise the creative talents of your internal teams, together with fresh thinking from external creative agents and creative-thinking customers. We also recommend that you use smart online ideation tools to engage the creative talents of a much wider team, and if you can, run a claims workshop. Workshops can be enhanced with direct involvement from target consumers, either by attending the session to provide feedback, or via overnight evaluation of early ideas. We recommend that this claims brainstorming work is run over a period of 1 or 2 weeks, combining workshops in different locations together with online virtual brainstorming sessions with global teams.
4. Be Inspired By Claims From Others
In addition to using deeper insights and creative thinking tasks, look to be inspired by claims used by other brands and companies, and not just by your direct competitors. Take a look at our January 23 blog report on five examples of winning claims. Consider for a variety in the styles of claims, including claims that are more emotional or more rational in their language; claims that promote being first or better than their competitors; how some brands make one principal promise that is supported by "sub-claims"; how technical and clinical data is used; and for regulatory reasons, how companies often make inferred claims using key visuals or broader imagery. However, in our experience, some of the most compelling claims manage to combine a promise that is both emotional and rational, and where the promise is strongly linked to the equity of the brand. Build up your bank of relevant claims, and use these to inspire your team.
5. Quickly Refine and Test Your Leading Claims
On most projects, we look to quickly refine and screen at least 40-50 "leading claims with potential" with target customers and key stakeholders in priority markets. Copy writers should be used to ensure that all leading claims are written in a consistent style with a similar length, language and with a clear claim that “hits the reader early”. We screen and test claims using Zip-Zap Ideas® including at least two “known benchmarks” (claims that have tested well in previous studies or that are already doing well in the market). When assessing the results, on most projects, we are looking for 6 to 8 "winning claims" that are “significantly more appealing” against all ideas tested and against the known benchmark. These winning claims can then be used to guide the development of new marketing campaigns plus deeper product development work.