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Over the past 18 months we have run numerous projects for leading global brands to develop and identify winning product concepts or claims, with inputs from teams and target consumers in over 40 countries worldwide.
This month's blog post looks at some of the "Top-Tips" from these projects (and steps to follow) on how you can run more engaging and effective projects with virtual innovation teams.
The nine "Top Tips" shared below follow an agile, creative and collaborative approach that is designed to identify a pipeline of both short and long term ideas that are linked to agreed innovation objectives. Creative thinking is inspired during virtual workshop sessions by focusing on relevant consumer insights and pain-points, together with fresh-inputs from Creative Agents, Copy Writers and fast online target consumer feedback.
The insights that are used to inspire creative thinking are typically defined following insight deep-dive research led by smaller teams, together with inputs from local market stakeholders and Global Trend Scouts. And all steps are supported by Zip-Zap Ideas®, our creative online innovation platform.
1. Define an even tighter focus for virtual innovation projects
Our first "Top-Tip" for any successful front-end innovation project (and especially one that is run virtually), is to be clear about the focus and scope for your innovation thinking. What is the ultimate problem you are trying to solve for your target customer? In many cases, the innovation objective is often prescribed by the overall objectives and strategic direction of the business. For example, the strengths of the business or brand, or the agreed future strategic direction. However, the objective for a virtual innovation project could be even tighter e.g. how to make brand X more accessible to younger people; how to make brand Y even better at delivering convenience; how to exploit emerging AI technologies for better customer service etc. On most projects, we normally identify 3 or 4 "Innovation Challenges" e.g. different customer profiles or end-benefit outcomes. Ultimately, a tighter focus will guide deeper and more creative thinking. For more information, read how to define the innovation focus for a succesful project.
2. Run a virtual "Insights Deep Dive" BEFORE you generate new ideas
Once you have defined the project focus, take time (and probably with a smaller project team) to gather deeper insights and trends linked to the agreed innovation objectives. On most projects, the first thing that we normally do is to revisit “old data” with a fresh pair of eyes. Most brands and companies are sitting on huge amounts of data that can still be relevant. The “old data work" can then be combined with trend scouting from other markets, together with “social media listening” where we capture insights from online blogs, community forums or competitive product reviews. To plug gaps in thinking, or to get fresh language, look to capture additional insights from fast consumer observational work or from online depth interviews. For more information, watch the following movie on finding deeper insights and trends.
3. Take time to identify STAR insights that will inspire creative thinking
With early insights gathered from an Insights Deep-Dive, we recommend that you now engage with your wider virtual team to get their feedback, to help identity and refine the insights that could truly inspire creative thinking. This might be the time to run some virtual insights workshops, getting teams to evaluate "early insights" with the "So What Challenge" - does the insight generate a "so what" response or does it immediately stimulate some fresh thinking? A good insight should inspire creative thinking, by capturing: the situation and context; the specific problem or pain-point; and importantly, the “deeper why” behind the problem. For more information, read a past blog on the key elements of a deeper insight.
4. Use virtual ideation workshops to generate lots of early ideas
As an agency, we have run over 300 1-2 day Idea Hothouse™ workshops in 60 countries worldwide. They provide the energy, focus and creative spark to get cross-functional teams working together to develop totally new ideas. However, in the past 5 years, our experience is that virtual workshops can be as effective, but as long as they are well planned and run in a slightly different way. For best results, you still need to have clear agenda with different thinking tasks and exercises......and you absolutely need to avoid long powerpoint presentations! We also recommend that you break up a typical "one-day workshop" into two or three separate virtual sessions for 12-16 delegates. For more details, watch a video on how we run online brainstorming workshops with Zip-Zap Ideas®.
5. Enhance early ideation work with fresh thinking from external creative agents
If you are struggling to block time with your internal teams, you might consider getting some fresh thinking from external Creative Agents. Working directly with Creative Agents can provide a fast and effective way to turn leading insights into early ideas or claims. For example, Creative Agents could be assigned to each of the virtual break-out rooms within a workshop to assist with idea co-creation, or in advance of the workshop to develop a range of "example ideas" that could stimulate further thinking by the internal teams. Check out a video showing how client teams co-create early ideas with creative agents in a workshop setting. This approach can be equally replicated online, with 10-12 creative consumers joining a 2-3 hour virtual workshop to evaluate early ideas, and to make suggestions on how ideas can be improved.
6. Creative-thinking consumers to get fast feedback to early ideas
Once you have developed some "early ideas", we always recommend that you get some fast feedback from creative-thinking consumers. On most projects, we recommend that this is done as part of an extended virtual ideation workshop, or 2-5 days after the workshop has ended. The creative-thinking consumers need to be well recruited and their main role is to help provide feedback that will help the internal teams to refine some of the leading workshop ideas. Take a look at a blog post from last May that provides some steps to enhance the way you develop and refine ideas with creative-thinking consumers.
7. Professional copy-writers to refine ideas and claims prior to consumer testing
Once you have completed the main virtual ideation tasks, we recommend that leading ideas and claims are refined by external Copy Writers using a standard "mini-concept format". This helps to ensure that all the ideas are written in a similar style, especially if you are then looking to test the final ideas with target consumers. For example, when running a claims development project, we look write all the final claims in a way to ensure that the "memorable promise" is clear, there is a good use of both rational and emotional language, there is a short reason to believe and the claim is linked back to the core insight. For more details, take a look at a past blog on how to write more compelling ideas and claims.
8. Use an online creative facilitator and interactive tools such as Zip-Zap Ideas®
To provide inspiration and to keep people focused, employ the services of a good online creative facilitator. They will help to control and inspire teams at the various virtual meetings, with different tasks and exercises in line with the agreed objectives and agenda. In addition, they should become part of the core project team to help drive the overall project, engaging with delegates in different markets. In addition, we recommend that the project is supported by a relevant online collaboration tools such as Zip-Zap Ideas®. This provides virtual team members with easy way to share, refine and evaluate insights, concepts and claims, either within a virtual workshop itself, or for self-work DIY tasks.
9. Identify the winners and keep on innovating!
Finally, once you have developed and refined a range of different concepts and claims, we recommend that the project is concluded with some fast-feedback from target consumers, to help identify the ideas with greatest potential. Following the brainstorming workshop sessions, we often run overnight fastSCREEN™ consumer panels, for a faster and more cost-effective way of screening "leading ideas" with target consumers and key stakeholders. We typically screen between 24 and 48 mini-concepts that appear in random order...with consumers voting and adding comments. For more details, take a look at this short video on how we test concepts and claims with target consumers.