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July 2005 - Strategy Magazine
Biz

Roundtable
Innovate or die
Everyone's talking about innovation, but few marketers actually achieve the real thing. Our panel discusses what it takes to get it right

by Lisa D'Innocenzo
page 10

Moderator:

(E) Christine Ross, partner, Spider Marketing Solutions, managing director, KiC

McArthur: Innovation is now on everybody's lips. Clients have taken a bit more initiative with it in terms of dedicating time in the marketer's agenda. Why's it happening?

Nykoliation: [When I was at] Kraft, it really did come out of a business need: How do you grow [very established brands] unless the population is growing, which it wasn't. The traditional brand model wasn't getting the results. [You had to] flip it and say: "What is it that you really do care about and what role could I possibly play?" and then fit your product into that situation.

Barroll: True innovation doesn't just meet and understand consumers' needs, it gets ahead of where existing behaviour is.

So, for example, Apple got ahead of what was innovation and Nike truly changed the way sports apparel was manufactured and marketed.

McArthur: The age-old role of the marketer is to identify a consumer need and fill it. Is innovation the ability to do that sooner and faster than anyone else? Or is it recognizing something that consumers haven't recognized yet?

Barroll: I think there are a few different layers. One would be the high ground of true sustainable, competitive advantage, which is recognizing what hasn't been recognized before, and then the second layer is identifying consumer needs. Third is where most companies play, the main competitive "me-too" phase, and then the fourth is losing ground because they aren't doing anything.

McArthur: Do you think it's possible to actually lead consumer behaviour from a marketing perspective?

Barroll: Major companies that are innovating are creating needs. For instance, we never had a need for a $4 cup of coffee until Starbucks came along.

Ross: True innovation is a great idea that has commercial value. Companies that do it found a way to be the first ones out with an idea, got the early adopters on, and then took it to the mass market. So are we seeing a need and filling it, or is someone doing a good job of seeing where we're going as society?

Barroll: That's a great point. Innovation starts to influence society and culture. Globally we're becoming a fast food world, and that was driven by the convenience that McDonald's created. With Starbucks, now there's arguably this whole other trend towards experience.

But certainly there's an element of seeing the early points of a trend and making it larger than life to the point where it drives the trend.

Ross: There's a huge contingency out there of professional trending companies. There's one called WGFN out of New York.

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