In an unprecedented era of innovation and value creation leading brands are taking ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking out of the cliché pile and making it a way of life. Lateral Thinking™ is one approach I use that enables breakthrough, creating a lens that helps marketers see hidden opportunity.
It’s difficult to escape the pervasive influence that brands have on our lives.
In “The Unexpected Universe” naturalist Loren Eisley tells of coming upon a spider in a forest spinning the sticky spokes of the web that extend her senses out into the world. Just so, brand planners need to find ways of extending their senses far beyond what can be directly perceived by their ears and eyes. Like the spider, brand planners sit in the middle of a complex web, listening, watching, waiting.
Ideas for brand innovation can come from anywhere. More and more leading brands are finding ways to layer and integrate the right features, functions and benefits to appeal to the widest possible audience.
In sports the sweet spot is that one special place on a baseball bat, golf club or tennis racket that drives the ball farther or faster with less effort than when it is hit any where else. In the marketing world there are campaign sweet spots too. And when your campaign idea strikes resonant emotional chords with your target consumer’s internal sweet spot then outsized profit and market share gains occur.
