First Person: What Do “You” Want Today?
When “Time” magazine declared “You” Person of the Year 2006, it marked the official arrival of the age of consumer control. So when it comes to innovation, what do “You” want from new products? The answer, in a word, is “delight.”
But how does, for example, a leading chocolate brand decide where to invest in delightful new products–and what is “delightful” anyway? Chocolate in a bag, a chocolate lollypop, a completely new form of packaged chocolate?
Don’t leave these decisions up to marketing or engineering. To find a solution that delights, one must ask the end user, the consumer.
We’ve been doing that for 20 years, using a process we call IdeaStorm to discover what consumers want in everything from dishwashers to snack foods. And though consumers look for a number of things, there are important commonalities regardless of the product category.
Surprise me—but don’t dare disappoint me
First and foremost, consumers want to be surprised and, yes, delighted by new products. They want their lives enhanced in some small way. Think of the first time you tasted broccoli rabe. If you were like so many others, your thoughts ran along the lines of “Oh, wow! This is spicy and delicious.” That sort of thinking led to the word of mouth that made rabe an “in” veggie.
For all the recent talk about word-of-mouth marketing, actual word of mouth as a marketing force is hardly new. Few folks today remember that the first refrigerators were placed on the front porch so that the neighbors could see (and envy) them, driving word of mouth through the neighborhood in an afternoon. Same thing with television; our next-door neighbor had the first TV on the block. It wasn’t pushed against the wall but placed in the middle of the living room facing the picture window for all to see and talk about.
Developing products today is a matter of knowing what will delight and understanding that the same people who will buy it are the ones who will think up the ideas that will make it a success.
Our redesign of the Similac infant formula container, which replaced the can with an easy-pour bottle, was one such example of listening to the customer. Word of mouth was so powerful that parent company Ross Products charged a dollar more a bottle, although it cost no more to produce, because mothers felt the product was fresher than that of canned condensed milk. It so delighted mothers that Similac sales increased 17% in six months.
Convenience is fine, but delight is better
A delightful product design is easy to understand. Its very simplicity enhances one’s life or solves some daily problem. From a design perspective, the sense of discovery, combined with simplicity of operation (no need to read manuals!), excites and delights. For a product to delight, its operation should be obvious, and it should promise not to easily break–attributes people demand from all household products today.
Delight and excitement in a product are paramount. If a product can delight on the shelf and repeat that emotion at home or wherever else it’s used, word of mouth will carry the product to the heights.
To put it bluntly, people want a perfect product that will delight them when they purchase it, delight them in its use, delight them when they go to replace it, and delight them when they seek other products from that brand. The product has to promise a lot, and then deliver it.
Speaking as a product designer, I readily admit that I don’t know what delights my clients’ customers. But I do know one group of people who do know –the customers themselves. That’s one of the reasons we regularly brainstorm with customers. They tell us what will make them happy.
Gary Grossman is founder/president of Innovations and Development (www.IDIusa.com), an Edgewater, NJ-based product strategy and packaging firm.
Other articles by Gary Grossman:
First Person: Ethnography, Quaker Oatmeal, and Frito-Lay
Blockbuster Products: More Than Mere Functionality
