There is Such a Thing as a Bad Idea ~via BeenThereDoneThat and their community member @gluts_gluttony
I was introduced to BeenThereDoneThat by their General Manager Lee Roth, after reconnecting f2f at ProcureCon in November. The BeenThereDoneThat methodology is not only unique, but groundbreaking for many brands. This post gets to the heart of a key problem for brands... Starting with a well defined problem... and "bad ideas." /Ted
Hi, it's Kathy here.
There’s a scene in Pitch Perfect 2 (it’s a classic, don’t judge) when a terrifying but brilliant music producer tells a room of minions and interns to “fire” ideas at him “when ready”, meaning instantly, in response to a brief they’ve just heard. Obviously, they all want to please the producer guy but no one wants to answer lest they expose themselves to his ridicule or the jealousy of their co-workers. As it turns out, one idiot is daft enough to suggest something only to be told by the music producer that it’s "a beautiful example of a horrible idea" and made to sprint laps of the room as creative penance and despite pleading he can’t run in skinny jeans.
What I love about this scene is that we have all been there. Not sprinting in skinny jeans, though possibly that too. No, anyone in a creative field has been in a workshop where they are told at the start ‘there’s no such thing as a bad idea’ and then, not 15 minutes later, either experienced the moment when someone offers a terrible idea, or, worse, been the one to suggest it. And, oh, how we all long for the boldness to respond like the music producer. Of course, since few of us “sleep on a bed of Grammys” and most of us are nice people, we don’t.
But it does illustrate that sometimes we instinctively know an idea is just horrible. Mostly these ideas get killed off quickly by people in the workshop deftly, and more kindly than the music producer, responding with “yes, and [insert other idea to distract the group]” or “that makes me think of [insert tangent to move conversation on]” or the moderator chips in with, “thanks for that, Bob. I think this would be a good time to review all the ideas so far…”. Mostly, there’s a collective instinct in the room.
Mostly. But not always. Sometimes the room, real or metaphorical, is such a bubble, so insulated from the real world, that dreadful ideas seem like good ones and concepts which should have flopped in development can make it all the way to consumers. My specialism is the food sector and, having attended more NPD ‘ideation’ workshops than I care to remember and as a judge for the Great Taste Awards (an annual scheme which gives 1-3 star badges to food products and is judged blind by specialists), I am often surprised by how many bad ideas come to fruition. Sometimes when judging for the awards (which involves tasting up to 50 products a day, across random categories, and accessing their flavour, quality etc) you sit, tasting the tiniest morsel you can of, say, vegan tuna, and wondering, “how did this ever come to market?”. Do vegans really want to eat a tuna substitute, even if it looks and tastes like cat food? And in other moments, are muesli eaters begging for popping candy muesli to liven up breakfast? Do the craft ale drinkers of the world really want a passionfruit flavoured ale? And who, for the love of God, needs a hotdog, complete with bread roll and mustard, in a can?
Over many such troubling tastings, I have come to the conclusion that bad ideas happen when the development process is guided by what a manufacturer can do rather than what it should do – ie: what the consumer needs. When for example, an engineer thinks, “I know! We’ve already got that popping candy maker for X product, why don’t we use it in our muesli line too?” (Though personally, I don’t see the need for popping candy in anything.) Too often bad NPD is driven by what is possible in the factory rather than by why anyone would want it.
Now, I appreciate I am, as an ex-account planner, biased towards the consumer, and I know some would argue that a consumer led approach is futile because sometimes consumers ‘don’t know what they want’. But surely, if you can’t find a need for the product, if you can’t find a reason a consumer’s life would be better with this product in it, if you can’t pin the idea to a compelling insight, then, for me, this is the very definition of a bad idea and someone needs to run a lap in skinny jeans.
As always, we are curious to hear what you think.
Kathy Slack (Community Member at BeenThereDoneThat.)
Originally posted at BeenThereDoneThat’s LinkedIn
