Newism – and why that spells heaven or hell from brands
Newism … And why that spells heaven or hell from Brands.
That’s how the people at Trend watching title their latest trend briefing. They define it as:
The ‘new’ has never been hotter, as the entire world, from emerging to mature economies, is now creating new products, services and experiences on a daily, if not hourly basis, in every B2C industry. Which moves ‘new’ from being a tired marketing ploy by ‘old’ brands (‘new and improved!’), to a genuine, exciting proposition for consumers.
They talk too about Creative > Destruction with the ‘creation’ (is) outweighing the ‘destruction. The key for me, however, is the line:
Which moves ‘new’ from being a tired marketing ploy by ‘old’ brands (‘new and improved!’), to a genuine, exciting proposition for consumers.
There is a lot of stuff now isn’t there? In the online world there’s a lot of content, a huge choice of where to get it and, for every service, there’s several providers. Creating exciting propositions around these deliveries – creating the best possible experiences – is truer now than it ever has been.
Over the last few days I signed up for a cloud-based backup system. It didn’t work and since my initial email to cancel that company has done its damndest to hold on to me. But because there’s such an accessible choice for this and almost everything else we need now then stuff that doesn’t work is going to cut it.
Stuff that doesn’t create genuine and exciting propositions isn’t going to do too well either.
For ‘genuine’ we can read ‘new’, ‘different’ or ‘innovative’. The report mentions the phenomenal successes of folks like Instagram and Omgpop’s Drawsomething. These are examples of both creation and of destruction – they were something new and fresh whilst destroying the existing boundaries and limits of the ‘norms’ that existed in those online genres. If imitation is the sincerest from of flattery then ‘being bought by the incumbent behemoths must be the ‘sincerest form of disruption acknowledgement’.
But being innovative or new or different is quite a challenge. I spent a morning with some folks a few weeks ago and introduced the session with them by explaining why we are programmed to generally not seek out the new whilst rather looking for the familiar and the well known.
Creating a culture of innovation is something that can be achieved but rather (counter intuitively) it’s often best achieved by following some quite pragmatic steps. There are processes and tactics towards innovation. Thinking that it’s magically bestowed on an isolated few is a mistake.
In industries (like the travel industry) full of incumbents, fuddy duddies and ‘ways of doing things’ that stretch back years, the opportunities for Creativity and a bit of Destruction are rife.
And because of a seemingly unstoppable craving for exciting ‘actual’ propositions and the moving away from believing the brands’ strap line and hollow promises, it looks like being an exciting time when it could be said that only the most destructive may prosper.
