Tag Archives: Nissan

Where Must Marketing Innovation Come From?

Where Must Marketing Innovation Come From?The world of marketing and advertising used to be very simple. If you got a branding or marketing job with a company, you would inherit an agency that the person above you or before you had hired to work with the company to get your advertising and marketing campaigns developed and executed. After a few years if you worked in an agency you might go work for a company and manage an agency, or after a few years working in marketing or advertising for a company you might leave to go work for an agency, and this cycle might repeat several times over the course of your career.

In this simple environment, companies looked to their agencies to bring them innovations in marketing and/or advertising.

But this simple world of marketing and advertising is being disrupted and made more complex in the same way that many other industries are (think book publishing, book retailing, management consulting, etc.).

We live in an era where people have more places in which they can collect and share experiences, both on-line and off-line. Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, hundreds of cable TV channels, hundreds of satellite radio channels, on-demand audio and video (both online and off), Pinterest, Instagram, meetups, unconferences, flash mobs, etc.

We live in an era where marketing and advertising work can be fulfilled not just via the company/agency partnership, but also via co-creation with customers, crowdsourcing, via crowdfunding, or utilizing cloud labor or crowd computing.

With the rise of the digital marketplace also came a plethora of new digital and social marketing and advertising agencies, many of which were snapped up by giants like WPP to infuse some new thinking and “innovation” into their traditional direct marketing and advertising execution methods.

But now, comes the news that Nissan (who has switched their slogan from “Innovation for All” to “Innovation that Excites”) has created their own Marketing Innovation Lab rather than just relying on their roster of agencies to bring them innovations. Nissan may not be the only company to do something similar, but it begs the question, where should marketing innovation come from?

Obviously Nissan doesn’t feel that they are getting enough innovation in their marketing efforts from their agencies, and it makes you wonder, shouldn’t it be the agencies not the companies who are looking to find and support upstart companies and apps with marketing and media potential?

Well, why should any company look to source innovation from any one place, even if it is marketing innovation?

I would say that every company looking to succeed at ANY type of innovation should be looking to collect dots to connect from as many sources as possible, including:

  1. Agencies and Advisory Firms
  2. Co-Creation with Customers
  3. Crowdsourcing
  4. Partners
  5. Suppliers
  6. Competitors
  7. Adjacent Industries
  8. Distant Industries
  9. Market Research (ethnography, surveys, focus groups, trends, etc.)
  10. Startups
  11. … (insert your favorite here)

So, where will your next marketing innovation come from?

And, who are you working with from outside in order to bring innovation inside?


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The Adopted Child of Innovation

The Adopted Child of InnovationInnovation is everywhere. Or at least the word is. CEOs talk about innovation, every technology company claims to be innovative (or to want innovative employees) and now we’re even seeing advertisements on television talk about innovation. Even Nissan, which has had innovation in their tagline for two years now, has decided to change their tagline from “Innovation for All” to something new “Innovation that Excites.” Okay, it still has innovation in it. But, the fact that they decided to move from innovation being something that is democratic, to something that is exciting, is an interesting shift. Maybe now that everybody is claiming to be innovative they felt the need to say, “No, our innovations aren’t like everyone else’s, our innovations are exciting!”

Because people talk about innovation so much, and misuse the term so frequently, I think it is important to reiterate my definition of innovation and talk a bit about the differences between invention and innovation and the differences between innovation and improvement. My definition of innovation is:

Innovation transforms the useful seeds of invention into solutions valued above every existing alternative – and achieves wide adoption.”

Adoption is of course key to something moving from being an invention to innovation, but then so of course is the threshold that something is valued above every existing alternative, and as a result isn’t just merely useful – but valuable. Crossing this threshold means that people willingly replace their existing solution. Crossing this threshold is what solidifies your solution as a true innovation. And that’s the point.

Improvement versus Replacement

All companies must focus on improving their existing solutions. But at the same time they must also constantly be on guard against other ways of potentially solving the same customer problem or fulfilling the same customer need. Six Sigma does a great job at fulfilling the mission of improvement and at helping to achieve operational excellence. But while an organization must be ruthless in their pursuit of perfection, or the amount of perfection that their customers are willing to pay for and that they can make profitably, organizations must also make a commitment to the pursuit of innovation excellence. The reason companies must strike a balance between the pursuit of improvement and replacement is that sooner or later something will become possible that wasn’t possible before – due to changes in technology AND customer psychological readiness for change – creating an opening for replacement. Really good value translation (and education) can help accelerate that customer readiness, but launching before both conditions exist can lead to financial ruin. When replacement does become inevitable, the only question is whether you will continue to focus on improvement and be replaced, or whether you will have the courage to replace your own solution with a new one…

Is there any innovation here to excite?

For fun you might want to check out one of the latest Nissan advertisements from the United Kingdom for the Nissan Juke that I’ve embedded below. Is the car itself innovative? No. Is the advertisement innovative? No. But it is creative. Is there any innovation in the product at all? Well, that depends. It depends on whether there are any new components that don’t just merely improve their performance but instead completely replace the traditional approaches to solving the targeted problem or performing the job-to-be-done. What do you think, true or false?

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Innovation or Invention? – Gyroscopically Stabilized Electric Motorcycle

Innovation or Invention? - Gyroscopically Stabilized Electric MotorcycleI came across the C-1 from Lit Motors in an article by Donna Sturgess over on Innovation Excellence that made me wonder, will this be an invention or an innovation?

As you may know my definition of innovation stresses that a new offering must transform the useful seeds on invention into solutions valued above every existing alternative. An there are lots of existing alternatives in this space including:

  • Bicycle
  • Public Transportation
  • Skateboards and Razr Scooters
  • Smart ForTwo
  • BMW C1 (launched in 2000)
  • Standard Motorcycle
  • Standard Scooter
  • Segway
  • Segway Hands-Free
  • Nissan Leaf (and variants)

Is the gyroscopic stabilization and electric drive enough to distinguish it from some of these other options?

What about at a price of $24,000 – up from earlier estimates of $16,000?

For me there are a couple of key questions. Are they going to try to keep it categorized as a motorcycle or try and get it categorized as a car? And if so, will it survive the car crash safety tests. Although getting it re-classified as a car might make it more accessible (no motorcycle license needed), I have a hard time thinking the greater access would offset the publishing of head on and rear crash test results (and pictures). So, I would place this one in the invention camp – unlikely to reach wide adoption.

What do you think? Invention or innovation?

Is this something that will catch on with commuters around the world?

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