Leading With Personas
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Presented by Glen Drummond at the 2014 MarketingProfs B2B Forum, Leading With Personas explores the insight and persona development process from four different Quarry client projects - 3 innovation stories and 1 glorious failure. For more about how business leaders use personas to drive innovation, check out: www.quarry.com/lwp.
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Leading With Personas
- 2. 14.10.10 Leading with personas 3 real-life innovation stories (and 1 glorious failure) Glen Drummond, Chief Innovation Officer @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 3. Why were personas relevant in change leadership? @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 4. What factors made the personas useful? @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 5. How was the insight activated? @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 6. www.quarry.com/lwp Sanjay A story about product redesign Isabella A story of new product innovation Susan A cross-channel experience-design story Juno A strategic-marketing turnaround story @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 7. A story about product redesign @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B STORY 1
- 8. With deadlines looming, “I didn’t even have consensus about what the product was.” A requirements nightmare Appeal to current customers Wow investors Leapfrog competitors Achieve fast time-to-market Ensure fast product adoption Reverse and forward compatibility @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 9. How Sanjay led with personas in product redesign From product features to customer-experience design Re-frame from “product design” to “experience design” Build go-to-market scenarios Refresh the view of the customer Choose the persona and scenario 1 3 2 4 6 Ship the product, deliver the experience 5 Prototype, test and preview @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 10. How Sanjay led with personas in product redesign From product features to customer-experience design Build go-to- market scenarios Refresh the view of the customer Choose the persona and scenario 1 3 2 4 6 Ship the product, deliver the experience 5 Prototype, test and preview Re-frame from “product design” to “experience design” @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 11. Differences in “stance” Timothy Justin Raj Motivation 1 Motivation 1 Motivation 1 @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 12. Sanjay’s breakthrough: scenario building @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 13. Justin Timothy Projected adoption scenarios Required performance & proven benefit delivered Implementation time & duration Raj @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 14. A new experience design target Timothy Justin Raj Motivation 1 @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B Motivation 1 Motivation 1
- 15. A new experience concept Fire tower network Remote sensor network @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 16. A leap-frog design Before After @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 17. Key takeaway for savvy marketers 1. New product initiatives call for critical thinking about business model assumptions: For whom? Why? When? 2. In product innovation, targeting choice can be an output of—not just an input to—the design process 3. Scenario-building fosters collaboration, strengthens creativity, and sharpens design focus @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 18. A cross-channel experience-design story @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B STORY 2
- 19. “The sales organization had a huge influence over senior management…and that influence extended to every aspect of marketing, including the website.” • The prevailing wisdom was that the product was sold, not bought. • But what if experience is a bigger differentiator than product? • And, what if the experience of “being sold” was a problem? @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 20. How Susan led cross-channel experience design with personas 4 1 Innovate Frame the problem 2 3 Gather the relevant data Develop empathy with customers @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 21. How Susan led cross-channel experience design with personas 4 1 Innovate Frame the problem 2 3 Gather the relevant data Develop empathy with customers @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 22. Susan’s insight: competing motivations Motivation 1 Motivation 2 @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 23. Susan’s breakthrough: role-playing @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 24. Susan’s innovation Old process – Customer is assigned a sales consultant New customer submits data Sales consultant assigned New process – Customer selects sales consultant New customer reviews and selects sales consultant @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 25. Key takeaway for savvy marketers 1. In the experience economy, tactical initiatives have strategic potential 2. Innovation follows from attention to unarticulated customer needs 3. Role-playing as the personas surfaces uncomfortable truths to pave the way for innovation @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 26. A story of new product innovation @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B STORY 3
- 27. “Our competitors’ technology is disruptive; they’re cherry-picking our highest value customers.” • Faced with the threat of disruption, an industry incumbent attempts to defend with sustaining innovation • A cautionary tale about barriers to experience-driven innovation @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 28. Re-think “customer jobs” 5 2 4 Identify the right target Pair personas with metaphors Set design priorities 1 3 Prototype and test 6 Assess market demand How Isabella led with personas in product innovation @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 29. Re-think “customer jobs” 5 2 4 Identify the right target Pair personas with metaphors Set design priorities 1 3 Prototype and test 6 Assess market demand How Isabella led with personas in product innovation @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 30. Isabella’s breakthrough: tagging the default target as the anti-persona @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 31. Isabella’s glorious failure: dropping the baton between product and marketing @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 32. Formula for innovation failure Product Functional needs Marketing Audiences Sales and service Business value Functional group Segmentation focus @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 33. Required for experience innovation Product Functional needs Marketing Audiences Sales and service Business value Differences in motivation relevant to this field of experience Functional group Segmentation focus Strategic segmentation framework @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 34. Key takeaway for savvy marketers 1. Great design personas can help product-innovation teams design product breakthroughs 2. But product teams require other groups to understand and execute on their innovation 3. If product innovation and marketing reference different customer models, great ideas can die in the gap @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 35. A strategic-marketing turnaround story @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B STORY 4
- 36. “We have to stop conceding ground before this becomes a threat to our enterprise business too.” • A market leader experiencing share erosion in an underserved corner of its business • Years of tweaks to marketing mix factors had not produced results • Time for a more fundamental re-think @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 37. Frame the problem How Juno led with personas in a strategic-marketing turnaround Challenge old assumptions Bridge the old with the new Make the theory practical 1 3 2 4 5 Share success stories @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 38. Frame the problem How Juno led with personas in a strategic-marketing turnaround Challenge old assumptions Bridge the old with the new Make the theory practical 1 3 2 4 5 Share success stories @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 39. Juno’s breakthrough: “The differences that make a difference” @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 40. Bridging new insight with familiar models Classification Organizational and economic attributes (e.g., revenue, location, operating model) Orientation Patterns in customers’ conscious choices and behaviors; answers the question “how do customers behave relative to their environment?” Stance Differences in customers’ attitudes and motivations; answers the question “why does a customer behave this way/make these decisions?” Classification Orientation Stance @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 41. Sharing strategic insight in tactical tools Persona and additional addenda Finance focused Purchase focused Product focused @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 42. Key takeaway for savvy marketers 1. Existing views of the customer, whatever their merits, exist because of the task-goals they serve 2. To make way for new insight, savvy marketers build bridges between old and new views 3. Embedding the new insight into tools that serve task-goals better helps on-board new perspectives @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 43. Common themes Sanjay Susan Isabella Juno @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 44. Why are personas relevant in change leadership? • They make complexity manageable • They displace prior biases and assumptions • They shift “empathy” from an individual to a collective aptitude @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 45. THEY FEEL “REAL” THEY ARE PURPOSE-BUILT THEY SHAKE UP CATEGORIES ACTIONABILITY What factors make the personas useful? @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 46. How is insight activated? • Integrate it with other creative problem-solving tools • Integrate it in collaborative activities @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 47. Back to the future... marketing for what comes next www.quarry.com/lwp @QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #MPB2B
- 48. Thank you! @Quarry @gdrummond #mpb2b
Notas do Editor
- Overview This presentation is not a case study – rather it is a study of patterns, and transferable lessons from a set of cases in which I had the good fortune to be a well-placed fly upon the wall. I’m going to share from the outset that this is a little different from typical case studies in the following respects: The heros of these case studies are themselves personas. Will grant you that there are real people walking around this good earth who might think they recognize themselves in the four people I’m going to tell you about – and they would be able to cite similarities – but they would not be entirely correct. We’ve been working in this field since 2001. The four people you are going to meet actually represent a group of change leader’s we’ve observed over a decade and a half of case work. The stories I’m going to tell you, are based on events that actually happened, but they have some information that is historically true, some that is left out, and some that is a complete fabrication. And here’s the thing, I am not going to tell you what parts of the story fit in which of these buckets. We sign, and respect tight non-disclosure agreements. The only way for us to reveal the powerful business insights of these stories, is to translate our experience into fictions that can tell such truths. Because we’re now in the realm of story-telling proper – rather that “conference case study presentation” we have given ourselves a novel permission…to learn together not just from stories that everyone would consider a success – but also from glorious failures. Failure is an important topic in innovation, but how often have you gone to a conference and had a chance to here failure stories told in the first person? That’s about as common as finding a screen door on a submarine.So I’m going to place actually more emphasis on failure than success here – just because I can! So – with that out of the way – I’m going to ask you to willingly suspend your disbelief in these stories and characters – just as you would if you sat down in a theatre and waited for the curtain to rise and the play to begin. There will be characters, and scenes, plots and actions and when the curtains come down and the lights come up, you’ll come away having had an experience that gives you a little more insight into the human condition – or in this case, the human condition for people leading innovation initiatives in corporate america.
- Now that we’ve clarified a few things about the fictional dimensions of the “who” I want to talk about the In this particular set of stories – let me tell you about my motive in telling these stories: I intend to reveal for you some insight on these three questions, and I encourage you to keep these questions close at hand as we embark upon the stories. Why? Why were personas relevant as change leadership tools?
- What? What were actors in the actionability of the personas in these situations?
- How? How was the insight that had been encoded in the personas activated by the change leader as a fuel source for innovation? So now let’s begin.
- I’m going to fly through these stories – giving approximately 10 minutes each to relay work that spanned in some cases more than a year’s work. To make us both feel better about that, I’m also going to offer to share with you an e-booklet that tells these stories in greater depth. Just see me after the presentation, or visit the Marketing Profs Website and link through to it, or visit the Quarry website to find a more detailed telling of these stories. Tell people about the 4 stories – their type, complex business situations What’s the nature of the stories? Product redesign Cross-channel experience design A strategic marketing turnaround New product innovation
- Sanjay’s story is not all that uncommon. A software engineer by training, Sanjay found himself at the helm of a team responsible for a product redesign effort. Sanjay’s company—a computing hardware and software leader—had slipped behind in a market it once owned and senior people had a sense of urgency about getting the new product to market and reclaiming market share. Sanjay knew that the challenge of meeting high expectations was compounded by a highly diverse team of engineers, UX experts, and product, program and project managers. Equally brilliant and trusted members of the team offered sharply different opinions about the vision of the product. Plus, there were competing goals and objectives—appeal to current customers, leapfrog competitors, achieve fast time-to-market to satisfy the sales organization and the street, ensure fast product adoption, and protect the brand through compatibility with past and future hardware—that were often unspoken and cloaked within the requirements document.
- Timelines were crazy, consensus was low on objectives and priorities and vision on what the new product was was divided. “In short, it was your typical requirements-management nightmare.” REQUIREMENTS: • appeal to current customers • wow investors • leapfrog competitors • achieve fast time-to-market • ensure fast product adoption • reverse and forward compatibility
- The first and most central accomplishment was to reframe and realign from the design of a product to the design of a customer experience. This framing created a more customer-centric approach – introduced a methodology that could help resolve design issues through a design process (rather than just an engineering one).
- The first and most central accomplishment was to reframe and realign from the design of a product to the design of a customer experience. This framing created a more customer-centric approach – introduced a methodology that could help resolve design issues through a design process (rather than just an engineering one).
- The shift from engineering, product-focused thinking to designing – customer-focused thinking is a shift from a progressive linear convergence to an alternation of divergent and convergent steps. Rather than continuing to argue about what’s the best way to build the product – the persona-enriched design process gave SanJay an opportunity to develop rich scenarios of different possible ways to build the product. These were composed from the persona – the differential emphasis in goals and needs of the personas – and also the practical considerations of appeal to current customer base, the time required to build the minimum viable solution for the scenarios, and the expected pattern of market adoption under each. This latter consideration turned out to be a key deciding feature in achieving a consensus on what to build, for whom, why, and with what expected go-to-market messages, and organizational implications. And – this could all be shared with a largely enterprise sales force audience who appreciated the clarity and coherence of the scenario. Targeted, clear, smart, innovative (and frankly – limited risk to the existing customer franchise).
- The shift from engineering, product-focused thinking to designing – customer-focused thinking is a shift from a progressive linear convergence to an alternation of divergent and convergent steps. Rather than continuing to argue about what’s the best way to build the product – the persona-enriched design process gave SanJay an opportunity to develop rich scenarios of different possible ways to build the product. These were composed from the persona – the differential emphasis in goals and needs of the personas – and also the practical considerations of appeal to current customer base, the time required to build the minimum viable solution for the scenarios, and the expected pattern of market adoption under each. This latter consideration turned out to be a key deciding feature in achieving a consensus on what to build, for whom, why, and with what expected go-to-market messages, and organizational implications. And – this could all be shared with a largely enterprise sales force audience who appreciated the clarity and coherence of the scenario. Targeted, clear, smart, innovative (and frankly – limited risk to the existing customer franchise). IMAGES THAT SHOW A CIRCULARITY, RECURSIVENEESS TO THE THINKING PROCESS
- The shift from engineering, product-focused thinking to designing – customer-focused thinking is a shift from a progressive linear convergence to an alternation of divergent and convergent steps. Rather than continuing to argue about what’s the best way to build the product – the persona-enriched design process gave SanJay an opportunity to develop rich scenarios of different possible ways to build the product. These were composed from the persona – the differential emphasis in goals and needs of the personas – and also the practical considerations of appeal to current customer base, the time required to build the minimum viable solution for the scenarios, and the expected pattern of market adoption under each. This latter consideration turned out to be a key deciding feature in achieving a consensus on what to build, for whom, why, and with what expected go-to-market messages, and organizational implications. And – this could all be shared with a largely enterprise sales force audience who appreciated the clarity and coherence of the scenario. Targeted, clear, smart, innovative (and frankly – limited risk to the existing customer franchise).
- The shift from engineering, product-focused thinking to designing – customer-focused thinking is a shift from a progressive linear convergence to an alternation of divergent and convergent steps. Rather than continuing to argue about what’s the best way to build the product – the persona-enriched design process gave SanJay an opportunity to develop rich scenarios of different possible ways to build the product. These were composed from the persona – the differential emphasis in goals and needs of the personas – and also the practical considerations of appeal to current customer base, the time required to build the minimum viable solution for the scenarios, and the expected pattern of market adoption under each. This latter consideration turned out to be a key deciding feature in achieving a consensus on what to build, for whom, why, and with what expected go-to-market messages, and organizational implications. And – this could all be shared with a largely enterprise sales force audience who appreciated the clarity and coherence of the scenario. Targeted, clear, smart, innovative (and frankly – limited risk to the existing customer franchise).
- Summary here of how it worked out A reduction in the cognitive load required of people Look after things in the background, brought things to the foreground
- Summary here of how it worked out A reduction in the cognitive load required of people Look after things in the background, brought things to the foreground
- How it worked out – commentary here
- This is a story that eventually became a happy clicks to bricks story – but it began with more brick walls. DESIGN NOTE: Can we switch out the wall from a simple brick wall to a more ornate one that go with financial institution
- Susan found herself charged with redesigning the corporate website for a large financial services company. Susan had customer feedback, as well as her own instincts, telling her that the current web experience was far from great. There were obvious opportunities for improvement, so the redesign should have been an easy win. But the whole process was fraught with internal political peril. “The prevailing wisdom was that our product was sold, not bought, so the commissioned sales force had a huge influence over senior management,” Susan recalls. “And that influence extended to every aspect of marketing, including the website.” Layer onto that the usual jostling of product managers competing for prime web real estate, a risk-averse business culture, the weight of regulatory compliance and you have a situation where Susan’s opportunity to maneuver and make measurable change was narrow. Susan needed to make the site a lightening rod for new customer acquisition. What she lacked was a compass that could lead her beyond the situation’s constraints and guide the success of the project. Possible call out: “.”
- Susan found herself charged with redesigning the corporate website for a large financial services company. Susan had customer feedback, as well as her own instincts, telling her that the current web experience was far from great. There were obvious opportunities for improvement, so the redesign should have been an easy win. But the whole process was fraught with internal political peril. “The prevailing wisdom was that our product was sold, not bought, so the commissioned sales force had a huge influence over senior management,” Susan recalls. “And that influence extended to every aspect of marketing, including the website.” Layer onto that the usual jostling of product managers competing for prime web real estate, a risk-averse business culture, the weight of regulatory compliance and you have a situation where Susan’s opportunity to maneuver and make measurable change was narrow. Susan needed to make the site a lightening rod for new customer acquisition. What she lacked was a compass that could lead her beyond the situation’s constraints and guide the success of the project. Possible call out: “The prevailing wisdom was that our product was sold, not bought.”
- Susan found herself charged with redesigning the corporate website for a large financial services company. Susan had customer feedback, as well as her own instincts, telling her that the current web experience was far from great. There were obvious opportunities for improvement, so the redesign should have been an easy win. But the whole process was fraught with internal political peril. “The prevailing wisdom was that our product was sold, not bought, so the commissioned sales force had a huge influence over senior management,” Susan recalls. “And that influence extended to every aspect of marketing, including the website.” Layer onto that the usual jostling of product managers competing for prime web real estate, a risk-averse business culture, the weight of regulatory compliance and you have a situation where Susan’s opportunity to maneuver and make measurable change was narrow. Susan needed to make the site a lightening rod for new customer acquisition. What she lacked was a compass that could lead her beyond the situation’s constraints and guide the success of the project. Possible call out: “The prevailing wisdom was that our product was sold, not bought.”
- The research revealed that there was a sizable group of under-served customers with a high level of need but who felt an aversion to the industry. Under Susan’sdirection, this tension was distilled into a persona who was quite different from the conventional view of the customer, yet was easily recognizable by those around the table.
- A turning point in the project occurred when Susan got groups of project contributors and stakeholders to do a little method acting – literally adopting the role of this interesting new persona. The effect was startling. Once in role, and thus freed of their normal inhibitions, members of the team spoke the painful, unspoken truth about the customer experience. “The experience connecting — or really disconnecting — the online channel with the bricks-and-mortar, flesh-and-blood channel was glaringly obvious,” says Susan. Possible pull quote: Freed from their inhibitions, participants spoke “The painful, unspoken truth about the customer experience.”
- How it worked out – commentary here
- How it worked out – commentary here
- Here we tell the story of a product that got put in the vault. The story of an effort to round up third party capital to buy it back. The story of a marketing mis-match. The cautionary tale – the personas were constructed to serve design – they should have been constructed to anticipate use by the marketing people.
- How it worked out – commentary here
- A globally admired manufacturer was suffering from a persistent market share decline in its product portfolio aimed at SMB customers. Despite advantages of brand, product engineering and distribution, the company was losing customers. Juno was charged with solving this highly strategic problem. “Here’s the thing: the SMB audience has significant buying power in its own right,” Juno says. “But our bigger concern was that our competitor, by gaining traction with SMB owners, would make inroads with our highly profitable enterprise customers too. We had to stop our competitor before they really established themselves among SMB firms.” Juno decided to take a closer look at the SMB audience.
- Early on, Juno made sure that stakeholders in the initiative understood the difference between tactical and strategic actionability. Juno saw that the previous categorization of customers was typical of a manufacturing-driven organization and focused largely around the tactical need to get the right amount of product to the right places. But Juno’s mission was more strategic — engaging SMB customers through more customer-centric business execution. And that required a deeper grasp of customer goals, motivations and unarticulated needs. There is a tradeoff to manage between strategic and tactical actionability in segmentation, so this was an important early choice to validate. Possible call out: Juno’s mission was more strategic— engaging SMB customers through more customer-centric business execution.
- Early on, Juno made sure that stakeholders in the initiative understood the difference between tactical and strategic actionability. Juno saw that the previous categorization of customers was typical of a manufacturing-driven organization and focused largely around the tactical need to get the right amount of product to the right places. But Juno’s mission was more strategic — engaging SMB customers through more customer-centric business execution. And that required a deeper grasp of customer goals, motivations and unarticulated needs. There is a tradeoff to manage between strategic and tactical actionability in segmentation, so this was an important early choice to validate. Possible call out: Juno’s mission was more strategic— engaging SMB customers through more customer-centric business execution.
- A phrase that Juno found himself using in discussing the goal of his initiative was “the differences that make a difference.” In the then-current segmentation model, a single difference was emphasized – the value of goods a customer produced. The more revenue the customer organization generated, the greater its presumed buying power and lifetime customer value to Juno’s company. But was this a good differentiator? Juno decided to test the theory that firm size explains and predicts customer behavior. To do so, Juno commissioned an ethnographic study of SMB customers, followed by a survey that quantified firm size, behaviors and attitudes. The survey respondents were grouped (or “clustered”) on the basis of their responses to attitudinal statements. Then the value of their product production and other demographic and behavioral data were layered on. These patterns were then synthesized into six personas. If size was the primary “difference that makes a difference,” then it would predict strategically relevant behaviors. The data showed a more complex reality. Size mattered, but within the different size categories, attitudes were a much more powerful predictor of behavior. Juno’s research had proven that an over-simplified segmentation model was misguided. For Juno, this was a good news/bad news story. This new insight helped to explain historical events and pointed the way toward better business outcomes. “Yes, this new insight was great,” he says. “But we had to compete with a worldview that had been entrenched in every business unit and every process across our company. No number of PowerPoint slides was going to fix this.” Possible call out: Juno’s goal was to identify “the differences that make a difference.”
- In our experience, Juno’s story is one of the most profound examples of the use of personas in inspiring innovation; personas put to work to change the way a whole business operates. The personas in Juno’s story displaced a segmentation model that was running into trouble. Savvy marketers wishing to use personas for the same end could benefit from Juno’s discovery that you can use a poor, but entrenched, theory to piggyback a more robust business framework into the daily workings of an organization. Then use techniques like persona addenda, practical how-to guides and storytelling to ensure the new framework eclipses the old model. In Juno’s case, it was not enough to discover the new insight. Building on existing understanding and sharing it effectively were all necessary to actually bring about change. But through all these steps, personas were a central resource in leading organizational change.
- How it worked out – commentary here
- • Personas were integral in a reframing of objectives into more customer centric as opposed to organization, product or project centric terms. • Personas enabled divergence in thinking about customer targets – at one level in selecting among alternatives, at another level in critically re-evaluating the categorization system for customers. • Personas brought coherence and consenus to the innovation scenario. • Personas were assets that helped change leaders lead change.
- SLIDE VISUAL NOTE: Bullets should build on this one Now as we near the end our time together, I want to come back to offer a perspective on the three questions we began with: Why were personas relevant as change leadership tools? Across all these cases they shared these qualities: First – they made complexity manageable. We’re not talking about oversimplifying the news about the customer to such an extent that the organizations decisions and behaviors were “customer-agnostic” (in other words product centric). But we are talking about simplifying the social/political/organizational context for innovation. The beliefs, assumptions and even intuitions about the customer were a shared text – not a hidden unstated source of disagreement to be resolved through proxy battles on tactical choices. The customer remains a complex reality – but the conversation around what to do with this complexity is greatly aided by a representation that can be shared. Second – they displaced prior biases. In the first three stories, the persona that was ultimately selected as “primary” replaced an assumed targeting choice that was an older mental model of the customer. (we’re in boston) Those of you who are familiar with what Clay Christensen has to say about Marketing Malpractice, and the innovator’s dilemma recognize just how important this is. In three of these cases, personas created a window for a divergent thinking step about who is the customer. False or default convergence around that choice too often results in innovation efforts that show up dead on arrival. In the fourth story, Juno’s, what was displaced was not just the single mental model of a target customer, but also a whole system of customer categorization – a full-on critique of the theory of what makes customers behave the way they do – and what indicators predict what behaviors. In all cases, a valuable part of the persona’s function was to free individuals and teams from an irrelevant theory of the business. (to borrow Drucker’s phrase) By discarding unhelpful ideas about the customer. And what’s particularly interesting is that this change was effected through story-telling, as opposed to argument, through accessing the imagination directly – through experiential learning (among members of the team) as opposed to the long road of lecturing and information bombing with statistics, spreadsheets and powerpoint decks full of charts and tables. Third – they made Empathy a collective aptitude. By humanizing the face of the customer, they accessed the individual and collective empathy of the team – and by doing so – they reset the possibilities for collective imaginative accomplishment.
- In a way it is ironic that the narrative (some might say fictional) representation of a character feels real – but it’s undeniable that once information is given a human face, it does not even mater if the intellectual bias of the information is strategic or dumb, if the quality of observation is penetrating or willfully blind – or maybe just a collation of dead assumptions and lies – we humans are hard-wired to be susceptible to information in narrative form. This explains, in part, why we believe urban myths that start with – my cousin knew this guy who…. Now – in all four of these particular cases, what also contributed to making these personas feeling real was that there was indeed a research process behind them. Moreover that research process in every case underscored a need that arose from a recognizable conflict in motivations that was widely observable in the population represented by the persona – and the personas represented a kind of theory about the relationship of that conflict to they way these people would behave in response to innovation. In other words the personas embodied a strategic insight about an unarticulated customer need. Or for you Christensen fans: An unarticulated customer “job.” And finally – in three of these cases – the form of the personas was constructed to anticipate the needs of the decision-makers who would use them. In the one case – let’s call it our glorious failure – there was a mismatch in this last regard – a persona constructed for product designers was not suited to the needs of tactical marketing practitioners – was the failure a co-incidence or is this one of the most important lessons of this case?
- How was the insight activated by our change leaders to drive innovation. To answer this fully would be to go back over the cases in detail, but broadly speaking – the personas were drawn into an innovation system that included other heuristics – think about it as an innovation workbench. In the cases of product design and redesign and cross-channel experience design – they were combined with metaphorical experience models. In the product design and redesign cases – they were also combined with brand experience attributes. In the case of the strategic marketing turnaround – they became the human face for a rich and expanding body of quatitative research data, built around the nucleus of qualitative customer insights. This innovation system also included specific processes in which the personas played an integral role: In product design: primary, secondary, anti-persona selection, also in recriting user experience testing subjects and definition of design attributes In product redesign: selection of targets based on adoption projections In cross-channel customer experience – heuristic reviews of the current buyer journey facilitated through role-playing in the character of the persona And in strategic marketing turnaround – embedding in core business processes dealing with the end-to-end customer acquisition model Through these activities – the personas really became an integral part of a new gestalt a new theory of the business – a new framing for business decisions from the narrower scope of products, to the broader scope of customer experience and whole-business strategy. That’s what really happened.
- Prediction is a risky enterprise, because trends can reverse themselves and new factors can appear, but that said, if we project the current trajectory of the economy we participate in, here are some characteristics of what comes next that appear likely to me: What comes next is more likely to be different than the same as it was yesterday – change is accelerating What comes next is likely to involve customer experience as a critical success factor… Customer experience is harder to imitate completely than any technical combination of features, price or benefits and those latter things are being neutralized as differentiators more quickly than ever before. If the previous observation about customer experience as a key differentiator of brands is true, then what comes next will require increasingly effective collaboration across organizational silos – since customer experience is a total gestalt comprised of the meanings of all touch-points with the brand. And finally – if all these predictions prove true – then what comes next will require a greater concentration of change leadership – the capacity to drive forward innovations in complex situations, situations with barriers to change not unlike the ones we’ve identified in the four stories just reviewed here. I hope you’ll find your way to the front line of that struggle – and that, with the stories you’ve heard here – you’ll be a little better prepared to succeed. Thank You!
- Prediction is a risky enterprise, because trends can reverse themselves and new factors can appear, but that said, if we project the current trajectory of the economy we participate in, here are some characteristics of what comes next that appear likely to me: What comes next is more likely to be different than the same as it was yesterday – change is accelerating What comes next is likely to involve customer experience as a critical success factor… Customer experience is harder to imitate completely than any technical combination of features, price or benefits and those latter things are being neutralized as differentiators more quickly than ever before. If the previous observation about customer experience as a key differentiator of brands is true, then what comes next will require increasingly effective collaboration across organizational silos – since customer experience is a total gestalt comprised of the meanings of all touch-points with the brand. And finally – if all these predictions prove true – then what comes next will require a greater concentration of change leadership – the capacity to drive forward innovations in complex situations, situations with barriers to change not unlike the ones we’ve identified in the four stories just reviewed here. I hope you’ll find your way to the front line of that struggle – and that, with the stories you’ve heard here – you’ll be a little better prepared to succeed. Thank You!