The Aha Trees

While going through the long list of brand-building idea generation techniques I should write about on LinkedIn, I realised that I had not as yet written about a technique that most of my 'students' find quite amazing.

They find it amazing because it gives them what people now call a "key consumer insight", literally, overnight. When most people generally believe that finding "consumer insights" is a lengthy process.

(I think I have a long list of students from MICA, and all those who have learnt to ride the brand-building motorcycle the Univbrands way, to vouch for the fact that these AHA moments do indeed happen overnight.)

I've put the words "consumer insight" in inverted commas because I find that the marketing and brand communication industry misuse the word "insight" rampantly.

I prefer to think of them as obvious emotional truths that lead to an immediately actionable solution to the challenge (or the opportunity) your brand, or product, or service, is currently facing.

So here's the story of how I invented The Aha Tree that yields obvious emotional truths your brand can be based on, within a day.

To tell you the truth, I came up with the diagram you see above because Pat (Professor Atul Tandan) had invited me to do a guest lecture at MICA in 2003. I was already using the process to help online clients like Candlelady discover the business they are really in, in the late 1990s. And earlier generations of Univads students, before that.

I thought the students at India's most prestigious C-School of that time might not buy into a process that just uses common sense, so I put together a mind mapping diagram. (I had recently read Tony Buzan, you see.)

The inspiration for the diagram is best explained by this story.

Bitopi, an advertising agency in Bangladesh, had sought my help to win the Kodak account.

(In the late 1990's my favorite learn-by-earning coaching technique for advertising agencies was to help them win new business pitches. I would take the people that the agency wanted me to train through a three-day workshop, at the end of which they would have their pitch for prospective new business ready. 50% of my fees were payable only if they won the account.)

As is my wont in my three day "Campaign Planning Workshop", I sent the participants off to meet consumers in the first day of the workshop.

The challenge Kodak was facing in Bangladesh was that Fuji had over 80% market share. Every photography studio in Dhaka, and possibly the rest of Bangladesh, had a Fuji shop sign.

Though the pitch was for the new digital printing paper Kodak was about to introduce I chose to stay with the obvious emotional truth I knew the brand Kodak was based on. People take pictures to share memories. And that was easily deduced from the oh-so-word-of-mouthable idea that Kodak owned. 'The Kodak Moment'.

Since I knew that all consumers lie when they know about the brand or product category being "researched" I asked my Bitopi coachees to engage with prospective consumers of digital prints on the topic of Memories, because I believed that that was the business Kodak was really in.

They were to go to the photography studios that could be found in every bazaar and find a creative way to talk to the customers who were waiting there, about their favorite memories. (I then taught them how to start the conversation: share one of your own memories that you had captured on a photograph.)

I gave the 'coachees' two hours to do as many consumer engagements as possible and come back to the workshop venue. They were then to tell me the most unusual stories they discovered.

Sure enough, within two hours the 20 or so participants had completed about 50 consumer engagements. They were dying to tell me about the stories real world consumers had told them.

I won't take you through all of them. Just the two that led to Bitopi winning the Kodak account. (Ogilvy held the account internationally and Ogilvy's partners in Bangladesh were also pitching.)

1. Apparently illiterate garment workers who had landed a job after coming to Dhaka would send two photographs home in an envelope. Having landed a job, they had to have a set of passport sized photographs taken. Passport size photographs came in sets of four at that time. One went into the employer's records. The second went into their ID Cards. The two they were left with would be taken to the letter writers who sat outside Post Offices. And the letter writer would write the address of the fortunate girl, put the two photographs inside, and without a missive being written, the girl's folks in the village would know she had got a job! Did you know that?
2. The girls preferred Fuji because they looked fairer at Fuji stores! That's when the Sherlock Holmes in the workshop participant who heard this story came up with a valid hypothesis. The developing fluid that Kodak used had a yellow tint. The Bangladeshi complexion came off looking sallow. The developing fluid Fuji used had a rose coloured tint. The Bangladeshi complexion looked brighter. Did you realize that?

From then on it was a matter of collecting the data on the number of Fair & Lovely packs (a fairness cream available in India) that were imported into Bangladesh, and creating a montage of the number of matrimonial ads that said "Wanted, fair bride" , and the winning pitch was ready. The obvious emotional truth? People in Bangladesh had a big complex about their complexion.

I only remember the title of the presentation: Fair Memories. I can't remember the advertising. I am not even sure if it was ever released. But I know that a single recommendation was made for their product: make the digital paper glossier so that the end photograph looks brighter.

I know Bitopi won the account because I got my success fees. But how much billing they generated I don't know because a few years later Kodak itself shut shop.

You see, the powers that be at Kodak, internationally, had forgotten that they were really in the memories business and believed they were in the digital camera business. As a result they kept filing for patents on digital cameras but forgot to put a SIM card in their camera. Or start a social media site called Kodak Moments.

To package this story for the MICA students I put together this diagram.

Now at 21st Century Campaign Planning Workshops I ask the participants to list "I didn't know that..." and "I didn't realize that..." discoveries which they then find easy to lead them on to "You know it's really true that...". Obvious emotional truths. How to phrase the sentence takes a little practice, but by that night each participant has between one and three obvious emotional truths.

The following day we shortlist the most resonant ones by using an 'applausometer' (the other teams applaud if they find the statements will resonate with the intended consumer of the product or service) and pretty soon, by conducting a quantitative survey, thanks to the internet, within mid-morning of the second day of the workshop they know which of the ten or twelve obvious emotional truths they had generated resonates the most.

If you ask me nicely, I'll tell you how the quantitative survey is done so quickly as well. But this post has already become quite long.

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P.S. You don't have to use The Aha Tree in a group. Individuals can use them just as easily. I've written about that here. An article I'd written well before LinkedIn Pulse had started. (Full disclosure. Simpliflying.com, where that article appeared, is a Univbrands client. And, yes, I did meet Shashank Nigam through LinkedIn.)