The success of marketing through Design Thinking.

The designer isn't seeking solutions, it creates them. And this changes everything.

One of the things most valuable that I have acquired in the many years that I have worked on marketing is a model of thinking to solve problems. Call it design thinking, or call it as you want, but working for so many years in marketing has taught me to reach solutions in a way different than usual. And this, in marketing planning, it is extremely useful.

When we talk about "design thinking", many people think that this means "thinking visually", explain things through drawings, or translate the ideas on napkins. It is not this. Although these techniques are cool and very useful, I do not mean this.

Business is serious thing. So creativity is often not very well seen in these environments, except for the creative confined to the third floor, to that "serious people" responsible for every so ideas fresh and creative ads to their serious business to remain profitable (and serious). Planning of marketing as a business tool, normally does not escape this vitiated atmosphere.

School form us as rational beings (the creativity is punished with exclusion). Then, the University extols rational thinking to unbearable levels. And finally, in the world of work, unless you have good luck, almost any job that you get out of college you shall cast if not you show that you have a well trained left hemisphere.

So many people, the majority of professional adults who run our businesses today are convinced that the proper and "serious" way (if not the only) think is the logico-mecanica structure of thinking rational. reason! above all. In business, as in any "serious" thing the logos is imposed to the mythos.

Western society loves the Cartesian method. Mainly because it promises the illusion of objectivity and absolute truth. And this much reassured that are playing the pasta and place in every decision.

But let us be sensible because the objectivity and the truth do not exist, nor will ever exist in the social sciences. What is the truth about the behavior of the consumer? Where is the objectivity in the perceptions of the people?

What is good for A may be disastrous for B, and what has worked in C may cause a disaster in D. The same conditions that caused that E would be a success, may not have the least impact on F.

I would say that Cartesian thought, and the illusion of security and trust that generates have provoked greater and more rounded failures in marketing.

All this happen because the rational, splitting of particular principles to reach conclusions universal logic obliges pretend data and facts passed upon the possibilities and future opportunities. Locked up in prisons in background, who lead thus, make it to looking at the rear view mirror. And what is worse: don't know it. Going blind but with appalling security. Accelerating without fear.Guided only by the false security of data and made to last, they lose the instinct and smell, and become the dog of Pavlov, drool whenever you ring, unless that help them in anything to get food.

At the opposite extreme the designer has to invent a solution that does not exist for a problem that will be changing as you go finding solution. The design process forces the designer to experiment, to make mistakes and learn on the fly. Force him to develop his instincts both as your powers of observation, and to trust him though, for now, does not clear where to take you.

The designer asks questions all the time: how would this?, what would happen if I did this another?, because not?. And instead of thinking the answer, create the. And when you create it, creates new solutions. Some will not be good, but it does not fear discarding them and trying. You don't have to hit the first and not thwart this. The design process frees the designer from the prejudices of the reason, and lets you get there where reason has not arrived yet.

Designers think doing. A designer not wondering how things are, but as they should be.This is the reason why it is so important to think as a designer when we work in marketing. Solutions that others only found worth to them, we need new solutions. Solutions that still do not exist or have been imagined. And, sorry, but we will get them through the rational analysis of past events.

The reason is overrated, and much. On the other hand, you despise the instinct and intuition. There are those who prefer a full document of data before a vision and intuition about a path to follow. I will tell you one thing: no great idea was born a full data Excel. Companies that have changed the world were born instinct, intuition, or even the whim of someone who stubbornly in not to look back, but forward.

Need to think like designers. We need to think the strategy as a creation, not as a synthesis. Give up the excel and come out to the street to see! Come out to mislead you, to accumulate experience and develop instinct. And do it now please. Marketing needs people with smell, capable of walking without a map, people rely on their intuition. At the end, and after all, an uncle of instinct marketing is nothing, it is only a technician who later or early it will be replaced by a software.