I had lunch the other day with my old friend, Dr. Bob Deutsch (dr.bob@brain-sells.com).
Dr. Bob is a genius brand consultant whom I worked with on several occasions when I was in the US.
His background was in cultural anthropology (studying indigenous tribes in Borneo, that type of thing) before he came over to the dark side in the 90s to apply his unique brand of human understanding to the marketing world.
Anyhow, over lunch he told me the story of his first brand consulting project, when he was asked by a leading US soap brand to uncover an insight that would allow it to develop an emotional, and not just functional, relationship with its customers.
After many weeks of analysis, research etc the day for Dr. Bob to deliver his findings finally came. The CEO, who had commissioned the project, and the full marketing team were in attendance, and sitting back in eager anticipation of hearing full chapter and verse.
But instead, Dr. Bob just laid a scrap piece of paper in front of the CEO, with the letters SED hand-written across it…
“What’s this?” asked the bemused CEO.
“The answer” replied Dr.B.
“What do you mean?”
“The answer to your question about how to connect emotionally with your customers.
You are currently satisfying their need to be clean.
But what they really want is to be cleanSED”.
The CEO got the point. The brand communication was changed accordingly, and the sought after emotional connection duly achieved.
Which has left me wondering ever since whether I would have the nerve to deliver a strategic debrief on an expensive project comprised solely of three letters on a piece of paper?
(DHM notepaper would double the letter count, but not, I doubt, halve the risk factor.)
But I’m beginning to think that in this time-challenged era, senior execs would probably welcome it.
After all, if the answer’s smart enough, it’s surely long enough.
