‘Only one way to product-innovate via deconstruction?’

Q: We read your column of last Friday and felt challenged by your deconstruction technique for product-innovating.

We’re a team of product development managers in a processed food company.  Our product innovation problem is not only about thinking and developing new products of our own. Often it is how to answer a competitor’s new product intro.

You mentioned reverse engineering and we do that. But you’re also correct in pointing out that reverse engineering will often not reveal the idea generating process that led to a competitor’s new product intro. How does your deconstruction technique apply in this particular case and problem?

A: We’re glad you asked this other half of the new product development problem. Last Friday’s column was about the first half, i.e., developing new products ahead of competition. The other half is what your question was about, namely, how to develop a new product that competition came out ahead of you and which you need to quickly match.

The deconstruction technique is in fact particularly suited to this other half of the new product development task. Here’s a case to illustrate this.

We had a client who was a former agricultural technology professor at UP Los Baños. He was also a consultant at a nearby research center, the IRRI (International Rice Research Institute). He founded and was the CEO of a fairly successful agricultural technology and research development company.

One time, he came to us with this question. We’re of course abbreviating his question. “A competitor, Slac (SL Argitech Corporation) introduced in the market Doña Maria Jasponica Brown Rice. Within just a year, this hybrid rice became a sensation especially in supermarkets. What new product idea generation process did Slac follow to successfully come out with Doña Maria Jasponica?”

We talked to him about the deconstruction technique but another version of it that was specifically tailored to his case. Here’s the summary of this version.

As in the case of San Marino Corned Tuna, we started with the gathering and collection of “artifacts.” These artifacts consisted of Doña Maria Jasponica’s product literature, packaging, advertisements, Web page and the like.

Next came the analysis of the artifacts. Here was where the difference of this deconstruction version lies versus the version applied in the San Marino Corned Tuna case. We began by searching and thinking about the analysis framework that would make new product development sense out the gathered artifacts.

In the San Marino Corned Tuna case, this framework came from Michael Michalko’s 2001 book, “Cracking Creativity.” In the case of Doña Maria Jasponica, it became obvious to us after trying that there was a need for a more suitable framework. After going over the collected artifacts for the second, third and fourth time someone in our research team called our attention to the analysis framework that Martin Lindstrom offered in his 2005 best-selling book, “Brand Sense.” So we tried this one and found an almost perfect fit. Here’s what we found.

Professor Lindstrom’s framework said that discovering a new product idea can come from considering a product that consumers see as engaging their five senses. There are 2 “T senses,” namely, taste and touch, and 3 “S senses,” smell, sight and sound.

In analyzing Doña Maria Jasponica’s artifacts we arrived at the following “sensory signatures” that it left in the consumer’s mind:

Taste sensory signature: “delicious … goodness enveloped in each bite,” “best tasting rice in the Philippines … probably the whole world”

Touch or feel sensory signature: “soft texture”

Smell or aroma sensory signature: “naturally fragrant,” “wonderful aroma of Jasmine rice”

Sight or look sensory signature: “Japanese rice quality”

Sound sensory signature: We did not find any.

Is having four consumer sensory impressions and signatures good enough?  Lindstrom in fact would say that it’s more than enough. This is because most successful new product intros typically only have two sensory signatures, namely, sight and sound.

So here’s our Marketing Rx’s on what you should do when applying the deconstruction technique in order to develop a new product that competition came out ahead of you.

1st. Gather and collect as many artifacts of the case as you possibly can.

2nd. Proceed to analyze the artifacts by searching and thinking of the suitable analysis framework. This is the tricky step where your creativity and familiarity with consumer behavior models and marketing frameworks must come into play. The more models and frameworks you keep yourself up-to-date with, the more likely it is that you will succeed.

Keep your questions coming. Send them to us at [email protected] or [email protected]. God bless!