What’s the benefit of innovation research?

A few weeks back I wrote about how I was feeling uncomfortable with a recent thread in the industry stating that the way to get ahead in the marketplace is to stop listening to your customer and to focus on your competition.

If you’ve taken any time to peruse our website, you can understand why I’m against this viewpoint, as it fundamentally goes against how we work and the value that we provide back to our clients on a daily basis. But saying that we provide value is one thing. Showing numbers to prove the value that we provide is quite another.

I was ecstatic this morning when I read a recent article in Forbes, called “Marketing in a Weak Economy.” The article makes reference to the return on investment that Shurline, a division of Newell Rubbermaid, has had after working with us.

In 2006, Sylver Consulting partnered with Cloverleaf on a aisle redesign initiative lead by Shurline and Lowes. Sylver Consulting supported the initiative by conducting in-store shop-alongs with people intending to paint their homes in the coming weeks. This research uncovered a host of problems that Shurline and other competitors had when appealing to the DYI customer at the point-of-purchase, all of which Cloverleaf leveraged as input into a 2-day innovation workshop led with members of Shurline and Cloverleaf’s extended team of partners, Brianna and Adriano of Sylver Consulting included.

A number of the product and packaging innovations resulting from that session have since come to market. Lisa Gunther, global director for marketing and brand management at Newell Rubbermaid, discusses one of them in the Forbes article, for which an excerpt is provided below.

Though Shurline operates in a decidedly non-sexy category–one where brand recognition is around 5%–research has shown that customers’ desire for more control included wanting to actually touch the paint applicators’ bristles before buying them. With a packaging redesign that allowed consumers to interact with the product, Shurline’s sales remained flat during the past year, even as the overall category fell by 30%, Gunther said.

In my opinion, the numbers speak for themselves. Shurline has been able to withstand the pressures of a down economy due to the efforts of Sylver Consulting, Cloverleaf and all the other folks participating in that 2-day innovation workshop back in August of 2007.

Categories: Customer experience, Ethnographic research, Innovation