eatbigfish » Takeaways

BURNING BELIEFS

Olivia Knight — Mon, 02 May 2011 16:40:07 +0000

When establishing a set of beliefs that you want to communicate to the world it helps to define what you stand against in order to clearly articulate what you stand for. So here’s a provocative way to start thinking about what you stand against, borrowed from The Blue Man Group. (If you don’t know the story of the Blue Man Group check out this short film in the stories section.)

But these are the basics: Struggling artists trying and failing to win over the New York art scene in the 1980s decide to identify all the things they hate most about contemporary art, politics and popular culture. The collect physical objects that represent all that they hate and put them all in a coffin. They then make a solemn procession to Central Park where they theatrically and publically burn the coffin and all its contents announcing ‘A Funeral for the Eighties’ and establishing themselves as the leaders of a new and unique form of performance art.

So let’s get straight to the business of hate.

Click here to print off and make the tools for your desktop demonstration

Now, cut out the shapes…

Fold the the dotted lines inwards and stick the tabs with tape or glue to make your mini coffin and two protest placards…

Now, take 5 minutes to write a list of all the things your brand, business or campaign brand really hates. Not disagrees with or dislikes but really passionately hates. Put your list in the coffin.

Now write in one line on each placard:
- What you stand against
- What you stand for

You need to spread the word about your protest, where are you going to publically burn it?

*Appropriate for desktop funeral demonstration purposes only. Do not set on fire without supervision from a health and safety officer. For public protest larger coffin may be required.*

The Challenger Times

Olivia Knight — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 23:03:55 +0000

If you’d like to see all 10 strategic stances you can download a full copy of the Challenger Times here.

Or if you’d prefer you can email us your postal address and we’ll send a paper copy to your door.

New Emotion, Good Fortune

Olivia Knight — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 00:53:14 +0000

A print out and play exercise that forces us to introduce a new and unexpected emotion into our category and explore what this would mean for our brand and our consumer relationship.

To Play:
Download and print this PDF, cut out the Fortune Teller and fold along the dotted lines. Pick a colour, pick a number and play like you did at school to reveal the emotion you are going to introduce.

The idea is that you have to work with a random emotion not associated with your brand or category. If you land on an emotion that already exists within your category, play again until you land on one that is a real, human emotion that you DON’T see used in your category – a genuinely new emotion that would surprise, disrupt and provoke.

If this emotion was forced into the heart of your identity, if it governed everything that you do, how would your behaviour change?

Brainstorm the following:

How would introducing this emotion change the way your consumers experience your existing products and services?

What would it mean to use this emotion as a brief for new product or services development?

What new usage occasion, distribution opportunities and brand partnerships might this new emotion help to create?

How might this emotion change the way you physically wrap your product or service?
- Packaging design, language, delivery vans, retail and service environments

How might this emotion change the way your brand and its representatives interact and engage with your service users/consumers?
- In store, online, phone and mail

Articles and Action

Hugh Derrick — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 02:09:21 +0000

All For One and One For All!

In today’s world the only contract most of us have is an employment contract – a vertical contract between the individual and the corporation. However the idea of a horizontal contract where a team binds itself to one another is a powerful thought.

So how might you create your own Articles for your team?

click to print

First
Get your crew together.

Second
Agree on your primary objective as a team. What’s your common ‘Prey’?
What will success look like? And what will be your resulting ‘Pay’?

What specific behaviours will be demanded of you all to achieve this success?

Third
Brainstorm what those critical shifts in behaviour will need to be. These will be dependent on your circumstances and your objective, but in case you are struggling here are some questions for you to consider:

• What’s your attitude towards Risk?
• How will you make Decisions as a group?
• How will you make Investment Decisions?
• What happens if you have Disagreements in the team?
• How will you keep Committed?
• How will you deal with Failure?
• How will you deal with Success?
• How will you be rewarded?

These are not a panacea for every situation but they may help.

Fourth
Identify the most important half a dozen behaviours and give each one a pithy headline.

Five
Fill out your Articles template.

Six
Sign in blood

Six Steps to Success

Olivia Knight — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 11:59:54 +0000

Establishing a head to head battle with a single powerful competitor is not for the faint-hearted; with it obviously comes a series of complex issues and difficult decisions about how to manage potential countermoves by the opposition. And this potential threat and complexity is clearly the reason that many Challengers often reject this course as a strategic opportunity, ignoring the very real upside potential.

So for now let’s keep it simple. Let’s work through the six steps that will prepare us for our Two Horse Race. And only once we have the clarity on the upside opportunity and how it might work, only then make a decision about whether to lean into it or not.

Step One: Basic Discipline
Ensure that you can articulate your brand’s overall ambition, identity and what success looks like before beginning your Two Horse Race. We are using this exercise and strategy to amplify those, rather than define them.

This will in turn help you choose the most valuable and appropriate competitor to go into battle with.

Step Two: Assessing the Landscape
List all the brands the consumer has to choose from in your category. Write down the benefits of reducing this choice to just two, in terms of:
• Your own business case (heightened awareness, consideration set, switcher opportunity etc)
• The consumer Benefit
What makes it compelling, for both sides?

Step Three: Narrowing down the competition
List the two or three candidates to pitch yourself against.

Consider the Market Leader, consider the Thought Leader on this list – clearly it needs to be a player that is powerful and salient enough for your battle to be a visible struggle, a competitor which therefore also you the Underdog.

And of course a brand large enough such that winning share away from them represents a significant increase in traffic for you.

Step Four: Understanding strength and weakness
Which of these brands could you juxtapose your attributes with for best effect?
Which of your attributes would their qualities best amplify?
How could you simplify this to define a ‘new’ criterion for choice in our category, that wholly favours you?

Step Five: Pick your Horse
Public enemy. Number one.
People’s Favourite. Number two.
Why would you be the people’s favourite?
What’s going to make them root for you?
Why do they win if you win?

Step Six: Consider your Public:
Think of your consumers as your audience.
What is going to make this particular two horse race watchable and rewarding?
Over the first three months?
Over the following three years?

3 Bits of Advice

Olivia Knight — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:03:19 +0000

Just for this month this section is going to look a bit different and work a bit harder. For the next few weeks it will act as a doorway to a whole load of useful advice on a number of brand and business issues that you, or someone you know, may be facing. Every other day one of our challenger friends will share their own experience and expertise of a particular issue – and across the month we hope this collection of interviews will prove to be useful in a number of different ways. Startlingly So.

Stemming from his analysis of the IPA databank Peter Field gives Challengers 3 bits of advice for improving effectiveness through achieving ‘fame’.