Yesterday I shared some key learnings from a Forbes.com article about an iPhone app that reads bar codes by my colleague Joshua-Michéle Ross. What I found most interesting about the article and my conversation with Ross was what these kinds of apps mean for our communications and innovation work at Fleishman-Hillard and for our clients.

“It used to be that if custumers had a problem with a product, it was considered a marketing problem,” Ross said. “Not anymore. Soon, we’ll have to take feedback, process it and make a better product. It’s not just about listening (to problems) but about engaging your customers in the innovation process. As communications professionals, we’ll have to facilitate the (message) flow.”

Here’s what I think:

Implications for external communications

• As customers gain increased access to any and all information available online, communications consultants will move from active drivers of messages from company to consumer, to a facilitator of messages between company and consumer and consumer and company.
• They will also be forced to engage consumers directly where they work, live and play.
• When all price comparisons are available anytime, anywhere, competitive advantage moves toward creating meaningful, long-lasting experiences for and relationships with customers. Communications consultants play a huge role in determining ways in which clients speak to consumers.
• It won’t be good enough for a store to have a sale. In order to get customers in the door, stores will have to provide meaningful, memorable and personal experiences.

Implications for business

• Internal dynamics will change and companies will need more diverse people who are empowered to make big decisions. Companies must move beyond research working in silos, as we know it now, to non-siloed thinking with integrated teams that include leadership, research, marketing, sales and customer relations. Together, teammates will conduct research, analyze results, derive meaning from them and react to them much more quickly than is done today.
• Companies have to become more “social.” They need to be more authentic and understand that consumers are applying the rules of social networking to companies. As Ross said, “today we can coordinate in real time. We used to coordinate a time and place to meet at the mall, but now we say ‘call me when you get to the mall,’ and then we meet up.” Consumers will soon expect the companies they buy products or services from to meet them wherever they are.
• Companies ought to think about technology as if it were a core competency. What if every company saw itself a tech company? Think about Apple and Google. Apple is a tech company that provides lifestyle products to consumers, and Google is a tech company that provides a variety of services, from e-mail to chat to maps, to consumers.

Implications for innovation

• The value proposition for different products is constantly shifting. This is an opportunity for innovation to step up and provide a process and method for companies to address the changing concept of value.
• Mobile devices will transform planning. Because value is constantly changing, businesses must be able to develop scalable plans that are fluid and flexible and allow for spontaneity. Innovation can help companies balance the polarities of being really clear about what they want achieve and being responsive to customers.

Consumers may not be shopping for products and services like this just yet, but they will be soon. Very soon. Only the companies that rapidly evolve with consumers will survive. Companies would do well to start that evolution now.

What’s your company doing to evolve?

– Kathie

December 11th, 2009 | No Comments Share |
Tags: consumer engagement · Evolving for the future · Innovation process · Joshua-Michele Ross · Mobile device implications