What is the meaning of design thinking and how
marketing and advertising can integrate with each other?
The human brain prefers to habituate most of the activities to make it easier for people to practice.
If we try to think of every little detail while driving a car, it would be a very difficult process to perform.
Instead, we just seem to be automating it for our convenience.
The risk of automation, however, is that we fail to see any difference in the process because most of the activities simply become repetitive.
There are many studies and articles about the significance of marketing automation and how it can benefit an organization in terms of the facilitation of the marketing process.
Nonetheless, when marketing or advertising processes are automated they tend to shift from being an art and science to merely process.
If a company advertises on the same spot on the street at a regular place and time of the year, people get accustomed to it and simply stop reading it.
Trying to deeply understand the meaning of marketing and its correlation with advertising.
we will realize that it is all about solving problems.
Addressing a need that doesn’t exist by tackling a problem that most people won’t notice, and letting them know that we “as a brand” have the answer.
This is the soul of marketing. This definition can’t be found in any academic textbook out there – the soft side that marketers develop by experience and having a wholesome look at things.
Whoever understands the essence of marketing, will understand that it is sometimes not about promoting an existing product or service.
But coming up with new ones to solve a problem and then promoting the solution to the customers.
Thinking About Solution
Take, for example, the windshield wipers – they are the most used products around the world.
Mary Anderson invented windshield wipers, an inventor, and designer who lived back in the 1980s.
One day, she was in the car with a group of people when it was cold and snowing.
The car driver had to open the window to wipe the snow to see the road. But when the window opened, a very cold breeze got into the car.
People didn’t complain about it because everything was normal.
But Mary Anderson took her pen and paper and started thinking about a solution for this problem.
With a simple what-if question, the windshields were invented and still are in use today.
Now, this way of thinking and looking at things, addressing what most people would overlook or consider as part of their daily life, is what we call the design way of thinking.
Design Thinking Methode
In terms of definition, there is a commonality between the concept of design thinking and the essence of marketing.
There is a need for every marketer not to take things or look at things the way most people do – there is this element of trying to find solutions.
And adding value to life, shifting it from the way people see it to how it can be better.
Most of the new projects, companies, products, and services fail in the marketplace (96% to be exact as mentioned by a study conducted by the Dublin Group).
While 7 out of 10 senior executives considered innovation as a top priority in their companies, projects, and processes.
However, massive investments are being wasted – the answer to such a dilemma comes from the world of design.
Designers and design tools can advance innovation solutions from imagination into an experience.
However, their tools are largely insulated within the design community.
Integrating Marketing with Design Thinking
Integrating design’s best tools into marketing, research and business innovation expertise could help deliver those elusive and disruptive ideas that we perpetually search for.
So, let’s have a look at the definition of design thinking and integrate it with marketing from a different angle.
It is a way of thinking that gives organizations context when dealing with their customers.
In fact, providing more depth into the relationship where it is built on ethnography (the journey of the consumers with all that it has of touchpoints).
The process starts with the collection of all relevant ideas for the purpose of exploring various problems the customers and the company face.
So, trying to understand the surroundings of the problem in order to come up with disruptive new solutions.
Finally, there is the concept of prototyping – where ideas from being on paper to being real transformed, accelerating the pace where they are developed and testing them for better results.
In order to integrate marketing and advertising with design thinking, the following has to be put to practice:
1. Dissecting the marketing problem and linking them with business objectives
when starting your marketing activities or campaign.
Put them all on the wall. Address all the elements of the equation, starting from what the problem is.
Create a clear definition of the problem and crystallize the insights while linking them with the business objectives.
Put the main questions (come up with as many) and then put the rest of them next to the others.
These questions have later to be addressed by consumer research.
2. Utilize ethnographic and contextual research
Marketing research doesn’t look into what could be created, but it is more concerned with how the existing could be developed in an incremental manner.
Breakthrough innovations come from experimentation, from contextual research based on ethnography of the customers.
Take, for example, the use of glasses in sports.
Research indicates that sportspeople have a difficult time using their glasses when playing sports.
The obvious answer would suggest the use of lenses to solve their problem.
However, through contextual research on seeing sportspeople wearing their glasses, they have developed ways to prevent the glasses from falling down.
3. Bring in your customers to develop with you
When being tied up with deadlines and specific launches, marketers tend to be very hasty.
That they just want to release the product or the service into the market.
The design thinking process encourages us to bring in our customers and integrate them at the beginning of the process.
It is not about them using what we have come up with, but rather developing our ideas at their initial stage with us and giving us feedback.
Marketers should capitalize on the opportunity of having the customers’ voices at the beginning.
So that they won’t waste investment and time on trials and errors.
4. It is all about failing and failing till we succeed
With the various processes we have and various levels of filtration for the product or services, we simply indulge in our fear of failure. It can be very paralyzing.
The concept of design thinking encourages failure and how we can leverage it for better products and services.
It is the true key to innovation.
Prototyping assists in getting customer feedback as early as possible – it gives the opportunity for refinement which reduces errors.
Design thinking is not a process however, it is a mindset – and that is the biggest challenge.
It is how we can adopt that mindset, break the shackles of how we approach problems, and integrate it with the way we do our marketing or advertising.
It takes time to build a culture of prototyping, where there is a linear communication process with the customers.
However, the end results are rewarding – where an edge is gained and a competitive advantage is fulfilled.
Written by: Maedeh Mehraein