Before you can create a logo mark, develop an winning marketing strategy, or even craft a witty and interesting name for a client, you really have to understand and empathize with your primary target audience. That’s something we’ve known here at Dossier for quite some time as we’ve developed products and created brands, but it was interesting to see this permeate out into the marketing teams and the speaker presentations at last weeks BCAMA’s ‘Thought Leadership Series’ conference.
The theme was ‘Experiences that Change People’s Lives’ and all four speakers reiterated the idea that in order to change people lives you must truly and deeply understand them so that you can find the right solution that fits for them, rather than trying to make them fit into your solution. Design thinking has started to permeate beyond the design studio and has started to effect how all facets of a business run.
In order to change people lives you must truly and deeply understand them so that you can find the right solution that fits for them, rather then trying to make them fit into your solution.
Our first speaker, Sally Parrott (Aritzia), spoke on having a single target audience to focus on, give them a name, a personality, values etc and drive all your communications and marketing towards them. She talked about Aritizia’s approach to marketing and how they spend 100% of their budget on understanding, communicating and rewarding their existing customers.
Next up was James Chutter (POWERSHiFTER) who ran us through BJ Foggs behaviour model, to encourage a positive user behaviour.
BJ Foggs behaviour model to encourage positive user behaviour:
- What behaviour are you trying to encourage in your user?
- Top 5 motivations that drive this behaviour
- What abilities are you giving your user to follow through on their motivation?
- What triggers are you providing your user to reward them for their motivation?
In essence behaviour change happens when motivation is high, the ability to do it is easy and there are triggers to help and reward the user.
Finally, both Russ Rickey (Critical Mass) and Ryan Opina (Engine Digital) each spoke about the importance of the research phase and how it informs design thinking. If you really want to tell a compelling customer story through a compelling marketing strategy, brand, product, or experience then you need to dig deep into the research phase. Understanding the needs of the user brings value to their day, instead of forcing your agenda, overburdening them, and wasting their time.
Design thinking is a core component of any design firm. It was refreshing and exciting to see that this style of thinking and research has started to permeate into all facets from product development to marketing.