How to Produce a Winning Concept

Think more like consumers, ad industry

Far more new product ideas are conceived than resources exist to introduce them. The challenge for companies wanting to maximize their return on investment in this process is sorting out the potentially winning ideas from the probably lousy ones.

To do this, companies are adding rigor to their new product development process by adopting development blueprints. Still, the best processes available can easily be derailed by something as simple and avoidable as a poorly written or executed concept.

What is a concept?

According to David Schwartz's seminal book, Concept Testing, a concept is a printed or filmed representation of a product or service. It is a device to communicate the subject's benefits, strengths and reasons for being with minimal frills.

Schwartz is correct to say that a concept must explain and inform clearly and realistically. However, in today's crowded marketplace that's not enough. These days a concept often serves as a proxy for what will later be included in advertising. It needs to attract attention, be memorable, persuasive and ultimately sell the product.

The line between researcher and marketer is a fine one to walk. On the one hand, we want a clean read on a new product concept, devoid of "children and dogs" that may artificially increase product evaluations. On the other hand, we are asking consumers to make a differentiation that they are less able to make than ever before. To show consumers a flat, boring product idea in a world of theme music and three-dimensional graphics is to artificially deflate concept scores. A client summed this up for me recently when he said the amount of "sell" in a concept should be directly related to the amount of "sell" you intend to give it later.

In short, a concept must describe a new product or service idea in the form of a promise to consumers that it will fill some unmet need in a unique way.

Strong vs. weak concepts

For a concept to be strong, it's uniqueness must come through. It could take the form of differentiation through lower price, higher quality, or both. It could overcome current category negatives ("all the taste, half the fat") or offer benefits that were previously unavailable ("and it lowers cholesterol"). Or it could help consumers to overcome some challenge ("like adding a half hour to your day") or in some way make their lives better.

A strong concept does one or all of these things well. A weak concept does none of these things well. This fact is born out qualitatively as well as in analysis of Ipsos's 5,000-strong online concept testing database.

Winning concepts

When writing a new product, concept marketers and researchers invariably spend the bulk of their time working on the body or so-called meat of the concept. At some level, this is not surprising given that we spend hours debating the merits of the 5 vs. 7-point scale and the subtle shades of word meanings.

Yet, this is not how consumers view concepts. Consumers begin their journey through our concepts with the visuals - the thing we as researchers spend the absolute least amount of time on. They then look at the headline copy, the price, the varieties and/or flavors offered and, finally, the concept statement. It's not that the concept itself isn't important. It most certainly is. But without these other elements, you may never get people through the body copy, especially for concepts aimed at children.

When writing concepts we really should be taking our cue from the advertising industry, which takes pains to ensure an advertising message is communicated with the mute button on or with the fast-forward button pushed. If people sit down and actually pay attention, it's considered a bonus, not a necessity.

Why good ideas fail

A good idea in a poorly written concept will almost always fail. Intuitively we all know this but we allow external pressures to cloud our judgment. We need to think about new product ideas the way consumers do and take some basic cues from advertising. A strong concept must grab the consumer's attention, separate your product from others and convey it all in an appealing way.