Customer Insights - Spring 2013!

As an economics major in undergrad, and with a 5 year background in finance coming into business school, the idea of “customer insights” had never really crossed my radar. That was part of the reason I was excited to take this course, as I literally have had 0 exposure to any of the concepts or ideas we talked about in a classroom format. In that sense I understand EVERY concept and topic better as a result of this course. Choosing one, I felt the observation was extremely informative regarding better understanding our persona. You can get tons of information through surveys and phone calls, but in my opinion none of that is as valuable and actually talking to real people. It is very much like the lean start-up model for starting a company. Get out of the office and into the field! You need to talk to consumers to get a true understanding of the problems they face. When we observed a particular family, tons of insights into their daily life were revealed. Most importantly, I picked up on the way they incentivized their children to do things such as chores, homework and eat their dinner: Privileges.  The fear of losing their privileges was a driving force in the kids doing what their parents wanted. This insight did not show up in any of our surveys or interviews, as it was a small subtlety that would only have been realized by observing in person. This observation served as the basis for the Galaxy Kids Tablet – a rewards driven device for children.

A concept that was particularly interesting to me was an exercise we did in class. We were given a series of different insights related to a certain demographic, and by putting a few of these together were forced to come up with ideas that could be created around them. After one minute, each member of our group would talk about the idea they came up with. After everyone shared, we would mix up the insights and then come up with more ideas. This process really got my mind moving. With each new idea said by one of the members of my team I would think of several iterations of them. With each new insight we could build on our existing best ideas to make an even better one. By the end of the exercise, I felt our team had come up with a very cool idea related to the insights we were given. I had never done an exercise like that and thought it was really cool.

This has a little less to do with the project and more with the final deliverable. Given no one in our group had any experience in film or film editing; we really struggled to put one together. I really loved our idea for the galaxy kids; however conveying that in this format became incredibly difficult. Having thought about ways to improve this I am not sure I have an exact answer. One thing I was thinking about would be to take a survey at the beginning of class asking who has had experience with film/editing/software and make sure at least one of these people is in each group. I think it would enhance the overall deliverable to the client. Everyone had some really cool unique ideas and it’s just too bad that given our groups (and I think some other groups) backgrounds we were unable to truly convey what we wanted to with regards to our idea. The other way is to do a class or two on how to do these kinds of presentations but that is not really relevant to the class and would take away from other material.

I definitely think working with our group contributed to my overall learning. The easy example is Sirisha. Given I am a 29 year old single male, I have very limited experience with families with small children. As she has children, she was able to provide a different perspective than what I had thought in my assumptions. Also being the only male in the group, getting opinions and perspectives from three different women was valuable to me.

Overall, I enjoyed the way our ideas transformed over the course of the semester into what I feel was a great problem statement. Seeing all the work come together into our persona and ultimately our recommendation was pretty cool. I definitely enjoyed the semester! 

Creativity!

The idea of being “creative” is a funny thing to me. What defines creativity? Someone sitting on their couch every day of the year doing nothing is creative in their own way. I mean hey, maybe they are onto something with that? But not by societies definition of creativity. I don’t even know how I would really define creativity. Is thinking “outside the box” creative? I guess so. Coming up with the iphone? That seems to be creative. I think to me one way to be creative is discovering solutions to life’s problems in ways that have never been done before. This could be something like coming up with a new offense in football, or writing a new song that changes the way people hear music forever.

I feel I am creative. I pride myself on figuring out ways to come up with unique solutions to problems or issues that arise. A perfect example is an experience I had with BeatBox. Without boring you with all the details of Texas alcohol laws, there was a time last year when it seemed like our plan to create our product was simply unfeasible within the legal guidelines of Texas. Instead of giving up, I came up with a pretty wild solution that has to this day allowed us to get to where we are. The solution was to actually build out a manufacturing facility ourselves so we could feasibly self-distribute in Austin and the rest of Texas to show proof of concept. Let me tell ya, that creative solution has come with a TON of work I never even knew existed!

I think to me the times I am most creative is when I am discussing an idea or problem with others. I am especially good at taking an existing conversation and extrapolating this to a wide variety of potential ideas. It is amazing to me the exponential growth in creativity when a group is talking out loud. A simple thought can within an hour turn into an elaborate business plan. It really is amazing to me the innate human trait of problem solving.

Let it be said, Sunday’s after a long weekend of drinking I am ESPECIALLY uncreative. Just like that guy on the couch I was talking about before.

In my past life I was an equity analyst, which funny enough does require a certain element of creativity. There is a constant barrage of news flow every day that finding ways to figure out what is really going on in the world is exceptionally difficult. Our group as well became very creative. There were only 4 of us responsible for a market of about 1,000 stocks, so coming up with ways to narrow our investing universe had us always thinking of new creative ways to navigate the market.

Though it ended up being disastrous, the very first company I worked for was creative as well. Directly out of college I worked in the corporate finance division for Countrywide financial. While our group wasn’t necessarily creative, the broader company was. When prices for homes in California reached their peaks, and consumers couldn’t afford mortgages anymore (around 2005), Countrywide started offering the “pay-option arm” where borrowers could pay even less than the interest owed on their monthly payments. Despite bankrupting the company in the long-run, that is one hell of a creative mortgage loan!!

It is more difficult for me to be creative on my own, though I am always thinking of new ways or ideas to solve problems. However I think it is definitely possible for someone to be creative by themselves. I would look at all of these “youtube” sensations for being especially creative. There are individuals with millions of followers on youtube, or twitter, or instagram for simply thinking of a way to address a societal need. That may come with daily food recipes, or a one-a-day photo of a cute cat. These people are very creative on their own.

Groups within an orginazation are VERY capable of being creative. I think the best organizations foster this kind of environment among their employees.

I found the article pretty fascinating, though not necessarily revolutionary. I do think I am going to repaint my walls blue now! It seems the key for all of this is to think with an open mind (or after a few drinks!) If you are too narrowly focused you miss the bigger picture. Travel, have more diverse friends, share in more experiences. All of these things will allow you to be able to see the world in a way others cannot.

It is refreshing to me to see I have accomplished a lot of the tricks of the trade to be more creative. I have been to over 20 countries, have studied abroad, have a wide array of friends, and drink a lot! I also tend to be very relaxed and easy going which lets things come to me.

I believe different people will respond to creative processes in different ways. Just like some people love to blast loud music before a football game while others prefer to sit alone in silence. There is no one “answer” for all people. So in sum I think it is important for each person to think about what allows them to get into the right state of mind for them, not necessarily what they think they need to do or what others tell them they need to do to be creative. 

Customer Insights - Blog 3

As many people in the business school know, I am currently starting an alcohol company along with Dan Singer, Jason Schieck, and Aimy Steadman. The company is called BeatBox Beverages. (Check out our facebook page here! )

http://www.facebook.com/BeatboxBeverages?fref=ts

We as a company know how important music is to the millennial generation. Music is connecting people all over the world, and it really plays on our desires to share memorable experiences with each other. I attribute the rapid rise in popularity of mega music festivals to our generations need to share everything with everyone. We feel connected to random strangers through music. Part of our company’s foundation was to enhance these memorable experiences with music through an alcohol product.

So, this bares an interesting question. How exactly is music connected to alcohol? I think we all can agree that some of the most fun we’ve had at a concert or music festival has been after we put down a beer or two, but I am wondering beyond this. As an example, here is an article from December 2011.

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2011/12December/Pages/loud-music-makes-alcohol-taste-sweeter.aspx

This article claims that loud music makes alcohol taste “sweeter”, as evidenced by a sample of 80 people who drank different strength alcoholic beverages while listening to loud music, listening to a repeating news story, and listening to nothing. The study found that those listening to loud pop music consistently rated all varieties of the alcohol beverages they were served to be sweeter than the other groups. Other studies have shown that as the volume of music in bars go up, the number of purchases of alcohol also goes up.

Another thing I want to explore is the concept of increased brand awareness of alcohol products through music. Down the line we would like to pursue some kind of deal or partnership with someone heavily involved in the music industry, and finding out what kind of value that provides will be important.  A recent article found that 25% of songs referencing alcohol from 2005-2007 also referenced a brand name. What impact does this have on purchasing decisions?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111020024129.htm

There are also several websites that try and pair the alcohol you drink with a certain type of music. I wonder if there is anything to that? Does vodka go better with a certain genre? Do people associate different products with different types of music? I imagine they do, but for our brand what would we be associated or want to be associated with? My guess right now is the electronic music scene given our bright neon packaging and the BeatBox name, however there may be other genres we appeal to as well. This will be important as we look to focus our marketing efforts on certain fanbases of music.

I also want to dive into the rise of these music festivals and see how BeatBox could get involved. It has been amazing to watch festivals like Bonnaroo, Coachella, ACL, Ultra, and Electric Daisy Carnvial go from moderately well attended events to selling out in weeks and adding multiple weekends. ACL, Coachella and Ultra will all be two weekends this year, with 3 day passes costing upwards of $300, yet they still sell out! What is it about these festivals that have caused them to grow so fast in popularity? How can we as an alcohol company build on that or make sure we are marketing to this group of people? How can we incorporate this into our branding? Who is the type of person that spends this kind of money to go to a music festival and how much alcohol do they typically consume? What type of alcohol?

There are so many ways we can incorporate music into our brand. I hope to use this paper to dig deeper into just how alcohol and music are connected, and how they are both impacting our generation in a variety of ways.

Customer Insights - Blog 1

I'm about to dig deep into the persona that is Janet Loraine, a 62 year old female whom I have known my entire life. She is my best friend’s mother, and I happened to meet my friend when I was only one. Well, I personally didn’t introduce myself to him, but our moms met in a “mommy and me” class (yes they have that) and the rest is history. This should be pretty interesting, because as I sit down to write this I actually have no idea how it is going to go. Hopefully well I guess!

So where is she at now? She got divorced many years ago and now lives on her own in Southern California in a very nice condominium. She actually just bought the place about 3 years ago and she loves it. It is incredibly well decorated with cool gadgets, artwork, and some big screen TV’s. It isn’t too big but definitely more than enough for one person, and even enough for when her son and his friends (yes that includes me!) come over to hang out and watch some football and eat her food. She loves providing for her son and his friends and can typically be found on a football Sunday making breakfast burritos or at the very least heading to McDonalds to pick up some egg McMuffins. She’s from Miami and is a Dolphins fan despite knowing almost nothing about football. As is the case with most mothers, I believe she likes to cheer for them so much because her son does and it is a way to stay connected. NOTHING in this world is more important than her son, and even with all the positive things going on around her, he is truly all that matters. Does she spoil him? Absolutely!

Janet works as head of human resources for a large logistics company where she probably manages over 200 people that work in the warehouse. She has been with this company for over 10 years and has moved up into a pretty powerful position given the tremendous job she has done. She loves her job and the people she works with. Janet speaks fluent Spanish, and given most of the workers in the warehouse are of Hispanic descent, she is able to interact with them every day. They really love her and look up to her and her decisions. These relationships are incredibly important to her and make going to work a fun and rewarding experience.

In her free time she likes to be social. She has several close friends and they like to go out to dinners and for drinks (more often for drinks!) fairly often. Ketel on the rocks with some muddled cucumber does the trick for her. No crappy vodka here! I’ve shared more than a few cocktails with her in my day and while I consider myself a professional drinker, she ain’t too far behind me that’s for sure. She also goes on several mini-vacations with the girls, where they sit poolside and drink cocktails and go out to nice dinners. Janet definitely loves to laugh and be social – always with family and friends.

She is her own person, not heavily influenced by others and she is always extremely kind to those around her. She’ll watch TV and will talk about the latest hot reality TV show, and is definitely up to date on all the important celebrity gossip. She likes to spoil herself as well from time to time, most recently a few years ago she bought a brand new Mercedes. She’ll also dabble in some new jewelry, and will often go out for dinner at her favorite sushi restaurant. She’s willing and able to spend money on nice things but she is more interested in expensive experiences with the people she cares about as opposed to tangible items.

Janet is incredibly happy with her life at this point. She has a great job which she loves. She has very close friends she goes out with a lot. And most importantly, she has her son. She would do literally anything for him and most of what she does in her life revolves around making sure he is ok and taken care of. I don’t know this for sure but I am highly confident her biggest fear in life is anything happening to him. She would love grandkids, so yelling at him to find a girlfriend and get married is a top priority on a daily basis. Lord only knows how much she would spoil that grandchild I should probably start thinking about getting in the baby clothing business for when that time comes!

So that was fun! Janet’s persona is pretty simple on the surface, though I imagine if we dug deeper it would get more complex. She has a pretty set routine of working during the week, socializing with friends and family during the weekend, and constantly interacting with her son during all of that. So now I have to think, if I were trying to market to Janet, what products and services would I provide? I’ll get back to you.