Understand Your Problem
January 21, 2015
By Ken Gasque
Understand your problem before you fix it. This sounds simple enough. But that is not the way problem solving takes place when there is a brainstorming session before there is a problem defining session. It may be that problem solving is more fun and easier than problem defining. In a problem solving session ideas are thrown out rapid fire, “What if we did…” and they build on each other. Sometimes a member of the group will say “but what is the problem we are trying to solve?” However, usually solutions are offered or suggested in rapid-fire succession and finally someone says, “Why don’t we vote on one?”
Before you prescribe a treatment for your marketing ailment you should understand your problem. The obvious problem may be a ‘lack of sales’ but what are the underlying problems behind the obvious?
Most often when meeting with a marketer with a problem they start by showering me with solutions. What we need to be doing is questioning what is happening like a scientist or engineer. I had an engineer tell me that “as an engineer, I can tell you the root of all human mistakes…It is people putting things right, before they have finished finding out what is wrong.”
Albert Einstein said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”
Have you ever gone to see a doctor and have him tell you that you need a muscle relaxer as he walks into the exam room? If so, did you leave? No, a doctor is going to examine you, ask you questions, determine the symptoms, do tests to rule out possible diseases and when he has satisfied himself as to what your malady is, he will recommend a course of action. That is all he can do. Whether you follow the course of action prescribed is up to you. His goal is, in theory, the same as yours—to get you healthy and feeling better. I say in theory because you may not want to take the medicine more than you want to start feeling better. If not, he has done all that he can do and it is out of his hands.
A marketing problem is similar. You need to understand the problem before you prescribe the medicine to fix it. There have been some classic marketing blunders by some very smart marketers who just reacted to what they thought was a problem and created a real problem.
Coca-Cola is probably one of the top five marketers in the world, maybe in the top three. But they blinked. Pepsi ran a series of TV commercials showing the results in ‘taste tests’ conducted in different communities around the country. The Pepsi commercials showed that people preferred the sweeter taste of Pepsi to Coke. So Coca-Cola reacted and introduced New Coke. The public reaction was swift and the backlash was powerful. After 77 days on the market Coca-Cola re-introduced the original Coke. There wasn’t a problem. Coke created the problem in their rush to fix something without enough information.
If you have a problem take a look at your brand, analyze it, think about it and see if that helps define the problem. For more about branding go to http://info.gasque.com/blog/the-brand-development-process.
© Copyright Ken Gasque 2015 all rights reserved.
Ken Gasque is president of Gasque Marketing and Advertising a brand development and marketing planning company in West Columbia, SC. www.Gasque.com. He can be reached at [email protected] or 803 791-0952. Follow Ken on Twitter @Gasque and on LinkedIn.
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