You Think You Know, But You Have No Idea

Resist the Urge

When a new project is in and ready to hit the ground running, the first instinct for many designers is to dive in. Open Photoshop and start making things pretty. Let me be the first to say… fight the urge. There is a lot that needs to happen before we get to design. Recently, I have had the opportunity and pleasure to start a project in an industry I know very well and love. My first thought was that I already know what the research will find. I am the demographic. I read the magazines, own half of the gear in the magazines, visit the shops and have paid my dues working in shops. So what am I going to learn from research? Let me dive in.

Let Research be your Guide

I was able to resist the urge to start designing and I was actually shocked at what I found. My research didn’t change my views or prove me wrong. What it did do was give me an even more clear direction. A road map. It laid out more clear guidelines for a direction than I would have ever been able to come up with without it. I started my research with immersion. I got my hands on all of the industry magazines, I visited all of the industry retail shops, and I visited all of the competitor websites. I was able to clearly identify the competitors, their approaches, holes in the marketplace, opportunities in the marketplace, inherent advantages and disadvantages. This let me know exactly what to stay away from and what to head straight towards.

Even if a client isn’t paying for a brand audit, survey, market research or competitive analysis there are still several questions that you can ask to get a good understanding of the field.

A Few Quick Questions

1. Identify the competitors:
   This is easy for most business to consumer industries. For this industry looking through magazines and reading blogs let me know who their competitors were. It can be a bit more tricky if you are dealing with a client that is B2B or is in a service industry. Most of the time the client themselves have good insight as to who their key competitors are.
2. Identify Approach:
   How is your client currently trying to position themselves? What is their approach? How are the competitors positioning themselves? In this industry, I was able to break the advertising campaigns into 4 categories. Emotion, Culture, Celebrity and Technology. Putting these in a diagram made it very clear how a majority of the competitors were positioning themselves and where the opportunities or voids were. I built this diagram by spreading out and giving myself visuals. I grabbed several of the most popular magazines for my industry. I went through the magazines, tore out all of the ads and spread them all out on the floor in front of me. This helped me categorize, make piles and break down the different brand campaigns into the categories I mentioned.
3. Identify Differentiators:
   What makes you different? What are your value adds that your competitors may not have? How can you use that to your advantage? Most of the time your client will know why they are different. 4. Identify Weaknesses:
4. What are your weaknesses:
   What areas are the competitors stronger. The answer to this may give you a clear definition as to what to stay away from. Not many clients know they have weaknesses or if they do know, they have a hard time telling you what they are. I find a client’s weaknesses by simply comparing their offering with their competitor’s offerings. A good place to start is by looking into how they are the same, and how are they different? What is the price point, and what is a consumer getting? Look into guarantees, innovations, history, experience and customer testimonials.
5. Identify Segments:
   Who are your client’s demographics? It is important to be super specific here. Inside of each industry there are several niches or groups that are attracted to different things. What niche are you after? What makes them tick? Yes, I was working on cyclists, but what kind of cyclists? There are the weekend warriors, the serious pros, the fixed gear hipsters, the techy weight weenies. It is important to know exactly who is your and your competitors primary, secondary and even third level target segment.

Know a Little About Everything

This exercise gave me clear organization and structure. It reconfirmed much of what I already thought I knew, but more importantly, it opened my eyes to a lot of opportunities and pitfalls that I hadn’t seen. Keep in mind we are talking about an industry that I felt I had a great grasp on. Not every client or industry is one that I can consider myself an expert on, so you can imagine the benefits of exercises like this for those clients.

With a small amount of research and analysis you can be better prepared to present your ideas and designs to your client, and most importantly have a better more clear view for generating and measuring results and ROI. I was told once that in no other profession do you have to be as much of a chameleon as you do in design. Designers should be able to blend into any situation because we deal with such a wide range of clients, industries and experiences. As designers we have to know at least a little about everything. The more informed you are on your client’s industry and what makes them tick, the more successful you and your business will be.