The heady thrill of ‘being innovative’ can seem irresistible for marketers. Many of us fancy ourselves – as individuals, and as brands – at the pointy end of the Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation curve. But we need to realise this comes at a price. To enjoy the amazing fruits of invention we need to work through the iterations that come before. In short, we have to kiss a lot of frogs. That’s just the way it is.
There’s no denying it, kissing frogs is hard, slimy work. Sometimes it makes us look pretty stupid. But someone has to do it… and if not us, then who?
Kissing frogs means we need to go through the early, awkward first steps of new technologies before we can reach their more sophisticated and powerful incarnations. That’s simply how technology works. It’s the nature of innovation.
For some brands, innovation is a core part of who they are. This is most obviously true of technology brands that know they need to keep innovating to stay ahead of rapidly developing competitors. There are also brands in other categories – like Uniqlo, Nike or 3M – who have built brands on constant innovation.
For the rest of us, innovation is a fire whose warmth we capture through association. There are many different places and spaces that are fertile hothouses of innovative activity – and we see brands gather around them like moths to a flame.
Take wearable technology as an example. Over the past few years it has become one of the on-trend topics in consumer innovation. But it hasn’t all been inspired brilliance. In fact, recent history is strewn with the abandoned wreckage of some pretty terrible wearable technologies.
For the environmentally conscious, there was Pauline van Dongen’s solar panel shirt – not only could it charge your mobile phone in your pocket, it was also machine washable. For those who appreciate the warm caress of technology there was the ‘hug jacket’ that lets you actually experience Facebook likes physically. For the more stylish amongst us Brian Cera created the Glove One mobile phone appendage and ‘fashion accessory’ if the promotional material is to be believed. Axent Wear have tapped into the Japanese love of cats and cosplay to create headphones with integrated ‘cat ear’ speakers that let you share your favourite J-Pop with the rest of the train carriage. And perhaps most tragically there was Tailly, the unsuccessful crowd-funding project for an animatronic tail appendage that responds to the mood of the wearer.
It’s easy to mock. Really, it’s very, very easy. But the important thing to remember is that this is all still work-in-progress.
As humans, we augment ourselves. It’s just what we do. We enter the world naked, screaming, and without Wi-Fi. Inherently limited by a physiology that we’ve inherited from millions of years of evolution. It’s no surprise that we seek to augment the basic, standard model that we have been provided with. Sometimes our attempts at augmentation are inspired. Sometimes not.
Just as much as in the field of wearables, the terrible burden of early adopters is everywhere we look.
Those old enough to be visiting video arcades in the eighties may remember the advent of ‘VR games’. Great cumbersome things that promised an immersive virtual reality for about six bucks (which was an awful lot of 20 cent coins). They were absolutely terrible. Awkward, clunky interfaces. Blocky, laggy graphics. Vaguely nauseating.
Fast-forward about 30 years and recently I spent some time playing with the HTC Vive VR system. The evolution from past iterations is astonishing. There is a profound sense that virtual reality, promised for so long, has actually arrived.
Innovation is a double-edged sword for any brand. Particularly those brands that seek to use it as a communication tool rather than make it part of their organisational philosophy. There is still real opportunity to work with innovators and benefit from the connection – but marketers need to work toward such relationships with realistic expectations and a readiness to get their hands dirty.
By Brett Rolfe, chief strategy officer at Naked (an Enero Group company).