The use of character mascots they
call Mami Wata, Gingerella and
Lemmy Lemon is drawn from
magazine publishing. They use
cartoon character faces, which give
their sodas a personality attracting
people to look at them. These faces
are also used in their marketing
material. Naturally, the more
familiar a face, the more the urge
to discover it and taste it.
While holding a very small part
of the cola beverage market,
Karma Cola is now available in 13
countries, and through attractive,
smart design, and brand story-
telling through effective use of
content and social marketing, the
business is growing.
Can’t Create? Eliminate
Paul Whybrow, a leading creative
leadership strategist advocates for
the ‘Hassle Map’ and ‘Plussing’
concepts to help companies
innovate to stay ahead of
competition. Karma Cola’s case is
a good example of using Plussing
to differentiate a product in the
market.
‘‘ Hassle maps think about needs, pain
points and desired outcomes. The things that
would hinder the normal customer journey
before they meet the product. They are
mental constructs of the customers’ journey.
Different customers of course have different
problems and desired outcomes.”
Plussing is different from mere
brainstorming, the term often used
for meetings designed to generate
ideas. The goal in brainstorming
is typically just to come up with
new ideas, sometimes as many as
possible. In plussing, the goal is
to critically review existing work,
often rigorously, and to generate
new ideas that build further and
create something better.
Adrian Slywotzky’s concept of the
‘Hassle Map’ is a designed around
the way product developers view
consumers and map out what the
key hassles are for them. The idea
is to listen to your consumers to
find what the hassle is and the
solution you can offer
with your product or
service to eliminate
the hassle. Only
then will you
become a
demand
creator.
The hassle
map varies
from the
journey
map. Adrian
defines the
hassle map as
being able to
define all the
actual steps that
characterize the
negative experiences
of the customer. These
are the emotional hot
spots, the irritations, the
12 MAL 17/17 ISSUE
frustrations, time wasted, delays
and even economic inconveniences.
A business creates demand by
improving the hassle map both for
the customer and for themselves.
Netflix, for example was able to
solve the hassle of the consumer
trying to rent movies from a video
store. Consider the hassle map
around a physical video rental
service.
The hustles include the trouble of
driving to the video rental store,
taking time to select the movie,
paying after queuing in line for a
few minutes, then remembering to
return the video so as not to incur
a late fine. Worse still, going back
after a few days and not being able
to recall which episode of a series
you watched last.
With an online video rental service
like Netflix, you sit on the couch,
select the movie and watch the
movie. Every time you go into
Netflix, it remembers and lines
up the episode you left mid-way
or automatically queues the next
episode.
The hassles of traffic, time,
payment, memory failure have
been fixed. Netflix is not just a
product, it has redefined the whole
movie rental process.
While journey maps help simplify
customer experience and mostly
don’t solve problems, the focus is
also more on the product, service
around the product and other