Decideware

In an excellent newsletter that I subscribe to, "Propulsion" by Tim Williams describes a great research technique to "look backwards" from failure in order to identify the issues that currently face a business.

"Account planners have an innovative research technique they call "The Obituary."

In individual interviews or small groups, planners ask consumers, "Let's say this brand just died. Write an obituary for the brand. What did it die of? Who will miss it? Who will come to the funeral?

Respondents are asked to put the brand's obituary in writing. Out of these responses come some fascinating insights about how consumers really feel about brands."

Tim goes on to describe how he applies the technique in his work consulting to agency executives - with a similar objective to help identify issues which can be addressed to help manage better client relationships.

We're familiar with the types of issues I'm sure Tim generates in his work.

Here are some examples of Relationship Obituaries we hear (and you may well have heard these as well)....

From a client:

"The relationship started out with the best of intentions but over time it grew stale. Vendor senior management never attended meetings and we felt isolated and under appreciated. At the end of the contract the business went to out to tender, much to the surprise of the vendor."

...and...

From an agency:

"The client never treated the us as a partner, they failed to share critical brand strategy and as a result the creative was never quite what it should have been."

I think this Obituary technique could be a great way to identify assessment criteria to apply in a formal supplier evaluation process and in particular, it could be focussed to reveal behavioral-based issues.

Behavioral based criteria, for example "information was not shared", and "management did not attend meetings" are much more easily actioned by supplier managers than non-specific issues, for example "there is no trust" or "they don't care about us".

I'm sure skilled researchers could guide respondents to go beyond top-line, non-specific concerns to verbalize specific, behavioral issues which can then be applied in formal evaluation programs.

The benefit of this whole approach is that by projecting into the future to look back to a terminal event (e.g. the death of a client-agency relationship) respondents have an opportunity to raise concerns in a low risk forum (the research setting) in advance of serious problems actually occurring.

So managers then have time to consider the issues, to perhaps gather further information to supplement the qual' work, and then to act to manage risk.

Author: Richard Benyon (Decideware)

With Thanks: "What if the advertising agency died tomorrow? By Tim Williams"