Imagine you walk into your doctors office, and after the usual greetings, he just glances at you, and said ‘Chemotherapy’
After recovering, you would walk out.
The thought of undergoing chemotherapy without detailed examination of the malignancy to which it was to be applied, is absurd.
While this may be an unlikely scenario in medicine, it is one I see approximated every day in the office of inexperienced and unthinking marketing people.
They jump to a solution before defining the problem. These days, the immediate ‘go to’ solution is more often than not, some shiny new digital toy that is claimed to fix all your problems while costing little, and walking on water.
The proper sequence to follow is to diagnose the problem being faced. This involves a detailed look at the causes, symptoms and consequences of a problem. It is not an easy task in most cases, which is why it gets jumped.
Qualitative research is often maligned, but done well will deliver insights that can later be tested, and uncover the questions that need to be answered. Unless you identify the right questions to ask, which is the power of qualitative research, your subsequent quantitative research will be nonsense, delivering answers to irrelevant or just plain wrong questions.
Secondly, once the dimensions of the problem are clearly understood, you can develop strategies to address them. If the strategy is more of the same, it is a clear sign that you either do not understand the problem, or you need a better strategist.
Only after the strategies have been developed and articulated, can you move to the tactical part of addressing the problem, the means by which you fix it. Usually it is at this point where the biggest money is spent, often in a short time. It can be easily wasted if the appropriate levels of time, attention, and skill are not applied to the foregoing problem definition, and building a strategic framework that drives the tactical decisions.
Header cartoon courtesy Tom Gauld at www.tomgauld.com
