As promised, more from Vegas and Vijay. Fosbury Flops are all very well in theory, but how does one come up with them in practice?
This is where Vijay introduced his 3 Boxes Thinking Model, which runs, more or less, as follows :
Good businesses do all three simultaneously. Sure, the focus is often Box 1, and rightly so, but boxes 2&3 are about coming up with, and then perfecting, your Fosbury Flop (if you're now lost, you need to read the first Vegas post here)
There's a nice summary and explanation of the thinking here on Vijay's blog.
Of course, all this got me thinking about how we can apply this to the work we do for our clients day in day out. I'm sure you're already thinking about your plans and which boxes various bits of activity fit into. I think using this model for planning would be really useful for a number of reasons.
First, it's not revolutionary, and is really simple to grasp. In business terms, we should think about the boxes as current territories being in Box 1, adjacent territories in Box 2, completely new territories in Box 3. We should think of channels in the same way.
Second, and this is going to sound a bit silly but stay with me, putting things into 'boxes' helps protect them. They stop being interchangable, provided you've established the context and objectives for each box upfront. This then makes it harder for us or our clients to remove, say, the social networks test (Box 3), to buy more ratings (Box 1), because the two bits of activity have been established separately.
Third, it's a great way of contextualising all your activity. It's inevitable in what we do that we spend more time discussing with clients the Box 2&3 stuff, because it's where they (and we) need a bit more convincing. In this respect, it's easy to see how this activity starts to feel 'larger' than it actually is. By setting out at the start of the planning process what your investment split between the boxes is (say, 70/20/10), it's easier for everyone to keep things in perspective.
Finally, despite splitting things into boxes, it actually becomes easier to link all these things together, which makes for an easier 'sell'.
Vijay explained it like this:
Box 1 is based on knowledge. What's happened before and what's working in the market right now. Everyone feels comfortable with this, because knowledge is absolute and empirical (I'm exaggerating a bit here, I know, but you get the point). As you start to move into Boxes 2&3, increasingly your basing your planning on assumption rather than knowledge. This is more uncomfortable, but no less important, because, ultimately, by testing an assumption it turns into knowledge.
And as we know, knowledge is power. And competitive advantage.
So turn those assumptions into knowledge now.
-- Toby