Next time you take the rubbish out at work make sure you stop at the leaking wooden cellar door. Jar it open. Stoop down and pop your head in. Watch the cobwebs. See that gut in the far, dark corner with the hunched back and uncontrollable twitch who’s making intermittent yelping noises? That’s your scientist. Or in marketing terms, your research and developer. Go make friends with them. You might need them soon.

In the past, these guys haven’t received too much attention. They made stuff. People bought it. And they moved on to the next product. But now you need to know what they know. Why? Because your customers will. And you’re going to face the barrage.

As marketers, we hang to absolutely every fact and opportunity in order to gain competitive advantage. No matter how small the detail is, we can usually manipulate it to be of a substantial product benefit for our consumers. However, as competition increases these manipulations tend to be magnified even more. But do we really understand these benefits and how true they are? Of course not, we just take the R&D guys word for it.

You can’t tell me that the marketing team at All-Bran really understand what Thiamin, Riboflavin or Niacin actually does – they just know that All-Bran helps you poop better. But mentioning these ingredients provides unchallenged justification. This is the same for Garnier Nutritionist which claims it is the Omega 3+6 and magnesium which “stimulate the skin”. Do they really know? They don’t but their R&D guys do.

But what happens when that tedious link gets broken by the curious customer? Your product falls to pieces in an instant. And with the power that consumers have today, it will literally be in one instant. Remember the story of Ribena? Two New Zealand school students found that the drink had no detectable Vitamin C content when the advertising hung its hat on having “four times the Vitamin C of oranges”. They were fined, forced to apologised and start a new campaign (not to sell product but to regain trust). This was world wide news in an instant – all from a school science experiment. While we’re here let’s not forget about Dell laptop batteries or that little toxic toy called Bindeez. A scientific friend would have been very handy here.  

It’s not always in defence that you need your R&D guy on your side. A great example of using it for good is the relaunch of Mother energy drink. The initial flop wasn’t from the marketing campaign. Conversations spread like wildfire through online social networks about the horrible taste of the product and it became the butt of many jokes. The mob decided that the taste could not be tolerated. After taking it back to development they came up with a new formula which regained the trust of its target and is now one of the leaders in the energy drink category.

So, while we as marketers understand (or should understand) the motivations and desires of our consumers, it is just as important to understand the product to the most minute detail. But it’s not a one way street. As we step into the the monitoring of online word of mouth, marketers are becoming of greater value to developers. Those listening to the consumers are at the forefront of the continually changing trends occurring in the marketplace. These need to be relayed to the R&D team.

It makes sense for marketers and R&D to be tight buddies. So go on, go drag your scientist out of his den and into the tooth whitening shine of the marketing department.

Photo courtesy of Okko Pyykko

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