April 2nd, 2009 by Dave Perks

The power of What If?

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About this post:

Dave Perks uses a question posed by Mitch Joel on his Six Pixels blog to talk about the importance of experience design in a world full of ads.

Filed under Experience Design, Branding, Social

 

What if there was only scenery to look at when you drive?

What if there was only scenery to look at when you drive?

When I was a kid, my parents bought a sailboat. My mom, dad and myself thought this was a very cool thing. Actually, I'm just assuming I thought it was cool because I do now and I was only three then. My sister, on the other hand, was 6 and she had A LOT of questions about our new family activity.

"What if the boat sinks?"

"What if it turns over?"

"What if I fall overboard?"

"What if we get lost?"

"What if the motor dies?"

"What if there's no wind?"

You get the idea.

Guess what my dad named the boat? Mmhm: What If.

Because of that, the phrase "What if…" had a comical and somewhat negative association for me as I grew up. I never really thought about it as a creative jump off until I was a little older.

Nowadays, I start a lot of questions with those two words. They open up a lot of possibilities. And that's why a post titled "What If?" by Mitch Joel on Six Pixels of Separation caught my eye.

In his post, Mitch poses the question, "What if traditional mass media advertising did not exist?" That's a big question. Economic struggles aside, that question asks a lot. And I like that.

So let's think about that for a second. What if there really weren't all these traditional methods of advertising that people get so caught up in? Would the Super Bowl be as big as it is? No. Would we have 3,000 digital cable channels? Probably not. So for one thing, media begets media. I get it.

BUT. Imagine what kind of discussions could be had in boardrooms around the world if the solutions weren't foregone conclusions like TV, print, radio and a really cool little microsite to tie it all up in a little interactive bow. What if every situation was seen as new? What if every marketing problem had to be treated as the unique situation it truly is?

What if the experience of buying, using, keeping, sharing, selling, driving, eating, reading or riding the product had to become the most important aspect of the solution? Why would that be the case? Because without advertising, there's really only one other way to get a message out.

People.

People who would want others to like the same things they like and would want to make sure that others dislike the same things as them, too. So everyone would make recommendations and dole out warnings about each and every product or service they use.

Wait.

What's that you say?

People already do that?

And it's consistently the most important factor in making purchasing decisions?

Oh.

Then how come we're not all having these discussions already?

Actually, these are exactly the type of conversations we're having with our clients, and it makes a lot of sense to them. We don't bend our clients' messages around pre-existing tools. We don't assume that just because something worked once, it will work every time. We do whatever makes the most sense to deliver the best results.

What if you had a conversation with us?

Speak up.

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