If you haven’t read Blue Ocean Strategy, it is a highly thoughtful discussion of how a product strategy can make the competition irrelevant.  A red ocean represents bloody competition and a blue ocean represents a market where there is no competition.  To zig, while competitors zag.

Books like these have great examples of successes and few examples of failed attempts.  Still there is much to be learned. The simple truth is it’s very hard to succeed doing what your competitors do.  Sure you can sell some product, but you never can really break out.  Yet the temptation to follow a successful competitor’s lead is great.  It feels safer.

The key to sleeping at night is to make a breakthrough idea feel safe.  We’re not talking about deluding ourselves into warm feelings of security, we’re talking about doing homework with your target audience to develop breakthrough communications, or strategies. After all, if you know that your audience will act on your communications, or buy into your strategy, there’s not much risk in implementation.

Start with foundational research that explores how your consumer relates to you and your competitors.  How do you fit in your consumers’ lives?  What are the rational reasons to buy your product and what are the emotional attachments to your product?  Once you gain that kind of understanding, you’re ready to develop a potential creative strategies.  We suggest developing three to five strategies to test with your target audience.  You’ll know which strategies have the best chance of success.  Many times the creative that wins, is the one you thought would lose.  That’s when you know you have created Blue Ocean Creative.

Challenge

Engage middle school children to lead the fight against childhood obesity.

The Smart

The target audience was teens, specifically middle school students. Research showed that the most powerful influencers of early teens are other teens. So we needed to persuade middle school leaders that wellness is cool. Middle schoolers love super heroes and 2008 was a year they flocked to the Box Office to see them – Spiderman, The Dark Knight, X-Men. So we engaged teens to “Unleash the Super Powers” inside them.

The Bold

The Super-Power Summit. A statewide event to excite middle school student to “Unleash the Super-Powers inside” them through better nutrition and daily exercise. We created powerful student recruitment materials , a summit Web site and event materials, arranged for motivating speakers including Olympic track star Lolo Jones, and organized special street marketing events.

And we managed the entire event from registration to venue to menu selection and media relations.

The Result:

Enrollment exceeded the client’s expectations. Fifty-five school teams applied to attend, seven more than the budget could accommodate, and 375 people attended. We earned extensive statewide print, radio and television coverage. Teacher and student evaluations were extremely positive and the overwhelming majority of teams committed to implementing wellness strategies they learned.

The Work

Event Poster

www.superpowersummit.org