life passes before your eyes as you wait for the scores of your precious newborns to arrive in your e-mail in box. It hurts to see many of your babies bite the dust. But that’s how fragile newborns are. They can be eliminated with the press of a button. Still, it’s a form of mercy killing. And it beats spending thousands, even millions of dollars preparing your product for test marketing, shooting advertising, designing packaging.
Merwyn itself is a wicked good idea. Tracking studies show it has one of the most accurate prediction records of any market research system ever tested. It’s been shown to have an 88 percent accuracy predicting probability of success in the marketplace. It’s been validated in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom. It’s been validated for written concepts, television commercials, radio commercials, direct mail advertisements, and e-mail campaigns.
Merwyn has increased our Eureka! Ranch success ratio considerably. But how do you evaluate ideas if you don’t have Merwyn? And what if you have an idea that’s not necessarily something to sell? The simple concept to keep in mind is WOW!
Wicked GREAT Ideas Make You Say WOW!
As a natural consequence of creating and testing thousands of ideas a year, I’m always learning about ideas—good, bad, and otherwise. The process, I hope, will continue as long as I live.
In my experience, I find that the most wicked, pure gold great, ideas satisfy a one-word criterion. They make you shout …
Wicked good ideas make you catch your breath. A wicked good idea generates uncontrollable buzz, down the hall, around the corner, in the elevator, and throughout the building. The minute you tell it to someone, they shout WOW! And they tell it to someone else, who shouts WOW! It generates interest in the news media and the lunchroom. This doesn’t do much for corporate security, but it’s exciting.
There is no ONE way to WOW! In any given area of products, any given line, the number of WOW! opportunities is limitless.
You get WOW! when you bring together all elements of an idea to create a synergistic impact. It’s like selecting individual notes to make a chord. The harmony is richer, more beautiful than any of the single notes alone. The harmony makes you gasp. It stirs you emotionally and rationally.
Ideas that generate a WOW! use beauty, simplicity, and elegance to appeal to the emotions.
Ideas that generate a WOW! offer logical, tangible superiority.
Just as the 12 notes of the chromatic scale can be arranged into an infinite number of melodies or the 26 letters of the alphabet can be combined to form an infinite number of books, so is there no limit to the WOWS! that can be extracted from any creative problem you may face.
The key is to stake your claim—define your area of excellence, then muster all your efforts into delivering that singular point of excellence.
WOW! ideas are the best at whatever it is they are. They identify a particular area of expertise and establish their entry as the ultimate in its class.
I SPELL WOW! LIKE THIS:
Wicked easy to understand
Original
Whole Solution
! Be magic
WICKED EASY TO UNDERSTAND
Before we go anywhere with evaluating the idea—we need to understand what the idea is. Here are the facts…
FACT: Eureka! Research on 4,000 innovations finds that ideas that are easy to understand are 70 percent more likely to survive and thrive in the marketplace.
FACT: Eureka! Research on 4,000 innovations finds that ideas written at a fifth grade level, so that someone of about age 10 can understand it, have significantly higher odds of success.
“Wicked easy to understand” means that at first glance, you get it. If it takes more than 10 seconds to grasp or 10 words to explain an idea, it’s probably not wicked good.
It doesn’t matter if your challenge is a high-tech computer, a hydrocarbon chemical, a sugar-water soda pop or sliced bread. Complicated ideas never work. Complicated ideas are a sign of hazy thinking.
Nothing delivers the kiss of death more quickly than an idea that is unclear, complex or obtuse. If your customer or your boss or your banker doesn’t understand, you lose. You are the only one who will give your idea the benefit of the doubt.
People need to get your ideas immediately, if not sooner. Unless you live in a bubble, any idea you want to develop has to be communicated to others.
The success of your idea will lean heavily on your ability to involve others in your mission. They can’t wax enthusiastic about your vision if they don’t know what it is. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision, as he articulated it on August 28, 1963, was easy to understand.
“I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.”
John F. Kennedy’s vision on May 25, 1961, was likewise easy to understand:
I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.
Your idea needs to be self-evident. In the hyper-cluttered Information Age, there is no other kind. Self-evident products make you want to pick them up when you see the name and the front of the package. No additional communication is required.
Simplicity engenders impulse purchases. Complexity generates contemplation. You lose when your consumer has to contemplate your idea. In the process of all that contemplating, they begin to look at other options.
“Simplicity is the essence of brilliance.”
– Richard Saunders
How to Know If Your Idea Is Wicked Easy to Understand
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