Crucible Co-Creators encourage experimentation …
They’re a highly-creative and flexible consumer & team co-creation format that quickly and cost-effectively challenges and optimises your marketing ‘mix’ to maximise its probability of success.
Each Crucible programme tends to be 2-3 x 2.5/3hr creative co-creation sessions per market.
Multiple markets can then be run in series as rapid-recyclers to generate globally optimised solutions.
In each co-creator session our agency Catalysts and your team work together face-to-face with Super-Consumers of above average intelligence, creativity and communication ability.
The team don’t just evaluate your planned ‘mix’, but collaboratively work to:
They are designed to go beyond the evaluation & assessment you get in a conventional focus-group to unlock fresh strategic insights, creativity and unanticipated solutions
1) Validate: digging deep into consumers’ motivations
The first section of any Crucible-session is typically run as a combination of personal-sharing & group discussion which allows the moderator to make sure your working-insights are maximising both relevance and motivation to change behaviour
Validation aims to flush-out fresh, untapped insights – as well as more-incisive, more-engaging, more-relevant and more-motivating expressions of your existing insight.
2) Evaluate: super-consumers assess each element of your ‘mix’
The second section of any crucible relies on great stimulus to allow consumers to assess and evaluate each individual component of your current plan. We frequently use a ‘gallery’ approach within the Evaluate stage, to get a quick read on which elements are working vs those that need rescuing or optimisation.
Whilst it is always possible to just assess the components of your existing ‘mix’, we would always encourage you to take an experimental approach. After all, there might be a better option you haven’t previously considered – or felt brave enough to implement!
3) Deconstruct: breaking-down your current ‘mix’
The ‘secret-sauce’ of a really successful Crucible is the face-to-face collaboration between client, agency + super-consumer teams. During these face-to-face work sessions, the teams don’t just break-down your current working ‘mix’ like they might in focus-groups, but also creatively reconstruct and improve each of the components to optimise it to their needs
Actively participating in the creative sessions not only provides the client-team with a unique understanding of what is and isn’t working – but allows them to experiment with potential solutions and improvements in real-time!
4) Stretch: generate and share their own ultimate solutions
Crucible Co-Creators creatively challenge super-consumers to go beyond current-thinking to and generate their own ultimate solutions – then summarise what they changed and why into capsule, pitch-presentations to ‘sell’ their thinking.
In this way, they go beyond current-thinking and share their own ultimate solutions – and give the team a clear insight into what the ‘ultimate mix’ would need to deliver to win them over from their existing go-to solutions
5) Optimise: fix flaws, optimise elements AND maximise synergy
The final stage of the Crucible process takes place immediately post-co-creator and comprises a hands-on incubator-sessions with client + agency catalysts working together to harness the co-creator learnings – in order to fix any flaws, optimise the elements AND maximise synergy between all the elements in preparation for final quant testing and/or launch activation
Why should you challenge your ‘mix’?
When budget is scarce and time is short, why would you risk challenging yourself?
Well, the simple answer is that if you don’t you might just be launching with a sub-optimal mix and significantly increasing your risk of being one of the 75% – whereas by making small timely optimisations you could massively increase your probability of being amongst the 25% of winners?
Crucible Co-creators are a quick, cost effective way of harnessing the power of consultants, your team and consumers to maximise the success probability of any NPD activation
We’ve also used then to optimise NPD insights, benefits, claims, prototypes and communications amongst everyone from kids & gatekeepers to over-fifties and bodybuilders!
If you are in the process of preparing for a new product or service proposition for launch, or even if you’re earlier in the innovation process and want to optimise your mix before kicking off serious R&D or Comms investments, get in touch with Joanna or David.
We’d be delighted to talk you through your options.
Why not drop us a line, or give us a call?