Fail fast, learn faster

Stop fearing failure

Stop fearing failure

The Museum of Failure is a touring exhibition of failed innovations from across the product and services spectrum. A whole museum dedicated to major brand blunders? Sounds pretty depressing at worst, and kind of cringe-worthy at best, no?

From Kelloggs to Nokia, Coca-Cola to Ford, most global brands have sent some real shockers out to market. But these failures and our ability to learn from them are just as big a part of innovation and progress as the successes. By proudly displaying their eclectic curation of cock-ups, The Museum of Failure teaches visitors the value of learning from experimental risk-taking. In 2021, we marketers should all be paying attention.

If the past year and a half has taught us anything, it's that, when uncertain times are testing us, we need to be constantly testing our strategies and processes against them. With digital disruption and changes to consumer behaviour developing faster than ever, the ability to move quickly and adapt to complex climates is no longer just a competitive advantage — it’s essential for survival.

Don’t fear failure. Fear generic, safe and repetitive marketing.

With great challenge comes great possibility

It’s not all risk and no reward. From commercial events to family gatherings, we all became natural experimenters with ways of doing things during the pandemic months. And even with budgets slashed and teams scattered, we’ve seen fast-tracked experimental moves really pay-off for big brands, too.

From Diageo’s experiments in direct-to-consumer e-commerce with thebar.com, to Universal Pictures’s straight-to-stream releases, global brands have harnessed the unpredictable times to throw out the rule book and test what’s really possible.

Whether we like it or not, we’ve entered the age of experimentation, and we’re not going back. So, get excited, or get left behind.

In 2019, we developed our Experiment-Led Marketing™ method, providing global brands with the tools to move and innovate with pace, resilience, and ultimate creative agility. While we’ve certainly learnt a lot in practice over the past couple of years, we stand by experimentation as the way to do marketing.

Think small, win big

Innovation and experimentation can be scary words for global brands — and fair enough. They can imply big leaps that shake the status-quo in expensive and difficult ways. But, how about we all take a deep breath and start understanding innovation as just the pursuit of fast and frequent marginal gains? That’s not so bad, right?

Experimentation isn’t synonymous with risk. With the right experiments and prioritisation method, success can be rapid, measured and scaled with no need for big budgets or vast amounts of time.

Just get started

An experiment can be a simple, fast and safe space to try new ideas without pressure or fear of failure. Experiments don’t have to result in scaled, high-stakes decisions that change your business processes or ways of working; not until the right data has been collected. And if those desired results don’t arrive? Fine! Move on and try again.

But if we’re going to fail, we have to fail (and learn) fast. Speed is critical. So, by setting out on a path of quick, focussed and measurable experiments designed around customer needs, you’ll no longer miss the best and most scalable opportunities for innovation and improvement that bring you closer to your audience. That’s low-risk, high-reward marketing.

Collect critical capabilities

In the Digital Trends 2021 report, Econsultancy and Adobe found that only 23% of executives believe the speed at which they gain accurate insights is ‘very strong’. According to Econsultancy this month, ‘this explains why agility has been ranked as the second most important development objective for mainstream organisations moving forward, just below innovation.’

So, that’s the magic combination. But, if you ask us, agility and innovation are two very closely-linked capabilities, and both can be achieved simultaneously through Experiment-Led Marketing.

Regular experiments build the muscles your organisation needs to fortify flexibility, creativity and resilience. Agility? Tick. Innovation? Tick. With the right processes for capturing, prioritising and executing the biggest impact opportunities, experimentation can be a means for on-going, scalable growth, not just a means to an end.

It’s a culture shift

While rolling out the XLM method over the past two years, we’ve learnt that building an organisation's collective belief in experimentation is just as important as running the experiments themselves.

Any brand that wants to reduce waste and gain from everything it does needs to make experimentation an integral part of its DNA. Why? Because, while innovation isn’t always fast, furious and risky, it’s always an on-going process. We have to start looking at innovation as a process achieved through experimentation; to innovate is a verb, not a fixed destination.

With a growth-driven, experiment-led mindset, your teams will always be asking: why are we doing this? What are we measuring? What are we going to learn from this? And, with everyone working in service of the same experimental method, experiments and decisions will always be prioritised around the customer and gaining collective insight.

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You don’t need to open your own Museum of Failure, but embracing experimentation, failure and consistent learnings into your marketing methodology could be the unlikely hero you need to really start unlocking your power for insight and innovation.

Want to know where Experiment-Led Marketing could lead you? Get in touch to chat about how Experiment-Led Marketing™ can ensure you survive and thrive through the unpredictable future of modern marketing. Let’s test it out together.