Design Thinking and Advertising

“Design thinking is a human-centred approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” — Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO

Design Thinking is, and has been, practiced by some of the greatest designers in the Advertisement industry.

The process was first described by Nobel Prize laureate Herbert Simon in The Sciences of the Artificial in 1969 and has since been taught in some of the world’s top universities due to its effectiveness not only in the world of advertising and media, but in all human innovation, such as arts, literature, business, science and engineering.

IDEO managing director Coe Leta Stanfford describes design thinking as a “process for creative problem solving.”

The concept allows designers’ work processes to systematically uncover, lead and apply human-centred techniques to solve consumer problems in a means that is both innovative and creative.

When we think of design thinking, we think of humanism. This is because design thinking revolves around developing a deep understanding of the people for whom we are creating the products and/or services through observation and empathy.

The core of design thinking is a process of questioning; questioning the problem, questioning the assumptions and questioning implications, in order to find a new way to look at problems.

Pictured above is the Stanford D.School 5 phase methodology

There are several variations of the five phase Design Thinking process that is commonly practiced today (pictured above). However, all of the varients are similar and embody the same principles.

The five phase process incorporates:

Empathy

Observe users behavours, interact and engage with users and immerse in the type of experince the users experince.

Define

Empathy findings are developed into insights and determine needs of the target market.

Ideate

Generate ideas that cater for a viable solution allowing the product/service to meet the target market’s needs.

Prototype

Creating physical representaions of the ideas.

Test

Practical refining and improving solutions: am interactive process in which prototypes are placed into the appropriate context of the user’s life, and the success is evaluated.

So, why is Design Thinking important in Advertisement?

Design Thinking is crucial when faced with what is referred to as a ‘wicked problem.’

These are any problems that are ill-defined and cannot be solved by any form of scientific approach.

The paradigm offers solutions that are not just merely incremental but are innovative and low-risk.

When done right, Design Thinking effectively captures the needs, desires and mindsets of the target market. It creates an impression of opportunity within the mindsets of these people when they encounter your advertised product and/or service.

To be considered successful, an innovation process must deliver superior solutions, lower risks and costs of change, and buy-in.

Example: A Hunter Shoots a Bear

Tipp-Ex campaign objective

One example of how Design Thinking was effectively utilised to form an innovative advertisement is the famous YouTube ad called “A Hunter Shoots a Bear,” part of a campaign called  the “Tippexperience.”

In a ploy to advertise Tipp-ex, a European white-out brand, during the back-to school period online, the company researched the reasons why their target market used and engaged with YouTube.

They empathised with the notion of the audience’s need of entertainment and desire to be engaged with content that alike to their interests. The issue was that it was unlikely that people were directly interested in correction tape.

The goal was to utilise the online video platform to promote their whiteout pocket mouse product  whilst keeping their audience engaged with the content.

Through ideation, they realised that interest is derived from a sense of relation; a personal connection with content. Their problem became how do they create a personal connection with the content.

Their solution was to extended interactivity between their viewers and the ad, allowing viewers to re-write the story through an innovative search engine mechanism that is created when the hunter in the video reaches out of the video frame, grabs a Teipp-ex whiteout pocket mouse, and white out’s the word “shoot,” leaving the title/search engine to depict “A Hunter _______ a Bear.”

The concept demolished the notion of the fourth wall that previously was considered a cemented restriction of the YouTube video.

Within the initial 26 hours of the campaign’s launch, the video hit over one million views on YouTube, 100,000 shares on Facebook, and an average of one tweet per second, causing it to go viral.

The success saw an increase of 30% in sales in Europe.

The campaign innovatively creates a fun way to demonstrate the benefits of the product, activating its audience to engage with the YouTube Ad, evolving from the previously perceived restrictions of the medium being quite literally a box.

The ability to create their own content, so to speak, allowed audiences to be in control of the content visualised, enabling them to feel more engaged with the ad and the product.

The brand successfully understood the engagement needs of YouTube users and applied design thinking processing to create one of the most innovative campaigns on the platform.

You can watch the full campaign here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RoG6S9WdP4