Final Task: The Innovation Consultant
Miller has an established culture of
innovation by which they understand the culture is the work environment that
leaders cultivate in order to nurture unorthodox thinking and its application.
Miller believes that innovation is not the province of top leadership but can
come from anyone in the organization with a great idea, making an innovation
culture essential for success in the organsation. Miller’s innovation cultures
measures their employees based on metrics such as value creation and competitive differentiation, instead of traditional metrics such as on
time delivery and revenue generation. Miller fosters innovation thinking so
they find ways to reward time spent on the research required to generate new
products and ideas.
Leadership cultivates a culture of
innovation, with the rapid rate of innovation, ideas have become more valuable
than ever. In an age where anything is possible, the companies with the best
ideas have the ability to create, improve and adapt to rapid change. This is
what distinguishes the leaders from the followers. Smart business leaders know
this as demonstrated creativity as
the most crucial factor for
future success. When a company or
organization department cultivates a culture of innovation, bright minds are
given the tools to generate and organize ideas, make them useful and take
action for them to work and be successful. Therefore, fostering an innovative
workplace is a fundamental role of leadership and Human Resources.
What does it really take to cultivate
a culture of innovation? “The innovative workplace runs on ideas. Leadership’s
role is to fuel the creative engine by encouraging members to think, try and
do.
This means:
- Possessing the right people
- Providing access to knowledge
- Providing a place to collaborate new ideas
- Proving the tools needed to execute ideas
For ideas to be useful there should
be a clear channel in place to track, organize and make them come true. If
fostering an innovative workplace is important to your organization’s success,
consider incorporating it as a core competency for all employees.” -Dr. Linus Pauling.
Millers main drivers of innovation
are keeping the right leaders, to guide them as well as motivate the workers
and give them encouragement, Miller says that a company needed a leader with
the right kind of talent, to grow and to continue to grow.
Relationships matter, “An
emotional commitment of one person to another makes a difference. Miller says
that relationships with one another is an important drive because you cannot
work with someone that you don’t have a relationship with or someone that you
don’t get along it because you lose motivation and you don’t work as hard.
Managers matter, Miller goes on to
say that creativity needs action to become innovation. Companies must do more
with their employees' creativity than just acknowledging that an employee has a
good idea..
Millers main barriers their competition. They could hinder their
progress if they offer consumers more than what Miller could offer them. There
are also a lot of laws in different countries that prevent alcohol companies to
sell to certain age groups or in certain areas, this could lessen their
exposure and productivity.
Their enablers are all the events
they sponsor and sell at. Those generate a buzz around the brand as a whole.
Their variety of different alcohol they supply is a great enabler as they cater
for a lot more people.
Innovation Plan
While the purpose of innovation is to create business value, the value itself can take many different forms. As we have researched, it can be incremental improvements to existing products, the creation of breakthroughs such as entirely new products and services, cost reductions, efficiency improvements, new business models, new ventures, and countless other forms as well.
The method of creating innovation is to
discover, create, and develop ideas, to refine them into useful forms, and to
use them to earn profits, increase efficiency, and/or reduce costs.
In the quest for innovation it’s
obvious that many ideas at the input stage become a few completed, useful
innovations at the output stage, so people readily visualize the innovation
process as a funnel: lots of ideas come in the wide end on the left, and
a few finished innovations come to market from the narrow end at the
right.
With Miller in mind, we have tried to
be innovative in a way that their true identity isn’t lost, as well as their
target market well in mind.
One of Miller’s biggest barrier is
their competition. As there are so many alcohol brands in South Africa, making
them stand out is our main objective.
Aura Promotions has come up with an
innovative, and exciting way to keep Miller customers interested, attract new
customers, differentiate them from their competitors and create brand
awareness.
Annual Exclusive Miller Party:
The parties we want to host for Miller are not just normal brand parties. With Miller’s parties, only 150 people would be invited a year. We would get Aura promoters to have Miller activations in 3 different bottles stores around the city. With every customer that buys a six pack of Miller Premium Draft, the promoters will approach them and ask them a simple question about the brand (e.g. Name 3 different beers Miller offers in South Africa), and anyone who gets the answer correctly, gets an invitation stating their invited to the Miller Party- with their unique code to enter the secret location and details of where they can go to meet the rest of the lucky invited people. From there, a party bus would take them to where the party is- there would be 5 of these located in different areas of the city and whoever is attending the party would have to go to the one nearest to them to be transported to the location.
There would be a different locations
every year to keep people excited and eager to find out more.
As these parties would be exclusive,
only 100 lucky customers would be approached. The promoters would then go to 2 campuses
to get 50 more people (25 from each) e.g. UKZN and DUT.
Each year, we would choose different
campuses to attend. Here, students would be engaged with different activities
to try win so they get an invite. Activities would include things like hotdog
eating competitions, tug of war, basketball matches etc.
This campus idea is because most
students are beer drinkers and they are the target market for Miller.
The party would only serve Miller
beers- for free. This would help customers get to try all the different beers
Miller offers and learn about each one.
Each year there would be a different
theme, e.g. All Black, Rock star, Hippie etc.
We would ensure that we never invite
the same people by making everyone bring their ID to be scanned on entry. This
would ensure that it’s a once in a lifetime, memorable event for customers.
We would have different headline
performers every year like, AKA, Emtee, Nasty C, and Nomuzi etc.
There would be media exclusively
invited to the events to document and share the experience with the world,
which would keep people excited and make them purchase Miller to try get
invited to the next party.
We would have promoters set out to encourage
people to post on their social media accounts so we generate a buzz around the
brand and a lot of people hear about it.
With these parties, we aim to attract a
lot more customers and keep Miller above all their competitors. Our plan is to
educate people on the brand and keep them interested on the brand’s activities.
If successful, Miller would be the number one choice for most beer drinkers and
the coolest alcohol brand in South Africa.
After each event, we
will follow up with our target audience. The reality is that the launch party
was only one part of the larger product-launch process.
A successful event
process is realizing where the product fits in the marketplace, and
consistently communicating Miller’s product through a variety of public
relations vehicles (press releases, social media, and print advertising, for
example) over a long range of time (Vanden Bos, 2010).
Reference list
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[Accessed 24 May 2016].
Researchgate.net. (2016). Which are
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https://www.researchgate.net/post/Which_are_the_main_barriers_for_innovation
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Mgd.com. (2016). Miller Genuine Draft
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Vanden Bos, P. (2010, June 21). How to Plan a Product-Launch Event . Retrieved from Inc.: http://www.inc.com/guides/2010/06/planning-a-product-launch-event.html
