(7 votes, average: 4.86 out of 5)
Loading...The What
The concept from myself, Robert Rost, Stephanie Nebbia, Mirjam Martinovic, Flavie Dirninger and Paula Fernandez Pais is that an Education Q&A Forum, led by the lab should be a protocol built into every NPD launch in the same way that imagery, sell sheets and other materials are created. The lab would share the history of the product from marketing brief to market ready product including how materials were sourced, what tests were done, how many attempts were made before the product meets our quality standards, why versions may have failed and more.
Currently, we (TFAC) ask questions of the lab piecemeal but not all questions are apparent until they are brought up in demos after we’ve launched. TFAC is an inquisitive group that loves the details of materials and an Education Q&A Forum would spur on questions whose answers will serve to make us, and the sales teams more confident and informed in sharing the attributes of our products.
The Why
A Education Q&A Forum eliminates redundancy of multiple markets asking the same questions of the lab which may not always be shared with one another. Our goal of being a genuine authority on our products is bolstered by this forum because questions in a group setting will spur on more questions that we may not have considered on our own. Even information that we may never share in demos gives us more confidence when presenting to groups. I can speak for all TFAC managers that our most enlightening conversations are ones with have with our lab who we look to for guidance about how our products perform.
The How
Delivering on the idea is about making an Education Q&A Forum protocol for every launch. Scheduling the forum before we ever present our products in any market means that we are all moving forward with one clear vision. This would be an online forum which can be recorded but also attended live by our sales force who will benefit greatly by hearing the questions that we as artists have.
While I wouldn’t need to attend these forums, the answers to these questions would be helpful from a tax perspective too. Since we claim R&D tax reliefs, these presentations could be a resource to support and enhance our claims.
That’s a very interesting side effect we had not anticipated Jon. Great to hear!
Hi Jon, the previous tax person used to sit down with me to discuss NPDs done in the past year. Happy to chat about this if needed!
love and support this idea TFAC team. Completely agree that this will make us much more efficient but also add some real opportunity to story tell our NPD products from inception to to reality – you are not the only product junkies out there – out trade are full of them 🙂
Thanks @jimmy for posting this idea. As you said, we often all asking the same questions especially on NPD. A recent example is about new WN Synthetic professional brushes… a fantastic range but we all discussed about how we can presentthem betetr to our partners/audiences: can we call them “100% Vegan”, “cruelty free” … ?
So, introducing an Education Q&A Forum for any NPD launch would be absolutely a great solution to better introduce our products to our commercial teams, resellers, partners, artist influencers and consumers! Hope it could become a protocol 🙂