In the 80s I 
worked on the launch of Liquid Tide, the first liquid detergent. As you can imagine, P&G invested a lot in R&D to ensure that Liquid Tide lived up to the cleaning credentials of the Mother Brand—Tide. To our surprise, consumers liked the cleaning power of Liquid Tide but they LOVED the drip back cap. They loved the product, which became defined more by the usage process than the clean outcome. The drip back cap eliminated the shmutz and mess of powders and other liquid cleaners. It solved a moment on the clothes-cleaning journey that was an annoyance but accepted. Swiffer, a product that was launched more than a decade after Liquid Tide rode the same principle of success—Swiffer eliminated the disgusting experience of a mop and bucket and it actually made cleaning fun. Its core motivation was less about the clean and more about the usage experience.
Big learning for a young marketer: Look beyond the conventionally defined product function for sources of innovation. Instead, find moments on people’s journeys where you can craft meaningful experiences to solve and even delight.
In healthcare, we limit ourselves in two critical ways: First, we define categories conventionally—typically by the therapeutic area. Break this convention by considering a more meaningful way to define the category. Second, think whole journey. Our promotional dollars are so weighted towards acquisition; we need to truly embrace journeys to understand where meaningful opportunities reside.
There are so many moments to create valued and loyalty creating experiences. How to find them? Intersect lived experience journeys, deep human insights, search behavior and even predictive analytics to isolate the key moments on the journey to go after with the insight to shape the solution. We call those new journeys, Journey 3.0.
