Introducing the Devil’s Advocate Workshop
Despite being Catholic, it was only a few years ago that I learned the phrase “Devil’s Advocate” comes from an official position in the church, one which was only eliminated in 1983. When someone was advancing towards sainthood, the Church put the holy man or woman on trial, and the Devil’s Advocate (advocatus diaboli) was appointed to make the case that the person in question was not worthy of canonization. (Though the position is no more, in a famous recent example, Christopher Hitchens was asked to make the case against the beatification of Mother Teresa.) Since most people who get to that point are in fact pretty saintly, the Devil’s Advocate has taken on the cultural meaning of someone arguing a case against conventional wisdom, or advancing an argument they don’t really believe.
Why did the Church create that role? Because if you’re going to declare that someone was a pillar of the faith who died and went to heaven, you don’t want some future historian discovering and publicizing their hidden failings. Now, launching or relaunching a brand may not be quite so fraught, but the strategic decisions made are also long-lasting, and a mistake can damn the brand in question to permanently reduced performance. (According to McKinsey, if your brand under-performs at launch, there’s a 70% chance it will miss its year three forecast, as well.)
That’s why we created the Devil’s Advocate Workshop: to help smart marketers ensure they have the most comprehensive and competitor-proof strategy possible. Our role is to approach your brand strategy as an informed outsider and unearth any weaknesses in plenty of time to make adjustments, rather than wait for the market to expose them.
A Devil’s Advocate Workshop has three central components:
1. Know your customer: how well does your strategy align your brand with the needs of your customers? Does your tactical plan reflect how your customers like to get information, or solve a true problem for them?
2. Anticipate competitive response: what are in-market brands likely to do to protect their share when you launch? How will they counter-detail you? What are your future competitors likely to do to supplant you? What new claims are competitors likely to pursue to gain an advantage?
3. Look within: are you building for the long term or focusing on launch as an end in itself? Are there claims you should be pursuing if you want to achieve your brand vision? Are you building the right support programs or access strategy to put your product in the hands of the people who need it? What approaches might you be missing?
Following the workshop, we assess the brand’s strategy based on both the written strategy and the team’s response in the workshop. Then we suggest concrete ways to reinforce your strategic foundations in advance of launch.
Even the best marketers can start to fall prey to groupthink or fail to challenge key assumptions that no longer reflect the current environment. An outsider perspective can shake up established orthodoxies and invigorate the team’s plan. And, if it turns out the plan is sound and there’s no need to adapt, the team can rest assured that they endured a vigorous stress test and passed with flying colors.