Convention hunting

The starting point for disruption in marketing is looking at where the brand is today and identifying the basic assumptions and common wisdom that maintain the status quo and inhibit imagination. 

Disruption theory offers a bunch of tools for doing this, but at the core of these is 'convention planets'.

Convention planets
For a defined competitive set, this tool reveals the underlying assumptions that currently bind the marketplace.

How convention planets works

This tool's derived from asking "why?". Why do we see things the way we see them? Why do people hate banks so much? What keeps this brand where it is? What we're looking for here is where the norm is open to challenge, or where there is an untapped truth or opportunity to build on.

Consider the conventions that dominate the marketplace along four key areas or 'planets':

• Corporate - i.e. a company's culture, branding, staffing structures, mission, values etc
• Marketing - maybe pricing strategies, or a way something's always been packaged
• Communication - assumptions on the best media or executional cliches 
• Consumer - consumer perceptions, habits, attitudes, prejudices 

You need to stand back and put your finger on what's really going on in the minds of they key players in a given space - find our just how conventional it really is.

Once you have a good list of conventions across all four planets, search for connections - a root cause or convention that influences all others and defines the worldview of the organisation (most likely found on the corporate planet). This is what we're looking for.

Here's an example of a corporate convention influencing consumer attitudes towards a brand of cognac.