CONFLICT IN STRATEGY PART 2: CONFLICT MAPPING DESCRIBED

As you contemplate your creative strategy and execution, a good exercise is to create what I call a “Conflict Map” – a road map, if you will, of the essential conflicts you must address and overcome, inthe order that you must overcome them, to get a prospect to say “yes” to your proposition. The later point is essential, because consumers don’t often make quantum leaps; instead, you have to have what I call a “success in increments” mentality. It should also be noted that a well-conceived conflict map can work hand-in-hand with your journey maps.

I created the Conflict Map using a “fishbone” chart as a way to prioritize, organize, and graphically represent the contingency of conflicts specific to any particular marketing challenge. This is a critical concept, because where many creative strategies go wrong is in positioning or communicating a value/benefit that a consumer can’t internally activate because they haven’t gotten past a contingent resolution to a conflict. Going through the exercise of completing a Conflict Map each time you embark on a creative strategy, therefore, will pay huge dividends in helping to frame the elements at play, prioritize them, and link them to other inputs such as competitive scenarios and creative decisions. 

There is no fixed number of sections or “conflict levels” (CLs) required to create the chart, though I generally try to narrow it to three. Each section (or “bone”) contains a consumer conflict and its potential resolutions. A consumer’s resolution to Conflict Level 2 (CL2) is contingent on a satisfactory resolution to Conflict Level 1 (CL1). Similarly, a consumer’s resolution to Conflict Level 3 (CL3) is contingent on a satisfactory resolution to Conflict Level 2 (CL2). Above the horizontal bar is where you identify the consumer conflicts; below the horizontal bar is where you identify the corresponding resolutions.

For each CL, start by determining a conflict category, or “B.E.R.B.” Not quite a perfect acronym (it can easily be mistaken for something related to acid reflux), it stands for Behavioral, Emotional, Rational, Brand. 

·      Behavioral = a specific required action

·      Emotional = a matter of sentiment vs. fact or reason

·      Rational = a matter of fact or reason vs. sentiment

·      Brand = relating specifically to the equities (or lack thereof) of the brand

In choosing one of these, you are forced to focus on the determining conflict. Thus, the key to constructing the chart correctly is to discover through research, data, observation and/or introspection the relative weight of the primary conflicts and how they are contingent upon each other’s resolution. In most cases, your last conflict level will be a behavioral indicator. This is because, in a marketing sense, behavior is both the hardest to successfully affect, and most contingent on the satisfactory resolution of other conflicts.

Thinking in terms of B.E.R.B. is also useful in determining the range of tactical choices and marketing channels you might employ, given their strategic characteristics.

Reprinted from Deconstructing Creative Strategy by Rich Feldman, all rights reserved. For a free copy email richfeldman@landtheplane.net