Zambon; customer-centric innovation

Zambon started out in Vicenza, Italy, in 1906, although it did not begin industrial manufacture of medicines providing an effective solution to colds, flu, coughs and respiratory illnesses until after the Second World War. In the 1950s, the Zambon group began to expand abroad to reach the 87 countries it operates in today. It set up in Spain in the 1960s when it opened its subsidiary in Barcelona.

Zambon needed to devise a digital marketing strategy targeted at the customer/patient by putting them at the centre while also taking care of all the partners involved in each process.

At Runroom we started out thinking it was a classic research project to build a customer-centric marketing strategy. So what we did first of all was:

• Bring together the teams and profiles at Zambon.

• Identify the brand archetypes.

• Group them and prioritise them.

• Specify the buyer persona in each one.

• Identify the three most strategic profiles for Zambon.

• Conduct in-depth interviews with the profiles.

• Map out the flu and cold customer journey.

• Pinpoint the opportunities and pain points for each profile.

With all this groundwork on the table, we realised that what Zambon really needed was much more than an ROI-based digital marketing strategy. We were looking at a project to deliver value to the customer and identify new business opportunities which might potentially have much more significance than a marketing campaign.

Con todo este trabajo encima de la mesa es cuando nos dimos cuenta que en realidad lo que necesitaba Zambon iba mucho más allá de una estrategia de marketing digital de acciones basadas en ROI. Estábamos ante un proyecto de valor aportado al cliente y de identificación de nuevas oportunidades de negocio que potencialmente podrían tener muchísima más trascendencia que una campaña de marketing.

Anchored in the four proposed innovation projects, we designed a governance model based on identifying hypotheses to reduce risk and which consisted of conducting experiments and measuring outcomes to continuously build in the learning gleaned from these experiments.

Armed with all this information, we were able to extract a minimum viable product in various forms: landing pages, online questionnaires, Concierge MVP test, prototype development, smokescreens, presentations, explanatory videos, a crowdsourcing platform, crash tests, etc.

This was the starting point for continuing our review, experimentation and constant iteration until several prototypes were refined which finally led to a pilot, a product with the features required to be released and that would make it possible to validate the business model in a real-world environment.

This way the risk is spread more evenly, product improvement is continuous and we ensure that the business plan and the end product are on the same page.

The great thing about this type of development is that it enables progress to be made on the basis of hypotheses confirmed by the experiments, meaning that the pilot product is evidence-based and not created blindly.

We were thrilled to join Zambon on this journey of self-knowledge to learn about its customers and put them at the centre, and even more so when we discovered this laboratory’s potential in medical and health innovation, in customer-centric innovation.

Este sería el punto de partida para continuar la revisión, la experimentación y la iteración constante hasta ir destilando diversos prototipos que finalmente darían lugar a un piloto, un producto con las características necesarias para poder ser lanzado y que permite validar así el modelo de negocio en un entorno real.

Trabajando de esta manera el riesgo queda más repartido, la mejora del producto es continua y nos aseguraremos de que el plan de negocio y el producto final vayan en la misma línea. 

Once we were clear about the project’s new track and had set our innovation goals, we moved on to the ideation stage. Keeping in mind the three key buyer persona profiles for Zambon and the type of products they market to treat cold symptoms, we compiled 494 ideas designed to enhance the customer journey.

We shortlisted 38 of these ideas which in the short term could generate actionable solutions to be implemented immediately, and finally we were left with four we ended up working on as potential innovation projects which would deliver value to Zambon and in turn to the consumers of its products.

These ideas were all related to Big Data, the Internet of Things, Machine Learning, Personal Tracking, biometrics, Open Data, Data Innovation, Servitisation and Branded Content, and were targeted at positioning the laboratory in health and care-related technological innovation while gathering information on patients’ habits and promoting its products through value-added services.

Lo mejor de este tipo de desarrollo es que permite ir avanzando en función de las hipótesis confirmadas mediante los distintos experimentos, por lo que el producto piloto está basado en evidencias, no está creado a ciegas. 

Acompañar a Zambon en este viaje de autoconocimiento para, a su vez, conocer a sus clientes y ponerles en el centro, fue apasionante para nosotros, y mucho más al descubrir el potencial que este laboratorio tiene en el mundo de la innovación médica y de la salud, una innovación customer centric. 

¡Transformemos la experiencia de tus clientes! 

Transformar la experiencia de cliente requiere un equipo comprometido y un enfoque Customer-Centric.

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