For a winning product strategy, the 6W framework is the place to begin

TL:DR

Successful product and portfolio strategies are built with the user at their core. To drive a user-centric strategy first make sure you have the answers to the 6W’s.

1. What needs do users have?
2. When do they have these needs?
3. Where do they have these needs?
4. Who is the core target?
5. Why do they have these needs?
6.Why would this product not be a good solution?

Once answered, set your goals to address the W that offers the most differentiation, and aligns with your the core competencies of your company.

Read on to understand how these questions can be applied.

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In the early 2000’s, when Amy Winehouse had just released her debut album, ‘the facebook’ wasn’t yet registered as a thing, and the Blackberry was just beginning to take lead as the latest must-have technology from the Palm Pilot, I was working on Park Avenue, home to many a global corporate headquarters, and one block away from New York’s famed Madison Avenue, the home of many of America’s leading advertising agencies

It was at the research and strategy consulting company that I worked for, that I learned about the 5W framework (as it was then), a simple yet powerful framework against which to develop product and portfolio strategies.

As the world progressed, social media took root, smart phones became widespread and the world of music celebrated Amy and the people who arrived on the scene after her, so too did I seek to move on to a new framework to work by, in order to stay fresh and relevant as Madison Avenue would proclaim is the holy grail. Yet over time, and with the years of experience I have gained working with household name companies across consumer goods giants, pharma, governmental agencies, financial and tech companies, one thing has crystallized in my mind — if you want to build a product and portfolio strategy that works, start with the 6W’s framework — it is hands-down the most relevant framework around, and, I’m about to make a big statement here, always will be.

If you want to build a product and portfolio strategy that works, start with the 6W’s framework — it is hands-down the most relevant framework around and….always will be.

What makes me so sure that this framework has enduring relevance is that it places the needs of the end user at the heart and center of the framework. True, there are many other variables that needs to be taken into consideration in developing a product or portfolio strategy, but while balance sheets fluctuate, distribution networks face disruption (Evergreen vs. Suez Canal) and legislation requires shifts in operations (GDPR anyone?), the thing that remains a constant universal truth is that users have needs, which they find ways to address.

The 6W framework dissects user needs into 6 elements. When your user needs are laid out bare for all to see, developing a user-centric strategy becomes as easy as it is compelling. My partner-in-growth Eden Rozin, Product Manager at Facebook, highlights the importance of dissecting your 6W’s as a first step, here.

How to ask the 6W’s

The 6W’s refer to key core questions that need to be answered with as wide- angle view camera as possible:


1) What? — They key question here is what are users doing in the space or category, defined broadly.

Say you’re in the business of manufacturing whole wheat tortillas. Asking yourself what kinds of whole wheat tortillas consumers prefer might get you some insight, but the more reliable approach is to understand what meal times look like in general. What do people consume? Are they eating fresh fruit and veg daily? Do they avoid dairy? What does meal time look like — family style or TV dinner for one? By drawing themselves a clear picture of the what in this case, the tortilla company proceeded to develop a successful dinner-in-a-box tortilla kit in answer to the need for easy-enough-for-the-babysitter-to-serve which was mainly being addressed with expensive fast-food takeout.


2) When? — Here we define when it is that users are in need of the value we can bring them.

Is it a time of day? A season? Is it when taking a domestic flight, or when they’ve just bought their first home? When they are waiting for the bus, or perhaps when their phone battery is running low? A banking client determined that a key variable determining what kinds of products their customers need is what life stage they are at. They went on to develop a successful suite of products catering to mid-career execs who needed more detailed financial guidance as their earnings increased alongside the urgency to plan for college tuition costs and retirement.

By asking ‘when during your shopping trip do you need connect to the internet?’ Sephora found that shoppers want to browse product reviews when considering an in-store purchase, subsequently launching a mobile service to assist shoppers in-store.

3) Where? — If data storage developers used this framework, the where is likely to have been the W that inspired the cloud.

By understanding where your users are when they have a need that you can address, you can tailor your response accordingly. Imagine you are designing a new pair of earphones, just think of how different the design considerations would be if your user base needed to use them at a packed football stadium vs. lying in bed vs. somewhere with heavy monsoon rains vs. somewhere with heavy government censorship. Perhaps the where is more localized; Where in the house? Where on the body? Where on the network? Understanding the specificities of where the need arises can , like the other W’s, uncover a myriad of needs.



4) Who? — By the 4th W it should be clear that we’re not purely seeking a demographic definition of who is currently using a product.

The Who (the 6W who, not THE who), describes lifestyle, motivations, aspirations, what we’ve come to call personas. Looking at the Estee Lauder Group of companies, I’d hazard a guess that this W plays a significant role in portfolio management; MAC cosmetics might be for the color-seeker, Clinique for the beauty-through-science driven, Estee Lauder is the offering targeted to the consumer seeking elegant performance and Glam Glow for the social media aficionados, who’ll upload a selfie of their diamond encrusted neon pink mud mask to their social media channel of choice.

5) Why? — If the first 4 W’s were an easy sell, this is the W where the less user-centric in the room might begin to suggest that 4W’s are a great start, but there’s no need for more analysis. It’s true that by understanding the what, when, where and who your strategy will be strengthened, but if you haven’t articulated the why, you’ve left a huge opportunity on the table.

Bottled water is a great example of this. Why would someone pay $10.99 for a 1L bottle of water distilled from rain clouds at the peak of the Himalayas? Why would they pay $3.99 for filtered tap water? The answer both times is in the motivation — the first consumer seeking to nourish their body with only the most ‘pure’ ingredients, for optimal health, the second consumer seeking clinical-grade sterility in line with general concerns about contamination. If you look at the range of choices of basic H20 at your local store, you’ll find as many motivations for consuming water as there are brands, providing space for a diverse portfolio and impressive profit margins.

In a stroke of simple genius, the team spearheading the maturation of the 5W framework back in my Park Avenue days added the 6th W. This is the game-changing question that forces the team to evaluate the user objections to a product, and ask — Why not?

6) Why not? — It seems so obvious now that uncovering the barriers to adoption is important, but for many at the time who still favored the Mad-Men approach to marketing — let’s tell consumers what they want. ‘Why not’ seemed like nothing more than a simple variation of ‘Why?’

By taking the time to ask why not you’ll likely kill half the strategic plans you made after answering the first 5W’s. The first 5W’s are likely to spark a lot of ideation and excitement and that’s exactly where the danger lurks, because ideation and excitement alone do not ensure success. By asking ‘why not’, you force your team to critically assess whether there is a need for the products you’ve started dreaming about launching. Addressed properly, this question can save your team months of wasted time developing products that won’t fly, or inform a change in execution that turns a non-viable product into one that answers a real user need. If the people who developed the Segway had asked why not, perhaps they’d have made the Segway more compact or foldable. Have you ever heard of the Blackberry Playbook tablet — A tablet that required that you hooked it up to your Blackberry in order to be able to use it? No, me neither.

By taking the time to ask why not you’ll likely kill half the strategic plans you made after answering the first 5W’s…..save your team months of wasted time developing products that won’t fly

Laying out the answers to the ‘why not’ might not make you the most popular person in the room, but it’s critical step in avoiding costly mistakes. This delicate task usually requires more than sending out a Powerpoint deck. My suggestion in order to avoid being the sole bearer of bad news, is to let the users themselves guide your team to the difficult conclusions. I’ve taken CEO’s into consumers kitchens where they had their products trashed, I’ve made engineers cringe as users struggle with their innovations, I’ve had product teams act out transcripts to parts of user interviews. The critical part, when delivering answering the ‘why not’, is to provide enough time and space for your team to discuss, contemplate, possibly mourn and make the tough decisions needed to prioritize strategically.

How to implement the 6W’s

Asking these 6 questions and plotting them against the 6W’s framework is a valuable exercise in driving a user-centric approach to product and portfolio development to drive better strategies, but the pure magic comes in the strategic analysis.

Implementation -The basic approach — Pick 1 W

When looking at the range of answers collected to the 6W questions asked, it is generally the W that has the most diverse range of answers that you should be building your strategy against.

• A diverse range of answers mean lots of opportunity to answer user needs.
• A diverse range of answers means that there is room to provide unique benefits to underserved users.
• A diverse range of answers means that there is scope to expand your portfolio.
• A diverse range of answers means that there are enough needs to be answered that you don’t have to directly battle competitors to win a tiny bit of territory.

If you’ve ever said the words ‘we need to develop personas’ think again. Yes, it may be that the ‘Who’ is the most differentiating vector in your category, perhaps building a strategy for a particular ‘who’ makes the most sense. But what if it’s not?

If toothpaste manufacturers targeted the ‘Who,’ their core target would likely emerge as ‘Thomas, the toothbrusher — brushes his teeth twice a day,’ a target definition that includes nearly everyone, offering no differentiation, no strategy. If however, toothpaste manufacturers looked at a mapping of their user W’s, and saw a list of Why Not’s, they’d see concern about gum sensitivity, an aversion to the taste of mint, concerns about BPA’s, concerns about time, pain etc, in other words, diverse needs to build for.

Implementation — The advanced approach -Clustering of answers across the W’s

The advanced implementation of the 6W’s is both a science and an art involving scale, layers of statistical analyses, a deep understanding of your business & market dynamics and usually, deep pockets. This approach:

1) Defines clusters of needs across the 6W’s,
2) Sizes their potential and,
3) Assesses market competition to drive nuanced, validated, game-changing strategies

The advanced approach is the original approach and the one to advocate for where the business opportunity warrants the investment, usually for companies trying to serve the needs of global users. Its the kind of analyses that someone could write a whole paper on, so I won’t go deeper into it here.

Looking Back

Since my days on Park Avenue, I’ve worked with hundreds of product owners to build product and marketing strategies. Whether huge conglomerates or small family owned businesses, whether conducting this analysis scientifically at global scale or on the back of an envelope, the 6W framework has proven its worth every time.

The 6W’s have driven successful portfolio diversification, guided break-through innovation, re-imagined communication strategies and enabled companies to successfully pivot at a moments’ notice. Sure, there are other frameworks that you can (and should) apply to strategic decision making to ensure they drive your team towards your business objectives, but beforehand apply the 6W’s. If there’s one thing I’m sure I’ll still believe in 20 years time, it’s that for a winning product strategy, the 6W is the place to begin.