The shock of the new

New is good. It’s also bad. Let me explain…

There was a minor revolution in central London last week. On 2 November, after a two-year, £5m ($8.35m/€5.6m) makeover, the all-new Oxford Circus opened. (Note: If you’re thinking big top, clowns and bearded ladies, think again. Oxford Circus is just a junction, much like Piccadilly Circus. Not a performing elephant or dancing bear in sight.) The new Oxford Circus layout is based on the famous Shibuya crossing in Tokyo. Not only can you cross horizontally (Regent Street) and vertically (Oxford Street), you can now cross diagonally too. For 30 whole seconds, traffic is stopped in all directions. That’s when you make a dash for it, and hope you reach H&M before you’re taken out by a bendy bus. With 40,000 people an hour using the crossing at peak time, something had to be done. But it’s a revolutionary concept for Londoners and tourists alike, and it takes some getting used to. On the first day, most people crossed the old way – vertically and horizontally. It’ll take time for people to learn how it works, and to feel comfortable with the idea. Why? Because new is different. New is scary. New is…well, new.

Double-edged

If you’ve come up with an idea for a product or service that’s new, innovative and revolutionary, well done. The good news is that you’ve got something nobody else has. That’s also the bad news. Nobody’s ever heard of it. Nobody knows how it works. Or even if it works at all. Some people will dive right in: the early adopters. They’re the ones that simply must have it precisely because it’s new. They like to be on the cutting edge, even if they get cut. But others – the vast majority, in fact – will wait. And if the early adopters aren’t enough to sustain you, you have to work hard to get the rest to buy in to your idea. How? By explaining it. Then explaining it again. And again. When the Barclaycard credit card was launched in the UK in the 1960s, the very idea of credit was alien to most people. It’s hard to believe now, but back then, buying things ‘on tick’ or ‘on the never-never’ – on credit, that is – carried a social stigma that most people wanted to avoid. So Barclays launched a major advertising campaign to explain to people that credit cards were the way of the future. And people listened. All too well, as it turned out: the UK now has the highest rate of credit-card debit per household of any country in Europe.

Box clever

New ideas have a lot going for them. But as you prepare your launch, your opening or your marketing campaign, don’t ever underestimate the shock of the new. Take cardboard furniture. Cardboard what? Yes, you heard right – cardboard furniture. It’s cheap, easy to assemble, environmentally friendly and funky. And it’s here right now. How about bacon-and-eggs ice-cream? Snail porridge? Cauliflower with chocolate? Welcome to the wonderful world of Heston Blumenthal. You see where I’m going with this. When you’ve got a great idea, you quickly get used to the concept. Of course you do. You’ve been living with it 24 hours a day since it was an embryonic idea, zinging around in your hyperactive brain. But they don’t know the first thing about it. So make it easy for them:

Simplify. Explain your great new idea in small, easily understandable chunks. Don’t over-complicate.
Convince. Find the benefits of your great new idea (lower costs, cleaner environment, less hassle, easier to use, scalability) and hammer them home.
Summarise. Use bullet points, headings, boxes and anything else that reduces the information you need to convey to bite-sized chunks.
Repeat. New is daunting and unfamiliar. So make it undaunting and familiar. Repeat your key messages, say the same thing in several different ways, and hold the reader’s hand throughout the process.
Demonstrate. Draw a diagram – by hand, if you can. It’s more informal and user-friendly. Include photos, illustrations and anything else that demystifies and explains.
Think ahead. If you were a potential customer, what questions would you want answers to? What reasons can you come up with not to use your great new idea? Find them, answer them, neutralise them.

On your marks

Meanwhile, back on London’s bright and shiny new crossing, people were taking their first tentative steps. Boris Johnson, the unstoppable Mayor of London, was convinced it was a great idea:

“We are very confident that this will work well – once people have got the hang of it.”

If they get the hang of it. A community police officer, who didn’t want to be named, was less sanguine:

“It’s based on the assumption that everyone’s going to act intelligently, which is quite an assumption to make.”

Ouch. Find out more:

X marks the spot: How did the Oxford Street shopper cross the road? By the quickest route possible at The Times.
Cheap and cheerful: cardboard furniture for every occasion.
Heston services: basil blancmange and beetroot jellies at the Michelin-starred Fat Duck restaurant.

Kevin Communication, Ideas, Marketing.