Zambon, customer centric innovation

The story of Zambon begins in Vincenza, Italy, in 1906, although it wasn't until after World War II that it began industrial production of medications providing effective solutions for colds, flu processes, coughs, and respiratory diseases. In the 1950s, the Zambon group began to expand internationally, reaching the 87 countries it is currently in. In Spain, it was established in the 1960s, opening its subsidiary in Barcelona.

Zambon's need was to define a digital marketing strategy focused on customers/patients, placing them at the center, without forgetting to care for all the collaborators involved in each process.

When we thought it was a marketing issue

At Runroom, we set out thinking it was a classic research project aimed at creating a customer centric marketing strategy, and these were the initial proposed actions:

• Bring together different teams and profiles within Zambon.
• Identify the different brand archetypes.
• Group and prioritize them.
• Define the buyer persona for each of them.
• Identify the 3 most strategic profiles for Zambon.
• Conduct in-depth interviews with the different profiles.
• Create a mapping establishing the customer journey for flu and cold.
• Point out the opportunities and pain points of each profile.

The ideation that led us to innovation

Once we had a clear new direction for the project and set our goals in the area of innovation, we moved on to the ideation phase. Keeping in mind the 3 key buyer persona profiles for Zambon and the type of products they market to treat cold symptoms, we collected 494 ideas aimed at improving the customer journey.

With the full range of ideas, we made a preselection of 38 that could generate actionable solutions to implement immediately in the short term, and finally, we focused on 4 that we ended up working on as potential innovation projects that would add value to Zambon and, in turn, to the consumers of their products.

These ideas were related to Big Data, Internet of Things, Machine Learning, Personal Tracking, biometrics, Open Data, Data Innovation, Servitization, and Branded Content, and were focused on positioning the laboratory in the field of technological innovation associated with assistance and health, as well as collecting information on patient habits and promoting their products through value-added services.

In search of functionality

Keeping in mind the 4 proposed innovation projects, we designed a governance model based on hypothesis identification to reduce risk, which would consist of conducting experiments and measuring results to continuously incorporate learning derived from these experiments.

With all this information, we could extract a minimum viable product that could take different forms: landing pages, online questionnaires, concierge MVP tests, prototype development, smoke screens, presentations, explanatory videos, crowdsourcing platform, crash tests, etc.

With all this work on the table, we realized that what Zambon actually needed went far beyond a digital marketing strategy based on ROI actions. We were facing a project of value added to the customer and identification of new business opportunities that could potentially have much more significance than a marketing campaign.

The best part of this type of development is that it allows progress based on hypotheses confirmed through different experiments, so the pilot product is evidence-based, not created blindly.

Accompanying Zambon on this journey of self-discovery to, in turn, know their customers and put them at the center was exciting for us, and even more so when discovering the potential this laboratory has in the world of medical and health innovation, a customer centric innovation.

This would be the starting point to continue the review, experimentation, and constant iteration until various prototypes are distilled that would eventually lead to a pilot, a product with the necessary characteristics to be launched and thus validate the business model in a real environment.

Working in this way, the risk is more distributed, product improvement is continuous, and we ensure that the business plan and the final product go in the same direction.

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