An innovation brief often begins with something people find difficult. The product should save time, remove a frustration or make a task easier. Those can be valuable opportunities. So can giving people something they look forward to.
For consumer brands, enjoyment, anticipation and self-expression can belong at the beginning of development. If they appear only when the team writes the advertising, the product may have missed the chance to create them.
Consider an illustrative brief for an alcohol-free drink. One starting point is to help people avoid alcohol on a particular occasion. Another is to create something they would actively look forward to drinking that evening. The two purposes can coexist, but they raise different questions.
The first directs attention toward what the drink leaves out. The second opens a conversation about taste, the way it is served, the moment it belongs to and how someone feels offering it to a guest. None of those possibilities is evidence yet. They are directions the brief could allow the team to explore.
Enjoyment needs to become specific
“Make it delightful” is too vague to guide development. A useful understanding of pleasure gets closer to what happens on a particular occasion.
For one person, an evening drink might mark the end of work. For another, it might be a way to take part in a shared occasion. Someone choosing for guests might value the feeling of offering a thoughtful choice. These are different possibilities, with different implications for the product and its presentation.
The opportunity could concern the sensory experience, the act of preparing it or the social experience around it. Understanding which matters, to whom and when gives the team something more concrete to develop than a general aspiration to create an emotional connection.
This is an established dimension of customer understanding. The Christensen Institute’s account of jobs to be done describes functional, social and emotional forces in the choices people make. The development challenge is to make that recognition consequential: which choices would change if the team took this part of the experience seriously?
Some effort is part of the enjoyment
Convenience can make an experience more appealing. It can also remove an activity someone values.
In the drinks example, opening and pouring might be all someone wants after a long day. On another occasion, choosing a glass, adding ice or making something for a friend might be part of the appeal. A product that eliminates those actions has changed more than the time required.
That doesn’t mean adding ceremony to everything. An elaborate serving process may be unwelcome, especially when people want an easy option. The useful distinction is between effort that gets in the way and participation that contributes something.
Research can help a team understand that difference by attending to what people enjoy, protect, repeat or share. A list of frustrations alone may not make it visible. Nor can a stated preference for convenience explain every choice someone makes within an occasion.
People still need a reason to choose it
An enjoyable concept isn’t automatically a worthwhile opportunity. Someone may admire the idea, like the design or enjoy a sample without wanting to buy it regularly.
The business needs to understand the role the offer could play among the choices people already have. That role might be an occasional treat, part of a familiar routine or a social occasion. Understanding it means knowing what the offer would replace or add, and whether the experience still feels worthwhile at the intended price and in ordinary use.
That gives enjoyment commercial substance. It also helps avoid making every new offer premium, elaborate or special. Sometimes the opportunity is a modest improvement to a frequent experience, available to many people. Sometimes it is a more distinctive offer for a particular occasion.
A brief that starts with pleasure leaves room for both. It invites the team to explore what a product could add to someone’s life, then develop an offer capable of delivering that value. The ambition becomes more specific than removing a problem: creating a choice people would be glad to have.