The Prius Monopoly

Maybe it’s the spaceship interior or the futuristic aerodynamics, but there’s no doubt that when it comes to hybrid cars, the Prius has the monopoly of the mind.

 

This has been verified by the board game itself – Monopoly, where the Prius has now taken place of the racing car.

 

The hybrid movement is not without its naysayers…

  • A $50,000 Greenpeace badge?

  • The eco-razzi car of choice?

  • Not as green as public transport?

It shouldn’t matter if it is moving human consumption in the right direction.

That fact is all this is the result of some damn good marketing. Kudos to Toyota.

Letter to Public Transport Marketers

Dear Mr Public Transit Marketer,

May I introduce you to the concept of ‘wildcard ingredients’. I would very much like to know if you have considered this in your strategy. May I also suggest your wildcard ingredient as ‘climate change’. You see, you won’t need to adapt the public ‘worldview’ to do this. They already know that public transit is a big part of the solution. Yet for some reason, you continue to compete on comfort, price and parking. It seems strange to me that you haven’t leveraged climate change at all.

It is also my humble opinion that you may be able drive this message home with significant free media coverage.

Please Mr Public Transit Marketer, take heed and do something really important. You may even improve the profitability of your employer also.

 

Yours sincerely,

Startup blog

traffic-jam.jpg

 

Product vs. Service

Which is better for your start up? I say service, qualified by the fact that I have just been involved in a product launch. The main advantage with a service is that every customer experience is new production run. You can change the delivery – instantly.  Not so if we have just produced 10,000 widgets. We must sell first, then adapt and improve. Services have the following advantages:

This is not to say products don’t have advantages. They are just more difficult to launch. Of course, both products and services can be successful. But for our first start up foray, we should try to make it as easy as possible.

Top 10 reasons your start up will fail

Top 10

  1. You don’t really believe in what your doing, making or selling
  2. You’re only motivated by money
  3. You took funding from people who are only motivated by money
  4. Your start up defies the laws of sustainability / health and wellness
  5. You believe that your ‘remarkable’ product will gain automatic distribution
  6. You have a long & complicated supply chain
  7. You think viral marketing is easy
  8. You don’t really understand the importance of cash flow
  9. You lose interest because you took too long to bootstrap it
  10. You believe that having the ‘best’ product will make you successful
  11. Bonus reason: You give up when things get hard.

Your thoughts?

Imagine this…

Not hiding anything from your audience

Making everything internal – public knowledge

Posting all staff salaries on your intranet

Staff setting their own pay rises

No official office hours

Staff setting their own hours

No official office location

CEO’s cell phone number on the company website

Every employee a shareholder

Sharing all company financials with everyone (internal & external)

Telling consumers your actual profit margin on the product

Telling consumers the retailers profit margin

Maybe printing these profit margins on the packaging

Staff voting on who should get the internal promotion

Suppliers voting on who gets a promotion

First in, best dressed at the car park

Hot desking – corner office to first person to sit there

No offices at all; or offices for all

Staff doing performance reviews of their superiors

Staff setting their managers salary

All performance reviews posted on the intranet

Any staff member allowed to talk to any media person, on any topic

Your bonus this year, is paid on how the company performs in 5 years

(yes, you have to wait, but we pay it even when you’ve left!)

Publishing the carbon output of the company

Publishing waste created per product

Publishing energy used per product

No email

No meeting rooms (no formal meetings)

A public company blog, an staff member can post on (no moderating)

Sure, some of these things would cause chaos, increase politicking, maybe even fraud. But maybe, just maybe, these ideas could transform your start up into something revolutionary.

What can you think of that your company would never do?