Innovation Archives - Page 18 of 19

Wildcard Ingredients

Posted on April 25, 2007 by Steve Sammartino

What creates brand mythology? That special indefinable element. What ensures ‘me too’ brands never make a dent in the original? Often it is a wildcard ingredient. It’s the thing that makes us ‘the original’.

Does your start up have a wildcard ingredient? Something you can own in the mind? It doesn’t have to be an actual ingredient (food / beverage) It can be some form of technology or anything. It’s an input you can talk about.

Many great brands have a wildcard in their positioning:

Red Bull	Taurine
Toyota Prius	Hybrid
ipod	itunes
Yakult	Casei shirota strain
Ebay & Youtube	User generated content (UGC)
Amazon	Unlimited range (long tail economics)
Subway	Healthy fast food
Bugaboo prams	Most expensive
KFC	11 secret herbs & spices

Wildcards build mythology and cachet. They give us a reason to believe. Build one into your start up.

Too late – Kodak

Posted on April 23, 2007 by Steve Sammartino

Kodak – Winds of Change
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtYXGY4wB-0]

Entertaining and relevant, but I can’t help but think it is 10 years late. Be nimble.

Imagine this…

Posted on April 22, 2007 by Steve Sammartino

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?

Not from here

Posted on March 21, 2007 by Steve Sammartino

One of the best brand strategies is… not from here. It can be from anywhere. So long as it’s not here. You see, we know everything and everyone from where we are. So it must be better if it’s from elsewhere. They know what they’re doing. They’ve been doing it for years. There’s all this history, or maybe it’s their technology. Whatever, they really know what they’re doing. So we’ll pay a lot more for it.

It feels semi romantic to pay $14.50 for a bar of soap hand made in Tuscany from capsicum and Amalfi red oranges. We unlock the power of our imagination.