The biggest problem with the perfect strategy is this: It’s pretty hard to implement the plan, maybe impossible. That’s why business plans can be overrated. The simpler the strategy and therefore plan, the greater the chance of implementation.
Here’s the start up blog view:
Create a 1 page mud map, and make up the rest as you go along. That way we just might keep up with the world.
Have you ever heard the story of how Ebay started?
The short version goes something like this; Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar built an on line auction facility to help his wife sell and trade her Pez dispenser collection. I believed this until yesterday when I read an excerpt from the Adam Cohens’ Ebay book, the perfect store.
Turns out Omidyar is a bit of a nerd (was there ever any doubt?) and a perfectionist who wanted to build a perfect market, with open bidding and perfect information. He didn’t just stumble upon Ebay.
If we can ignore the irony of perfect markets built on a PR lie, it’s a pretty cool story which has created some sustaining brand mythology. Another brand which has a leveraged a consumer myth was Redbull; speed in a can, illegal in some countries…’Gee, it must work’
If you can build a story at launch, it might just be the exposure your start up needs to get it off the ground.
FORD UTE ‘UTOPIA’ COMMERCIAL
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZWh5R-vHMk]
I’m not saying it is a great advertisment. I say this because I’m not going to rush out and buy a Ford ute, and neither are my friends – maybe the target market will? I am saying it’s virus worthy, because blokes will send it to their mates.
I saw this on youtube before I saw it on TV. The point for start ups is this. The main barrier to entry has been lifted – cost of communications. All we need is the right creative.
What do these names have in common?
Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump, Martha Stuart & Arnold Schwarzenegger?
They all encompass their belief systems in what they do. They live and breath what they sell, do or communicate.
Oprah is the queen of emotive issues & media
Donald is the king of ‘real estate bling’ & making it big, the comeback kid
Martha is the queen of aspiration & homemaking
Arnold is Mr Olympia, come Terminator, come Governator
In short, they are the brand personified. They took what they personified and built a business around it.
It’s not so different with a start up. We shouldn’t pretend we have a brand in the early days. What we have is a product, service or name. Brands take years to build. In the short term the only brand we have is ourselves.
What we say, represent, believe and create will essentially be extended into our brand franchise.
This is good news. In the short term it means we’re in control of the initial brand experience, because it’s a personal one. One on one interactions with customers and colleagues. What they think of us, will be what they think of our brand and more importantly, what they tell others.
Ray Croc stumbled upon McDonalds at the age of 53 and took over and expanded at age of 59.
Colonel Sanders although cooking chicken for sometime didn’t open his first franchise until the tender age 62. (Pun intended)
Lesson: You’re never too old to follow the entrepreneur inside.
Physics and business once more…. Markets and motion.
Law 2: Force equals mass multiplied by acceleration The rate of change of momentum of a body is proportional to the resultant force acting body and is in the same direction.
Start up blog interpretation; Your brand or start up will only grow by the force of the energy that you and your evangelists (passionate users / early adopters) put behind it.
If we want our start up to grow, that growth rate (or decline) will be directly proportional to the effort we put into it.
Conversely a competitor pushing us backwards with more force has the same impact.
A start up won’t just grow. Organic growth is a hoax. Organic growth is your customers or passionate users pushing it for you. In this case we’re lucky, we’ve managed to create an idea worth spreading…But it’s very difficult to do.
In the end, the growth is always our responsibility. We need to be the force acting and pushing.
That’s the actual name of a person. Faith Popcorn, although she was born as Faith Plotkin….
Faith has a bit of a reputation as a Nostradamus of marketing. Given her uber cool book“The dictionary of the future” from 2001 is now much like the story of the present, she just might have some insights for us budding entrepreneurs.
Swiped directly from trendhunter.com here are Faith’s latest predictions.
Identity Flux Technology has enabled us to experiment with different personalities, leading to a much more fluid sense of who we are. Having tasted the nectar of virtual liberation, we’re beginning to reject the singularly defined roles we’re expected to play in society.
The Future: Gender-neutrality goes mainstream. People list skills on their business cards rather than title, and dress up in various costumes depending on who they feel like being that day.
Liquid Brands Today’s consumers are capricious and non-committal. Brands will have to become more liquid to keep up with their constantly moving targets.
The Future: Chameleon-like brands focus less on communicating a static message and more on being the right thing for the right persona at the right time. Constantly morphing retailers carry products until they sell out and never restock.
Virtual Immortality Consumers globally are creating fully fleshed out existences in the virtual world-dressing up their avatars, making friends, having affairs and buying property for their pixilated alter-egos. And now that people have multiple lives, who says you can’t live forever?
The Future: While some let their avatars drift away to online purgatory, many more leave behind specific instructions on how their virtual selves should proceed. Services offering avatar surrogates flourish, and we bequeath avatars to friends and family in our wills.
EnvironMENTAL Movement Like the movement to combat environmental pollution, the next consumer-led reaction will be against the mental pollution caused by marketers. With every corner of the world both real and virtual becoming plastered with marketing messages, bombarded consumers are starting to say they’ve had enough. The current attack against marketing to kids is just the beginning.
The Future: Companies are expected to reduce the amount of damage they are doing to our minds. Savvy companies sponsor marketing-free white spaces in lieu of polluting the environment with models and logos.
Product PLACEment In the globally networked age, consumers are much more concerned about the consequences of consumption. Is my garbage poisoning someone in a developing country? How much fuel was burned in order to get these strawberries to my local supermarket? The Future: Enviro-biographies are attached to just about everything, letting consumers know the entire life story of a product: where the materials were harvested, where it was constructed, how far it traveled, and where it ended up after being thrown away or recycled. Brand-Aides The government has let us down when it comes to providing the social services we had once expected from it. Brands are stepping in to take over where the government left off. Companies are already finding there’s profit to be made from providing affordable healthcare to the masses.
The Future: Socially responsible brands make a buck while providing desperately needed services. Communities are revived by Target daycare, Starbucks learning centers, and Avis transportation services for the elderly.
Moral Status Anxiety In today’s increasingly philanthropic climate, expect conspicuous self- indulgence to go straight to the social guillotine. The globally conscious consumer regards altruistic activities as a necessary part of self- improvement.
The Future: A person’s net worth is no longer measured by dollars earned, but by improvements made. Families compete with each other on how many people they fed while on vacation, and the most envied house on the block is not the biggest, but the most sustainable.
Oldies but Goodies
Our culture is suffering from an experience deficit. With the availability of online knowledge, we’re claiming expertise based only on secondary experience. Now that everyone’s a web-educated know-it-all, we’re secretly longing for authority figures to guide and assure us with indispensable nuggets of wisdom that could only come from having actually accumulated life experience.
The Future: Respect for elders makes a comeback in the form of Ask Your Grandma hotlines and the proliferation of online video clips by seniors showing us how to tie knots and concoct home remedies.
How can your start up get ahead of the curve using these mind jams?