|
put an ad on TV |
spread your idea virally |
| sell to consumers | collaborate with community |
| modify for the masses | overwhelm a niche |
| compete on price | charge what it’s worth |
| focus on volume | focus on revenue |
| sell through intermediaries | no middle man |
| use spin to trick consumers | be transparent and authentic |
| mass media, mass production | digital networking, craftsmanship |
Talking with the launch team today, we were reminiscing about what we should’ve done 6 months ago. It’s true we’d be much further down the track if we knew then, what we know now.
Then we flipped it to what we don’t know now and tried to work a reverse hindsight theorem. We couldn’t work out what we are doing wrong right now.
We’re certain our current path is correct…
We’re certain we’ll be wrong…
The irony of this is that there are no short cuts on the journey. Mentors, books and blogs will provide insight, but they’ll never give us hindsight.
The only path to the knowledge of hindsight is doing.
Is 911 a brand?
Sure it is. As soon as I mentioned it you had a bundle of attributes, images, prejudices, and memories fly into your mind. You probably remember where you were the second you found out about it. You know what it represents both to the producer and the target. (victims)
The 911 brand has massive awareness. You don’t get launches much bigger. It dominated the airwaves for 2 weeks with unpaid media. This is exactly what 911 was. It was a launch. Albeit of a terrorist cell.
But what does 911 mean to you and me? It means fear. What does fear do? It builds prejudice. Isn’t this what marginalised minoroties are fighting against?
When you launch, be clear with your message and what that builds. Once a brand takes meaning in the mind it is very hard to change.
Every product or service has 3 price tags. We’ve been trained to focus on the first. Occasionally we consider the second and the third has been largely ignored in the post war era. I am sure there is some kind of economic model developed at Harvard to explain this phenomenon, but I’ll give you my simple version instead.
1st Price Tag: The cost of purchasing the good or service. Usually represented in a dollar amount.
2nd Price Tag: Cost to use, maintain or hold the product or service. 
The dollars you need to spend on it to get the value in use.
3rd Price Tag: The wider environmental, social or personal cost. 
The 3 price tags don’t live on separate islands. Just like any complex economic, social or biological system they all interact. Think Newton’s 3rd law. (yes, deep down I am a nerd) Unfortunately, for the last 30 years most companies, brands and governments have ‘pretended’ that this isn’t so.
What an opportunity. There is a myriad of ways we can leverage the 3 price tags. The first of those being to admit an interconnectedness.
Toyota have done an amazing job on this with the Prius Hybrid car.
The 1st price tag is a premium ($40k-$50k), but it more than pays off on the 2nd (1200km per tank of petrol) and 3rd price tag (90% less emissions). Both of which beat every other car on the market.
No surprises that Toyota cannot keep up with demand for the Prius. Never ran an advertisement on TV either! Interestingly it’s the 3rd price tag that makes the emotional connection with consumers. There’s a 3 month waiting list for a Prius in an Industry which is constantly announcing plant closures, mass redundancies and financial disasters.
Ok, you don’t have to go out and save the world to leverage the 3 price tag insight. It’s a reality in all product and consumer segments. Entrepreneurs who build a strategy considering all the 3 prices can really have an advantage – a path to market.
Which industries are currently ignoring price tag 2 and 3? Maybe you can be first in that market with this insight and give them a marketing lesson.
The software group 37Signals have written a great strategy book – Getting Real. Including this strategic suggestion:
One downsmanship.
Instead of trying to be one better, how about being a bit less.
In a world of excessive choice, less can generate real cut through.
You may have a vision of selling out to the incumbent. The type of stuff that makes the front page of the business section. The reason you know about Google buying Youtube is that it doesn’t happen very often. We all need this sense of reality before we commence.
Having a successful business doesn’t mean someone (read here big ugly conglomerate with large cheque book) will want to buy you. Especially if you’re another, slightly more innovative version of them. They will think they can just beat you with a better version of your innovation later, or some flimsy brand extension. Consumers might want to give you money for what you provide – but this success doesn’t automatically give you a ‘sell out’ exit strategy.
To put things slightly in your favour for a sell out to happen, your strategy can help. You need to have something they haven’t got and can’t build. You’ve got have the thing, they missed. Generally speaking incumbents only buy two things:
Distribution Systems & Brands
Widgets can be made, reverse engineered.
Pepsi bought Gatorade – Not because they didn’t know how to make a sports drink. They bought the brand.
Google bought Youtube – Not because they don’t know how to build a video sharing website, they bought the eyeballs the brand gives them.
Coke bought Neverfail Water – Not because they don’t know how to put water in a water cooler, but because Neverfail secured the distribution channel of offices.
Nestle bought Musashi – Not because they couldn’t find any food technologists to make a protein bar. They bought distribution in the health food channels, and a brand with health food ‘cred’. Something the Nestle brand can never be.
You can only sell something an incumbent hasn’t got and can’t build. This is never about the product.
If you want to sell out, build a brand that means something they don’t, focus on a channel that they forgot.
Copy cat from Ballarat, went to school and got the strap….
This limerick is well known in grade school locally, not sure if it transcends geography.
We’re taught from a very young age that copying lacks virtue and deserves some form of punishment. You could say it is viewed as some form of stealing. A start up or business for that matter is a complex set of interacting ideas and actions. Some of which may be original (your widget), some of which may be copied (your accounting methodology). These are simplified examples to make the point. Is anything truly original anyway? Every idea has been built upon something. Civilization is built upon man adding value to the ideas of others
Learning is copying. From breathing to eating, to building houses to modern transport, everything is learned. And if everything is learned, we’re simply imitating and adding at different locations on the copy scale.
If you don’t have an idea, maybe copying someone else isn’t so bad. Here are three ways to be a copy cat.
Do the same thing in the same market
Do a new version in the same market
Do the same thing in a new market
If it’s the same thing in a new market, it’s a new thing to the people who haven’t seen it. You might just be rewarded by copying in a new geography or copying then adding.
– The Ipod wasn’t the first MP3 player (new version – simplified)
– Windows wasn’t the first Graphical User Interface. (new geography – PC’s)
– Redbull wasn’t the first energy drink (new geography – western world)
A website worth checking out is springwise They espouse the virtues of the copy cat. You’ll be amazed at what you can copy from this idea pod. Some new start ups are literally asking for copy cats. (otherwise known as distributors)
I’m not doubting that a more original concept (relatively speaking) has a higher propensity for success, the big win. However it also works in reverse.
A copy cat may not make a billion, but it may get you out of your cubicle.
Isn’t success an internal and relative concept anyway?