I was having dinner at a friends house last week and saw something that caught my eye. It’s probably not something you would ordinarily pay attention to, but i am sure at some stage in your life you have done it. As we sat around the kitchen table playing a board game, we passed around a large tin of mixed lollies. It was getting late at night so all the kids were getting ready for bed. One of the young girls came out and caught a glimpse of the lollies and decided that she had to have some.

After much negotiating with the boss a.k.a Mum, she was told that she could pick only 1 lolly. As she peered into the large tin filled with all types of delicious sweets, she sat and pondered at what seemed an impossible task. So many sweets..but only allowed 1. It wasn’t too long before she removed her hand from the tin holding her selection. Amongst a plethora of gummy lollies, her hand emerged clenching the one and only lolly pop in the container. 

You should have seen the smile on her face when she realised what she had achieved.

So what did i learn from this unusual experience. I’m so glad you asked!

I learned that People are attracted to:

1. Perceived Value- When my friends daughter looked into the lollie jar ready to make a decision on a lollie, she undertook a complex process.She weighed up the perceived value in her head before making the selection. Her thought process concluded that by choosing the lolly pop she would be maximising the opportunity that she had been given. The lolly pop was larger and had the potential to last longer than all the others, It could be eaten slowly as to enjoy the fullness of the sweet, It could also be resealed and kept for later (as gross as that is, this is kids here). When a customer purchases your product, they make 1 decision. They have many providers to chose from but can only chose 1 to provide the product or service. This desire to get the most out of everything is in us from the start, we want to get the most value we can. What value can you offer the customer to make them chose you? The value you offer is reflected in the experience you can offer the customer. (Read the earlier post on the Experience Economy). Is your service outstanding? Can you offer the customer a gift? Do you have a rewards program? What added value will the customer receive from choosing you?

2. Differentiation- I know this will hurt to hear, but you are just a jelly baby in the worlds largest lollie jar. When people look into the lollie jar they are overwhelmed with selection. When people are exploring your industry the same is true. If you are looking for a good book check out Seth Godin’s book ‘Purple Cow’. People are attracted to differentiation. What is it that makes your organisation stand out from your competitors. Are you the lolly pop in the lollie jar or are you just another jelly baby? What are some of the things you could be doing to make your organisation stand out? What does your shopfront look like? Compare your newspaper ads with other organisations…what makes yours different? How is the culture of your organisation different from others?

While these two areas have potential to attract people to your organisattion, these are only the initial stages of the process for acquiring new customers. It is not simply enough to attract customers! It is important to provide an experience that will retain customers, which is achieved through consistency (we will talk about that another time). The next time that girl is fronted with a similar situation, her past experience will play a crucial role in her selection process. If the lolly pop was sour, don’t rely on these two keys to get you through.

I am going to apologise in advance to all of my past university lecturers for doing this. It is rare for me to quote ‘Wikipedia’, but i really think that its definition of innovation is perfect for this post. “The term innovation means a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental, radical, and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations. 

Seth Godin sums it up perfectly when he says that we are in an attention economy. As marketers and business people we are struggling and fiercely competing for the attention of our audience. Switch on your television or listen to the radio, it doesn’t take long to see and hear how many signals are firing off into your brain trying to get you buy this, go here, do that.

Innovation is one of the crucial keys to communicating your message in an attention economy! You’re probably thinking…”I already knew that” right? I’m not asking you whether you know this, I’m asking whether or not you apply this on a regular basis? Not did you have a really good ad you ran once. 

Take a look at this campaign by Air New Zealand. The ‘Nothing to Hide’ campaign was created to promote the airline’s fares as having no extra fees or charges and features over 90 Air New Zealand staff.  Eight of these staff wear nothing more than body paint. The risk associated with developing a somewhat ‘cheeky’ campaign like this would be very high, from using their own staff rather than paying professional actors to the potential negative response that the campaign would generate from the wider community. Innovation is a ‘new way of doing something’ i certainly think Air New Zealand have achieved this and are seeing the positive outcomes of an innovative idea with the ad gaining media attention all over the world. The marketing world needs innovators. Innovators are risk takers. Innovators are revolutionaries. Innovators are first. Are you willing to take a risk? Are you prepared to revolutionise the way people are currently thinking? Are you ready to go first?

I read this 5 stages of innovation and thought it was very appropriate for a conclusion to this post.

1. People deny that the innovation is required.

2. People deny that the innovation is effective.

3. People deny that the innovation is important.

4. People deny that the innovation will justify the effort required to adopt it.

5. People accept and adopt the innovation, enjoy its benefits, attribute it to people other than the innovator, and deny the existence of stages 1 to 4.

©AC 2005. Inspired by Alexander von Humboldt’s ‘Three Stages Of Scientific Discovery’, as referenced by Bill Bryson in his book, ‘A Short History Of Nearly Everything’. (http://www.businessballs.com/quotes.htm).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation

“What happens to our hearts when we find our wallets?”. Boschee (1998) makes this bold and confronting statement in his article ‘Merging Mission & Money’. Mission is the DNA of your organisation! It is the genetic make up and the substance of who you are, what you do and why you exist. Why does your organisation exist? Have you sat down and really asked yourself the question? Boschee (1998) suggests that often people come to ‘do good’ and stay to ‘do well’, meaning that people come to an organisation with a mission and a passion and stay because of the personal return. 

Are you or your staff members lacking motivation? Mission fueled people are passionate people. Ask yourself these questions

1.) Am i actively promoting the mission of our organisation? (Mission is communicated  from leadership)

2.) Have i communicated the mission clearly to gain internal buy in? (Do my staff want to be part of the mission?)

3.) Has my focus shifted from ‘why’ we exist to ‘what’ can you give me? (heart vs wallet)

Your organisation exists for your customers. Without customers you would not exist. Your customers generate your bottom line. Your bottom line does not generate customers. 

Maybe its time to put shift the focus from our wallets for just a moment and find the love and reason for why we exist.

Boschee, J. (1998) Merging Mission and Money: A Board Member’s Guide to Social Entrepreneurship

People are willing to pay for an experience. Whether you hear you customers or not, when they walk through your doors, click on your web page or enlist your services, they are all saying the same thing- “give me an experience to remember”. If you want to attract and retain your customers, it is about going beyond ‘function’ and providing an ‘experience’. 

The book “The Experience Economy” written by Pine & Gilmore (1999) uses a great illustration.

“Consider a true commodity- the coffee bean. Companies that harvest coffee or trade it on the futures market receive- at the time of this writing- a little more than $1 a pound, which translates into 1 or 2 cents per cup. When a manufacturer grinds, packages and sells those same beans in a grocery store, turning them into a good, the price to a consumer jumps to between 5 & 25 cents per cup (depending on brand and package size). Brew the beans in a run-of-the-mill diner, corner coffee shop or bodegra and that service now sells for 50c to $1 per cup. So depending on what a business does with it, coffee can any of three economic offerings- commodity, good or service- with three distinct ranges of value that customers attach to the offering. But wait, serve that same coffee in a 5-Star restaurant or espresso bar, where the ordering, creation and consumption of the cup embodies a heightened ambience or sense of theatre, and consumer gladly pay anywhere from $2 to $5 for each cup”

Last year my wife and i travelled to Sydney for the weekend. On our second night in the city, we got dressed up, took the monorail into Darling Harbour  and found a nice restaurant that overlooked the sunset on one of Australia’s iconic locations.We sat and watched the sunset and enjoyed the ambience of light music and street performances. When we ordered we sat and watched a television screen of the chefs preparing our food, and before we knew it we had just finished one of the best pieces of steak we had eaten in our entire lives. To this day, both my wife and i share our experience with  anyone who says that they have had a good steak. 

While the meal wasn’t cheap, when i reminisce  on that experience, price isn’t even in the recesses of my mind. This is the power of experience. People are willing to pay for experiences, to spend time enjoying a series of memorable events to engage them in a practical way. Pine & Gilmore (1999) believe that the workplace is a theatre and that every business is a stage set to give the customers an experience. It is not simply about entertainment, but about engaging customers by truly connecting with them. They make the statement that it is about “going beyond function to provide an experience. Commodities are Fungible, Goods are Tangible, Service is Intangible and Experience is Memorable” (Pine & Gilmore, 1999).

If your business is a stage, what experiences are you providing to your customers?

Pine, B & Gilmore, J. (1999), The Experience Economy- Work is theatre & every business is a stage, Harvard Business School Press, Boston

Let’s play  a game! I’ll hold up an image, and you tell me the first word that comes to mind.

Let me guess.. the first word that came to mind was “Fragile”? If by any chance you saw a gun or knife, i am going to recommend that you seek medical advice. For those people who work in freight, shipping or removals i’m sure this symbol is something you see every day, and quite familiar. When i see a picture like this on a box and the words fragile, my first response (in most part) isn’t to throw it on the ground and play hacky sack. In most cases, i tend to be more delicate with items exhibiting this image.

I read a funny story about this logo the other day- A company complained when it didn’t receive a large order of fragile goods that were supposed to show up on a ship. The freight company couldn’t figure out how the items had left on the ship, but didn’t arrive on it at the final destination. What they didn’t realise is that while the ship had stopped over in an African Port, a group of staff made an executive decision to make some room on the ship for more goods. Naturally the first things to be thrown overboard where the boxes of what they perceived as “broken glasses”

A funny illustration, but a clear case of mistaken identity. There are a number of organisations today who have a similar case of mistaken identity. How you brand your organisation is foundational in how you will be perceived by your customers. As marketers and business people we are faced with the grueling task of somehow trying to communicate “Our Space” into the “Head Space” of our consumers. There is a huge difference between our ‘desired’ perception and our customers ‘perceived’ perception. What is your brand communicating? Is it clear, or is it being misinterpreted? Do people see your brand for what it is, or do they throw it overboard?

If you don’t know how people see it, then maybe it is time to ask.