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Loved each and every part of this book. I will definitely recommend this book to business, non fiction lovers. Once you find people who buy pain relievers, then you need people who want to buy a new kind.
Finally, you need to find the people willing to listen to you talk about your new pain reliever. The vast majority of folks are just too busy and will ignore you, regardless of how many ads you buy. Being first in the frozen pizza category was a good idea. Being first in pain relievers was an even better idea. The problem with books about how to do yoga is that there are too many of them.
A few years ago, when yoga books were scarce, all a pub- lisher needed to be successful was a good yoga book. Today, though, there are more than five hundred books on yoga. Nobody, no matter how motivated, takes the time to review all five hundred before buying a book on yoga. All those folks who vis- ited the store a few years ago and made yoga books so pop- ular are no longer shopping for yoga books!
The world has changed. There are far more choices, but there is less and less time to sort them out. Way back then, consumers had a lot more time and far fewer choices. Then the game changed — it was all about satisfying our wants.
The market- ing community taught us with plenty of TV advertising to want more and more, and consumers did their best to keep up. Among the people who might buy your product, most will never hear about it.
There are so many alternatives now that people can no longer be easily reached by mass media. Busy consumers ignore unwanted messages, while your competition which already has market share to defend is willing to overspend to maintain that market share.
Worse still, people are getting harder to reach by per- mission media. And setting aside the spam issues, even when people do want to hear from you by phone or mail or email, they are less and less likely to take action. Your sat- isfied consumers value these messages less because those messages no longer solve their current problems. Companies have gotten better at understanding what sat- isfies their consumers and presumably have gotten better at delivering it , so the bar keeps getting raised as to what product news you can possibly deliver that will add to that satisfaction.
Patent and Trademark Office. Almost everything we can realistically imagine that we need has been invented. When was the last time someone told you about a new pain reliever? This is true not just for consumer products but also for business and industrial purchases. The folks who got there before you have a huge inertia advantage. If you want to grow your market share or launch something new, you have a significant challenge ahead. Bottom line? Marketing is dead. Long live marketing.
The idea behind it was simple. The government spent money on weapons. Companies received tax dollars to build weapons. These companies hired labor. They paid taxes. The taxes were used to buy more weapons. A virtu- ous cycle was created: The government got bigger, employment went up, and it appeared that everyone was a winner. As one half of it grew and prospered, so did the other. Little noticed over the past fifty years was a very differ- ent symbiotic relationship, one that arguably created far more wealth with large side effects than the military- industrial complex did.
I call it the TV-industrial complex. The death of the complex is responsible for much of the turmoil at our companies today. The system was simple.
Build a factory. Buy a lot of TV ads. The ads will lead to retail distribution and to sales. The sales will keep the factory busy and create profits. Astute businesses then used all the profits to buy more ads.
This led to more distribution and more factories. Soon the virtuous cycle was in place, and a large, prof- itable brand was built. Non-advertised brands lost distribution and, ultimately, profits. The old system worked for Revlon. Charles Revson was one of the first big TV advertisers, and advertising grew his company dramatically. Where did he spend his profits? On more TV ads. In , a smart ad agency hired Jay Ward, creator of Bullwinkle, and asked him to make a commercial.
Then, and only after that was done, did the cereal company go about actually making a cereal. The cereal was secondary. Neither will adults.
Consumers were kids in the candy store; they had pockets filled with shiny money and they had a real desire to buy stuff. We shopped on TV and we shopped in stores. We were in a hurry and we wanted to fill our houses, our fridges, and our garages. Is it possible to read the list without filling your head with images and jingles? Throw in particularly annoying prod- uct pitches like Wisk and Irish Spring, and the point is obvious.
Advertising this stuff used to work. Really well. Big brands, big ideas, big impacts on our lives. Our cars, our cigarettes, our clothes, our food — any- thing that was effectively advertised on TV was changed by the medium. Not only did marketers use television to promote their products, but television itself changed the way products were created and marketed. As a result, all of the marketing Ps were adjusted to take advantage of the synergies between our factories and our ability to capture the attention of the audience.
Individuals and businesses have ceased to pay attention. The TV-industrial complex lasted a half-century — a long time. So long that the people who devised the strategies and ads that worked so well are gone. Every day, companies spend millions to re- create the glory days of the TV-industrial complex. And every day, they fail. The old rule was this: Create safe, ordinary products and combine them with great marketing.
The new rule is: Create remarkable products that the right people seek out. The center of the black curve above was the goal. Mass marketing traditionally targets the early and late majority because this is the largest group. In this market, for example, the early adopters heavily influence the rest of the curve, so persuading them is worth far more than wasting ad dollars trying to persuade anyone else.
The original VW Beetle was not as much of a countercul- ture car as you may remember. Its sales languished until some brilliant advertising saved it. On the basis of this great TV and print campaign, the car was profitable in the United States for more than fifteen years.
The original Beetle is a poster child for the power of the TV-industri- al complex. In this case, it was the shape, not the ads, that worked. The new Beetle, on the other hand, was a success because of the way it looked and the way it felt to drive. Every time the very round Beetle drove down a street filled with boxy SUVs, it was marketing itself. After marketing the new Beetle for just three years, VW is now offering incentives, new designs, and other features to make the car exciting again.
What could the Four Seasons and Motel 6 have in common? Or Wal-Mart and Neiman Marcus, both growing during the same decade.
Or Nokia changing its hardware every thirty days and Nintendo marketing the same Game Boy for fifteen years in a row. Sure, those things worked, but do they help us predict what will work tomorrow? What all of these companies have in common is that they have nothing in common.
They are outliers. Super-fast or super-slow. Very exclusive or very cheap. Very big or very small. A full-page ad in the Journal costs more than a house in Buffalo, New York. Page after page of dull gray ads, each pitching a dull product offering from a dull company. If you took 90 percent of these ads and swapped the logos around, no one could tell. Switch one stock photo of a guy in a black derby hat with another stock photo of an earnest-looking pan-Asian smiling employee, and no one could tell.
One morning, with time to kill at a fine hotel, I inter- rupted a few people who were reading the Journal over breakfast. I waited until they had finished the first section, and then I asked them if they could name just two of the companies that had run full-page ads. Not one person could. Then I took one of the ads, folded down the bottom with the logo, and asked the Journal readers which compa- ny ran the ad. No idea.
Finally, I asked them the million-dollar question lit- erally. You can probably guess the answer. Just about all the ways marketers promote themselves whether they sell to busi- nesses or to consumers are becoming less effective. We have chartered a new beginning. An era of empower- ment. But while we have changed our name to BearingPoint, what we have not changed is our mindset-the desire to get it done.
And get it done right. At the top, of course. We will accomplish that goal the same way we have operated for over years. One on One. With practical know-how. With passion. Delivering to our present and future clients more than just consulting. By helping our clients align their business and systems to achieve their desired goals. Providing the right information to empower their business.
Because the right information brings knowledge. And knowledge is power. Sharing it is empowerment. A committee wrote this ad. A committee approved it. No one will remember it; no one will point it out to a col- league. It could be remarkable. It could help spread the word about a remark- able product. If the goal of the advertiser was to create a measura- ble impact — to create ads that actually got people to sit up, take notice, and tell their colleagues — the ads would be a lot better than they are today.
They entertained and got atten- tion, but they translated into no incremental revenue. So what? I think your business has plenty of great opportunities to do great things.
Once you see that the old ways have nowhere to go but down, it becomes even more imperative to create things worth talking about. What I can do, though, is highlight the takeaway ideas, the specific things you can do tomorrow to start on your way to the Purple Cow. How, then, does an elevator company compete? Until recently, selling involved a lot of golf, dinners, and long- term relationships with key purchasing agents at major real estate developers. No doubt this continues, but Otis Elevator Company has radically changed the game by developing a Purple Cow.
The prob- lem? Every elevator ride is basically a local. The elevator stops five, ten, fifteen times on the way to your floor. While your elevator is busy stopping at every floor, the folks in the lobby are getting more and more frustrated. When you approach the elevators, you key in your floor on a centralized control panel. In return, the panel tells you which elevator will take you to your floor. With this simple pre-sort, Otis has managed to turn every elevator into an express.
Your elevator takes you immediately to the twelfth floor and races back to the lobby. This means that buildings can be taller, they need fewer elevators for a given number of people, the wait is shorter, and the building can use precious space for peo- ple, not for elevators. A huge win, implemented at remarkably low cost. Not likely.
Tide is arguably the best laundry detergent in history. Is that the right thing to do? Tide succeeded early on because of a mixture of good TV ads, very good distribution, and a great product.
As the TV-industrial complex crumbled, though, the ads mattered less and less. Now, with the ascension of Wal- Mart, the distribution is more crucial than ever.
Without Wal-Mart, Tide is dead. Are they likely to come up with a true innovation, a remarkable breakthrough that even casual detergent buyers notice? Or are the incremental improvements largely a carryover from a different time, a time when people actually cared about their laundry?
Cut research spending, raise the price as much as is practical, and put the incre- mental profits into the creation of ever more radical and interesting new products. Instead of investing in a dying product, take profits and reinvest them in building something new.
If we look at the idea diffusion curve, we see that the bulk of product sales come after a product has been adopted by the consumers willing to take a chance on something new. Those early adopters create an environment where the early and late majority feel safe buying the new item. The big insight here, though, is that the vast majority of the curve ignores you.
Every time. People in the early and late majority listen to their experienced peers but are going to ignore you. It is so tempting to skip the left and go for the juicy center. Regardless of industry, successful new products and services follow this familiar pattern after they are intro- duced. First they are purchased by the innovators. These are the people in a given market who like having some- thing first.
They may not even need the product; they just want it. Early adopters are the folks who can actually benefit from using a new product and who are eager to maintain their edge over the rest of the population by seeking out new products and services. It might be a new investment device zero-coupon bonds, say or even a new TV show, but in any meaningful mar- ket, this audience is both sizable and willing to spend money. Trailing after the early adopters are the early and late majority.
First, these people are really good at ignoring you. The early and late majority want protocols and systems and safety that new products rarely offer. Countless products never manage to get far enough along the curve to reach these folks. Finally, the laggards complete the curve, getting around to buying a cassette deck when the rest of us have moved on to CDs.
If anything, these people are the adapters. The vast majority of consumers are happy. The only chance you have is to sell to peo- ple who like change, who like new stuff, who are actively looking for what it is you sell. Then you hope that the idea spreads, moving from the early adopters to the rest of the curve.
And they will sell it poorly. Moore talks at length about moving through the rest of the curve. I high- ly recommend his book. You must design a product that is remarkable enough to attract the early adopters — but is flexible enough and attractive enough that those adopters will have an easy time spreading the idea to the rest of the curve.
Digital cameras have been attractively priced for about five years. At the beginning, only gadget-heads and com- puter geeks bought them.
Over time, the camera manufacturers obsessed about fixing both prob- lems and were rewarded with dramatically increased sales. Digital cameras are well on their way to replacing film cameras. This shift was not caused by great ad campaigns from the camera companies. Instead, it is the direct result of early adopters successfully selling the cameras to their friends.
Digital cameras spread because they offer convenience and price advantages over film cameras. Better still, these advantages are obvious, easy to talk about, easy to demon- strate, and just begging to be brought up every time an early adopter sees a laggard pull out a film camera.
Being remarkable in the right way helps you in two ways. And second, it makes it easier for these early adopters to per- suasively sell their peers on the rest of the curve. Ideas That Spread, Win A brand or a new product offering is nothing more than an idea. I call ideas that spread, ideaviruses. Sneezers are the key spreading agents of an ideavirus.
These are the experts who tell all their colleagues or friends or admirers about a new product or service on which they are a perceived authority. Sneezers are the ones who launch and maintain ideaviruses. Every market has a few sneezers. Finding and seducing these sneezers is the essential step in creating an ideavirus.
So how do you create an idea that spreads? The everybody products are all taken. The sneezers in these huge markets have too many choices and are too satisfied for it to be likely that you will capture their interest.
The way you break through to the mainstream is to tar- get a niche instead of a huge market. The early adopters in this market niche are more eager to hear what you have to say. The sneezers in this market niche are more likely to talk about your product.
And best of all, the market is small enough that a few sneezers can get you to the critical mass you need to create an ideavirus. After it dominates the original niche, it will migrate to the masses. How smooth and easy is it to spread your idea? How often will people sneeze it to their friends? Do they believe each other? How reputable are the people most likely to promote your idea? How persistent is it — is it a fad that has to spread fast before it dies, or will the idea have legs and thus you can invest in spreading it over time?
Those are the products and ideas worth launching. Marketers who read these books often conclude that these ideas are gimmicks that work every once in a while, or that the ideas sound organic and automatic and natu- ral. An idea becomes an ideavirus. It crosses the chasm. It tips. All these consumers seem to be busy doing your job, spreading your idea from one person to another, so you can sit back and wait for success to happen. Both groups are wrong. While ideaviruses are occasionally the result of luck consider the Macarena, say, or the Pet Rock , the vast majority of product success stories are engineered from the first day to be successful.
Products that are engineered to cross the chasm — with built-in safety nets for wary consumers — are way more likely to succeed than are products not engineered that way. Services that are worth talking about get talked about.
The hard work and big money you used to spend on fre- quent purchases of print and TV advertising now move to repeated engineering expenses and product failures. If anything, marketing is more time-consuming and expen- sive than it used to be. This is worth highlighting: The Purple Cow is not a cheap shortcut. It is, however, your best perhaps only strategy for growth. We need to understand that investing in the Cow is even smarter than buying a Super Bowl ad.
Ads do work — not as well as they used to, and perhaps not cost-effectively, but they do attract attention and generate sales. Targeted ads are far more cost-effective, yet most advertising and marketing efforts are completely untargeted. They are hurricanes, whipping through a marketplace horizontally, touching everyone in the same way, regardless of who they are and what they want. Yes, sometimes this hurricane allows you to skip the painstaking work of moving from the left to the right.
Sometimes the entire market needs something, knows they need it, and are willing to listen. The key word here, though, is sometimes. But a very different kind of ad does work. What is it about some ads and some products that makes them suc- cessful, while others fail?
Why, for example, do the little text-only ads on Google perform so well while the flashy, full-page, annoying banners on Yahoo! We have to start with another look at the power in the marketing equation. In the old days, marketers targeted consumers. Implicit in the idea of targeting, though, is the conceit that it was up to the marketers to decide who would pay attention and when.
Today, of course, the opposite is true. They choose whether you are listened to or ignored. How do they decide? Are some consumers more likely than others to listen? What separates the listeners from the others? Compare this to a loud, unwelcome interruption of a less-focused consumer, and the difference is clear. At any given moment, in any given market, some people are all ears. They want to hear from you. They look through the Yellow Pages, subscribe to trade magazines, and visit Web sites looking for more information.
Some of these people will eventually buy; some are just looking. So here comes the big idea: It is useless to advertise to anyone except interested sneezers with influence. The rest of the time, you need to be investing in the Purple Cow.
Products, services and techniques so useful, interesting, outrageous, and note- worthy that the market will want to listen to what you have to say. No, in fact, you must develop products, services, and techniques that the market will actually seek out. Their low-cost structure, underused airports, and young, non-union staff give them an unfair advantage. The coffee bar phenomenon was invented by them, and now whenever we think coffee, we think Starbucks.
Their low-cost index funds make it impossible for a full-service broker to compete. Their free shipping and huge selection give them an unfair advantage over the neighborhood store. Their flexibility allows them to intro- duce half a dozen salad-based entrees, capturing a big chunk of the adult market. Because they have to program original shows only one night a week, HBO can focus and invest and cream the networks.
None of these companies are using the old-fashioned advertising-based techniques to win. Consider classical music for a second. The classical music industry is now officially moribund. The big labels are hurting. Orchestras are seeing record- ing money dry up. There are virtually no commercially important new works being written or recorded.
Because no one is listening. Everything old that was worth recording has been recorded — and quite well, thank you. So the sneezers have stopped looking. Because listeners have stopped looking, composers are turning to film scores or lawn care as a way to make a living.
So the entire market stops. The insight here is not that the music industry ought to figure out a better way to solve this problem. Because they organized the product-marketing in all its forms — around the idea that sneezers wanted good, cheap versions of the music they already knew.
Naxos was right. The market stopped listening. Naxos won. So they whither. When faced with a market in which no one is listening, the smartest plan is usually to leave. At first glance, a consultant would argue that the bank should stop spending so much on the service, as it was appealing to only the innovators and some early adopters. Often, the valuable slices are located to one side or the other. What this bank might realize is that by focusing on these innovative customers, the bank may be able to bring in even more highly profitable risk-seeking cus- tomers, leaving the slow and declining sector to seek other less profitable banks.
Ignore the rest. Your ads and your products! The numbers are compelling. What if just one out of a thousand Oscar viewers tried your product? What if one member of every family in China sent you a nickel?
If you reach million people, but only. Years ago, when I first predicted the demise of the ban- ner ad as we know it, people laughed at me. CPM is the cost per thousand ad impressions. What advertisers who measured the vast minority soon realized was that every time they bought a thousand ban- ners, they got exactly zero clicks.
The banners had a hit rate of less than. The law of large num- bers was at work. Today, you can buy banner ads for less than a dollar a thousand.
A 99 percent drop. The funny thing is that I lost money on the deal. Sure, there are always gimmicks that work animated online pages or product tie- ins with reality TV shows come to mind , but the vast major- ity of ordinary advertising is victim to this unrepealable law.
SoundScan is a neat company with a fascinating product. Working with retailers and record companies, SoundScan knows exactly how many copies of every released album are sold, every week, in the entire country. In , the New York Times reported that of the more than 6, albums distributed by the major labels, only albums sold more than , copies last year.
Often a lesser brand has no chance at all. His first hotel, the Phoenix, is in one of the worst neighborhoods downtown. In fact, no matter what he did to the Phoenix, hardly anyone would choose to stay there. Which is fine. Chip redesigned the place. He painted it funky colors. Put hip style magazines in all the rooms. Had a cutting-edge artist paint the inside of the pool, and invited up-and- coming rock-and-roll stars to stay at the place.
Within months, the plan worked. By intentionally ignoring the mass market, Chip created something remarkable: a rock-and-roll motel in the center of San Francisco.
People looking for it found it. Are they outperforming you? If you could pick one underserved niche to tar- get and to dominate , what would it be?
Why not launch a product to compete with your own — a prod- uct that does nothing but appeal to this market? Why is it so hard to be Purple? This, of course, is nonsense. The Cow is so rare because people are afraid. Nobody gets unanimous praise — ever. The best the timid can hope for is to be unnoticed. Criticism comes to those who stand out. Where did you learn how to fail? We run our schools like factories. We line kids up in straight rows, put them in batches called grades , and work very hard to make sure there are no defective parts.
Nobody standing out, falling behind, running ahead, making a ruckus. Playing it safe. Following the rules. Those seem like the best ways to avoid failure.
And in school, they may very well be. Alas, these rules set a pattern for most people like your boss? These are the rules that ultimately lead to failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible. In good times, however, those same people will tell you to relax, take it easy; we can afford to be conservative, to play it safe. The good news is that the prevailing wisdom makes your job even easier. The book was published in multiple languages including English, consists of pages and is available in ebook format.
The main characters of this business, non fiction story are ,. The book has been awarded with , and many others. Please note that the tricks or techniques listed in this pdf are either fictional or claimed to work by its creator. We do not guarantee that these techniques will work for you.
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