Right Place, Right Time!

Right Place, Right Time!
ID-ONE's News-Letter 1st Quarter 2010

Right Place, Right Time: Is it enough?

Post-it notes have become such a part of our office supplies that it seems like they’ve been forever, but in actuality they’re closer related to the computer in product cycle than the antiquated hole punch or stapler.



Why does ID-ONE care about Post-it notes you ask?
The Post-it note is an amazing story of American enterprise. It encompasses skeptical bosses, last-ditch marketing campaigns, and that old Hollywood crowd-pleaser, “inherently tacky elastomeric copolymer microspheres.”

BUT, that isn’t why we’re here. The Post-it note is also a great example of what companies need to bring a highly successful product to market.

What was needed!
Innovative Company Culture - While an intern at 3M, Post-it inventor Art Fry, “asked the engineers if I could try and develop new products, and they said, ‘Sure.’” “After I graduated, I thought all companies would let you pick up the ball and run with it like that.”
In most companies, innovators have to have their designs approved higher authorities, usually corporate executives; however, authority doesn’t always come with a knowledge of what should go to market, why, and in what form.




What didn’t work!
Product-focused companies frequently allow new product innovation to drive their process and marketing research is limited to ensuring that profitable market segment(s) exist. The rationale is that customers don’t know what options will be available in the future so we should not expect them to tell us what they will buy in the future. However, if Thomas Edison depended on marketing research he would have produced larger candles rather than inventing light bulbs.



How they found the right product!
Customer focus or market based focus - Survival in today’s market requires producing goods that people are willing and able to buy. Products can be commercial failures in spite of being technological breakthroughs. Success finally comes when a consumer pain point is found.

Moveable bookmarks upon which notes could be written!
A simple low-cost, highly adaptable innovation.

Why they still couldn’t sell it!
Re-positioning products can be key. Take for example a coffee maker, a typical Western-style home appliance now being marketed to China. Coffee is regarded as part of Westerners' life but using the same sales approach in China as in the West is unlikely to lead to sales. Chinese people tend to prefer tea to coffee, so marketing the coffee maker as a tea maker, takes full advantage of the immediate connection with Chinese families' daily life.

Despite increasing popularity within the walls of 3M, in test markets Post-its received a lackluster response. Success didn’t come until 3M correctly positioned the Post-it.

Success!
Viral Marketing – An epidemic had hit the hallways and offices of 3M. “I’d give a person a pack of one hundred sheets, and that person would end up introducing the product to twenty other people,” said Fry. “It was a geometric expansion.” Although viral marketing wouldn’t be introduced for another 20 years, almost overnight, co-workers were suddenly hitting up Fry for more samples.
3M decided to mimic this marketing technique in one large test market, “Those things really were like cocaine,” said Steve Collins, who worked the Post-it Notes account for more than a decade “You got them into somebody’s hands, and they couldn’t help but play around with them.”

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Part of the Post-it note’s appeal was its low cost, and high adaptability. It inspired innovation, was psychologically appealing and user friendly.

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It All Started On A Napkin!

"It was the 1970s, New York was in a crisis. There was high crime, high unemployment, the city was dirty and tourists were not coming. The mayor was worried and decided to launch an ad campaign. By chance, the advertising company was talking with Milton Glaser, a famous graphic artist, who just wrote on a napkin, `I Heart NY', and it became such a powerful symbol.

But what I find as the most beautiful thing of all is that its not limited. People can use it for free all over the world. It's a great example of a symbol that is invented and released out to the world for free,”

Paola Antonelli, senior curator of the MoMA's department of architecture and design

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To Create a Truly Great Product,

You Need a Truly Great Problem!

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Post-it Notes (3M) –In 1968, Dr. Spencer Silver, a scientist at 3M in the United States, with the help of Jesse Kops, a fellow scientist, accidentally developed a "low-tack", reusable pressure sensitive adhesive. For five years, Silver promoted his invention within 3M, but without much success. Finally Art Fry 3M launched the product in 1977, but it failed as consumers had not tried the product. A year later 3M issued free samples, and 90 percent of people who tried them said that they would buy the product. By 1980, the product was being sold nationwide in the US; a year later Post-its were launched in Canada and Europe. Now Post-it’s have been around 30 years and are considered an office necessity—pretty good for a product that is so relatively young!

Entrepreneur’s Corner

Art Fry’s father told him, ‘You can have great ideas, but if you can’t sell those ideas, you’re dead in the water,’”

To launch a successful product, entrepreneurs need to be equal parts, visionary, brilliant inventor, persuasive salesman, marketing guru, and engineer… or they need to be able to access these skills and abilities.

ID-ONE Tip: To increase your likelihood of success, we suggest taking advantage of the skills, experience and connections of product development companies like ID-ONE.

The Java Jacket Coffee Sleeve, that little cardboard cuff that Starbucks puts on your cup, was inspired, Antonelli tells us, when designer Jay Sorensen dropped a cup of coffee in his lap because it was too hot to hold any longer. Necessity, it seems, really is what it's cracked up to be.

“From a marketer’s perspective, Post-it Notes were pretty much the greatest invention since cigarettes. People used them at work, they used them at home, they used them everywhere—and they didn’t give you cancer. And because you could use them in so many different
settings, for so many different kinds of communication, it was hard not to develop some emotional bond with them. The fact that they were also a discernible brand only magnified this dynamic. You would probably never say to yourself, ‘Ah, scratch paper! Thanks for the memories!’ But with Post-it Notes, you just might. Because remember the time you used one to make up with your wife, or show off your genius to your boss, or play a practical joke on a friend?”

Twenty-Five Years of Post-it Notes by Greg Beato

Standing Out in the Crowd

Standing Out in the Crowd
ID-ONE's News-Letter
November 2009



Standing Out: Product Positioning



There are lots of ways to position an existing product to compete in today’s market. You can even create the perception of differentiation, with product positioning.




1. Capture the customer’s imagination.
If your product is virtually identical to other products in the market, try looking at it from a different perspective. Find a new attribute that can get customers excited and focus your positioning around it.

2. Reinvent the “customer experience.” Shake up the competitive landscape by rethinking the customer experience in new terms. Customers’ preferences change over time and as market conditions fluctuate. Take advantage of this.

3. Only target up, not down the totem pole. If you are not first in the market, publicly and to customers, always position your product relative to the market leader. It elevates your product in terms of customer perception. That said, train your sales force (and other internal groups) on features - benefits versus all competitors.

4. Infrastructure (or ecosystem) as a competitive barrier. This is an important and often ignored aspect of product planning and positioning. Many products and services, especially in technology, require related companies and industries to support them in some way. If you get enough support for your product, it can be an extraordinarily effective competitive barrier that you can use in positioning.

5. Market share gains are expensive. There’s simply no way around this. Market share comes at a heavy cost. Your product planning and positioning must reflect that or your P&L will suffer and you’ll end up back at the drawing board. The cost is a function of how entrenched the leaders are and the perceived “switching cost” for customers.
Adapted from Destroy the Competition With Positioning Strategy By Steve Tobak at BNET.com

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What is Good Design?

1. It does something useful
Especially if it does something that hasn’t been done before.



2. Fulfilling its function efficiently
Even better in a way that is entertaining, fun.



3. Features and function are important, but so are looks
There’s nothing wrong with eye candy, but people’s view of what looks good is always changing and sometimes even conflicting. Now the definition of beautiful is often multifaceted, challenging or thought provoking.



4. Innovation appeals.
Is new better than old? It appears that new will always be seductive.



5. User interface.
Is it easy to operate? Being able to easily figure out how it works shapes the experience.



6. Environmentally Conscious
Good design must be ethically, socially and environmentally responsible. Sometimes this trumps aesthetically pleasing design.

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In "Good design" these qualities and characteristics that represent and deliver "goodness" would be obvious, consistent and established. The more often designers work this way, the more confidence people will have in the things they design improving honest and useful communications between designer and end user.

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The Information Age

We have come to believe that all we need do is to collect more and more information, and the way forward will be clear. There are times when information alone does create value. More often, it is the thinking applied to the information that creates value.



Research shows that people who go to the cinema are between 15 and 25 years of age. So the studios make films to fit the tastes of this age bracket. Suddenly a different movie appears: My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It tops the box office in the US. Why? Because there is a huge audience outside the 15-25 group who do not go to the movies because none of the films interest them.



This is but one example of how information without thinking can be highly dangerous. Yet we persist in putting all our effort into information gathering and virtually no effort into thinking. Thinking is no substitute for information. Only rarely is information a substitute for thinking. The purpose of design is to take all the information and factors and then design value. Value needs to be designed, unless you just want to copy someone else's design.
from Design and judgment: Why we need to change our emphasis from judgment to design By Edward de Bono

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Good design is about creating perceived value!

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No More Black Boxes!



No, we’re not talking about airplanes!



Wayne Brush, one of the principals here at ID-ONE, once worked at a company that makes testing devices.** He often relates the story of a time when the marketing department took their product to a trade show. Their product was superior in almost every way, save one. While their product worked better and had more features than any of the others in the market place, it didn’t sell well. The reason? It was a black box. The majority of the products at the show, in the professional opinion of the marketing guys, “looked cool.”



I wish I could say that the company got smart and invested in some product design, but they didn’t.



**If you’re reading this newsletter (you know who you are!) - it’s not too late! Heck, we’ll even offer you a discount.




Entrepreneur’s Corner

Myth: I looked everywhere and didn’t see anything like it, so it must not already exist.



Smart patent holders have developed as broad a patent as possible to prevent others from creating a product that is similar to theirs and possibly stealing the market. These variations may never be developed and made into a product, but are nonetheless valid. It is necessary to do a thorough patent search to be assured the product does not already exist. These time-consuming patent searches can be done through a patent attorney (expensive!), a product development firm (less expensive), or the entrepreneur can do the search themselves through somewhere like Google Patents..

Tip: When searching somewhere like Google Patents, be sure to avoid using search terms that describe your concept too specifically. You might be surprised at how well this information is tracked and your IP (intellectual property) could be stolen before you even get a chance to develop it.





ID-ONE's November Wink at Product Development




Snuggie –In late 2008 and early 2009 the "Snuggie" brand of sleeved blankets became a pop culture phenomenon, sometimes described humorously as a "cult". The phenomenon resulted in sales of the Snuggie and its rivals that far exceeded their distributors' expectations: more than 4 million Snuggies and 1 million Slankets as of February, 2009. The phenomenon has even inspired similarly-marketed knock-off products.