JACK MIXNER STRATEGY

www.mixnerstrategy.com

Picture a middle-eastern bazaar on market day maybe in the middle of the eighteenth century. What do you see? People packing the square. Shouting. Cursing. Eying. Ignoring. Touching. Feeling. Negotiating. Settling. Paying. Carrying. Trusting. Not trusting. Knowing. Undecided. Decided. Rich. Poor. Packed. Tight. Close. Smelly. Smoky. Sensual. Nonsense. Cheap. Exquisite. Sunny. Shadowed. Wet. Rainy. Cold. Hot. Safe. Unsafe. Escorted. Unescorted. Free. Enslaved. Story. Sounds. Music. Singing. Horses. Monkeys. Pestering. Quiet.

Now picture a Target on a Saturday afternoon. How many of the adjectives above apply? Some of them just don't fly anymore. People want to be safe. They want a fair deal. Things have changed. Walmart the same way. The center of the retailing universe has become staid. Yes, the end-caps sell. So do the aisles, or, believe me, the items for sale won't remain at Walmart very long. But the experience has changed. Maybe it is a good thing. It might be what we really want.

Doc Searls (Levine, 76) says we really do want the bazaar, and that the bazaar has been re-created on the web. Want to argue? There's a place for you. Same with every one of the adjectives above. Quiet. Unsafe. Smelly. There's an idea.

Searls talks about a marketing assignment for a computer company that had spent years in the dark making their latest product. They wanted to make a big splash at the launch. There was no way. No one was interested.  They weren't part of the conversation, and, crucially, the conversation couldn't be created in an instant. My friend Shannon Barnes clued me in to The Cluetrain Manifesto. He does a good job with all the media out there. Twitter. Facebook, I guess. Linkedin, certainly. What's that mean for you? Want to launch a new product or service? Make sure you're part of the conversation (that might even be too simple - be part of the arguments) in today's bazaar, or have a very tough time marketing your new product.

Levine, Rick, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger. The Cluetrain Manifesto. The end of business as usual. Perseus Books. 2000.

Posted by jackmixner at 03:13 PM | Permalink

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A Table of Contents is sequential. Following from the first chapter to the second to the third is the idea. Want to innovate? Forget about the Table of Contents. Focus instead on making connections throughout the book - throughout your company and your clientele - to make things new and worthwhile to customers.

Remember the pictures of bicyclists racing on those big-wheeled bicycles back in the last decades of the nine-teeth century? Bicycling has been a popular sport for a long time. The designs have changed, but it is a reasonable bet that you rode, if not owned, a bike when you were a kid. So, if we are all bicyclists, why did we mostly stop bicycling by our twentieth birthday? Shimano, after looking at the problem a bit, found out (Brown, 13). Bicycling is a cyclic business, something most marketing folks with expertise in the bike business will tell you. You are going to have down years. Shimano wasn't willing to accept that as a given, so they tried to do something about it. The first thing they should have done, if they followed the chapter-by-chapter scenario, was to go to their marketing department (or maybe their research and development department) and ask for a new flavor of bike for next year. They chose instead to look for connections in the biking community to see if they saw anything interesting.

Their classic assumption was that they should focus on the high end of the market. After all, they had thought all those years, you make more profits on higher priced parts and components. That makes for more profits, normally. Instead they looked down market. People stop bicycling when they hit twenty for a reason. If you've bicycled lately, you probably know why. The seats hurt. Leaning over isn't comfortable on your back. They found out a whole list of things folks hate about the experience (Brown, 14): people hate comparing themselves to lycra-clad sales clerks; the complexity - and cost -of owning a bike isn't conducive to a quick weekend ride; cycling on a clogged city street is dangerous to your health; maintaining a bike is a pain in and of itself; everyone owns a bike, but it has a flat tire, or a broken cable that has been broken and abandoned for years. Fix all that and you might increase sales. Thus was born (or re-born if you think about it) the coaster bike for weekend warriors who want a simple ride. Shimano makes components, so they had to convince manufacturers like Trek, Raleigh and Giant to follow along (Brown, 15). They didn't just make stuff. They designed campaigns for local bike shops to start with their local government. Safe place to ride. Safe equipment. Safe rules. Safe sold more bikes.

A simple concept if you think about it. Don't "complexify" your product to sell more product. Simplify it. Throw out parts. Make it easy to maintain. Make it a cool thing to do in your community. And -oh, this is cool too - sell more bikes. I didn't say it would be easy. It takes time to sell more stuff. But it is doable. Think about it.

Brown, Tim. Change by Design. How Design Thinking  Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation. Harper Business. 2009.

Posted by jackmixner at 01:58 PM | Permalink