Quiddity Higher Purpose Business, help for entrepreneurs, women in business, David Solomon

The Queen is Dead. Long Live the Queen!

No, this isn’t a blog about Madonna, Lady Gaga, or even Michael Jackson or Elvis. This is an article about the humble USP or Unique Selling Proposition.

The original idea of the USP was that each product or service taken to market should have a specific benefit that was unique to it (hence making it as discernibly different from its competitors as possible).

This benefit needed to be a compelling proposition so that it could move many people to buy the product or service. And when done well, this proposition could be captured by a memorable phrase or line. Do you remember these?

When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight – Federal Express
Melts in your mouth, not in your hand – M&M’s
We try harder – Avis
The Fresh Food People – Woolworths

So what is the problem with a USP? Well, there are several, but the most obvious is that a USP only takes into consideration the perspective of the product, service, company, or individual about which it refers. This is soooo 1970’s. More specifically, there is no consideration of the customer’s perspective!

So if the USP is dead, what is the alternative? Well, here are a few to consider:

POD = Point Of Difference
ESP = Emotional Selling Proposition
TSP = Tribal Selling Proposition
CVP = Customer Value Proposition
UVP = Unique Value Proposition
CVP = Compelling Value Proposition
UPV = Unique Perceived Value

CVP - Customer Value Proposition or Compelling Value Proposition is what most people will talk about nowadays (just note the power in those words!)

The key take-away message is that we have moved away from the narcissistic perspective of the USP, to understand that the audience – specifically their desires, their needs, their likes and dislikes – are what we need to be addressing!

You may well have heard of a particular radio station that everybody listens to 24/7. Don’t believe me? It’s radio station WII-FM – which stands for “What’s In It For Me?”

Whenever you communicate with another person – any form of communication – they have this little WII-FM filter that interrupts your message. And if you can’t answer the question to the filter’s satisfaction – you won’t cut through!

This is why I personally prefer UPV – Unique Perceived Value – as it clearly acknowledges that it is the customer’s perception of your unique value – the value they acknowledge when they look through their filters – that is what counts.  
 
Let’s face it, with a few exceptions, most clients don’t care that much about you - other than what you can do for them (WII-FM). What they are interested in is what can you do that will help them win more business, cut their costs, save them time, be more efficient, deliver a better result, provide better service and make more money. They want to know how you can help them with their value
proposition.

And the way to make a Value Proposition compelling? That’s simple.

• Make it real and tangible - not just a memorable line.

• You must believe in it totally, walk the talk and do what you say you stand for.

• It should be a declarative statement of intent, belief, action, and a promise to the customer.

The most important thing is to internalise your Compelling Value Proposition, embrace it, live it, and (if relevant) make sure your staff understand it and are empowered to act accordingly.

And the easiest and most powerful way I know to do this is to ensure that your CVP serves your higher purpose!

If you’d like a copy of my complimentary ebook A Simple Guide to Creating a Compelling Value Proposition please shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to send you a one.

Creativity , Innovation, Marketing and the Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead wasn’t a band I grew up with, but I have read a great deal about their contrarian approach to marketing themselves. You see, many (if not all) of their marketing innovations seem to spur from doing the opposite of what other bands (and record labels) were doing at the time.

It may not be all that obvious, but the Grateful Dead actually pioneered many of the social media and inbound marketing concepts that businesses in all industries use today on the web. The internet has merely served as a catalyst to support its growth, scale and reduce the cost of entry. Their approach cultivated an extremely dedicated fan base of “Deadheads”, who often followed the band from concert to concert for literally years. Who wouldn’t want loyal customers like that?

They made a series of important choices to separate themselves from everyone in their industry, making difficult decisions that were very unpopular – except with their fans! For example, they allowed concert attendees to tape shows and distribute them to other fans for free. They also created special tickets and access for fans.

By taking these (then) radical actions, the Grateful Dead succeeded in building a loyal, word-of-mouth network of fans powered by free music. They understood that it was about the experience that the music provided instead of strictly the music itself.

Today’s successful companies have shifted their marketing focus away from outbound promotion of products and features, to create a demand at the top of the “marketing funnel” through a content strategy that focuses on the problems, needs and education of customers.  

A key part of the new marketing model is to give away valuable information or sample product / services for free, so as to attract a larger base of prospective customers (after “experiencing” the product / service / approach / expertise of the company), and with a percentage of them willing to pay for a premium product or service. This approach is at the core of inbound marketing and describes the cutting edge of business development strategies for many businesses today.

This is why the more enlightened music artists are only too happy to give away their music for free, as they know they’ll make it all back (and more) on ticket and merchandise sales (assuming they are good enough to attract an appreciative audience of course).

The Grateful Dead were innovators in many areas. They played for the love of the music and their payback came later. They cultivated their tribe with free downloads, counter culture branding, great community and giving their fans what they wanted.

But this is more than just an interesting reminiscence…

For all business owners and CEOs, the most important leadership quality for success in business is now considered to be creativity – somewhat surprisingly even outweighing integrity in recent surveys.

Creative leaders are more prepared to break with the status quo of industry, enterprise and revenue models, and they are much more likely to rate innovation as a “crucial capability.”

As epitomised by the grateful Dead in the 1960’s.

Two minutes to read, a few more to think

I was recently on a Qantas flight from Sydney to Melbourne. As most of you will know, it isn’t a long trip - only about 90 minutes at most (depending on time of day).

Not wanting to waste the opportunity to think without interruptions, I put my iPod headphones in my ears and started playing some easy listening tracks. As I let my mind wander, I also let my eyes move around the cabin. Some of the images on the cabin TV screen caught my attention.

What I saw was the Qantas general entertainment programme and I (mildly) amused myself by trying to guess the story without listening to the sound. I did notice that the various reports were split into 4 basic categories – business, sport, politics and the arts. The most interesting thing was that about 50% of the reports were on the various Arts.

This grabbed my attention. 

So I looked a little harder…

…and I started to see a very considerable commitment to branding Qantas in alliance with artistic endeavours. I saw links to opera, orchestral music, modern dance, classical dance, literature and choral singing.

So what images did I see around me?  The tagline of “Sharing the Spirit”, the Sydney Dance Company, the Australian Ballet, Cathy Freeman at a book reading, “A Spirit of a Community”, the Australian Girls Choir & National Boys Choir, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Canteen, Pathfinders, and even the onboard magazine On:Q (on cue).

(When I later checked the Qantas website I saw they support no less than 15 artistic organisations, 3 major sporting bodies and over 30 charitable and community organisations.)

I’m not a shareholder, employee, relative of an employee, or a consultant to Qantas – simply a fare-paying passenger. And they don’t know I am writing about them.

So why am I making a song and dance about what they are doing?

Because these are things that are directly linked to the soul or spirit of Qantas’s customers. This is incredibly powerful! In this way they are making an emotional bond with their customers that is almost impossible to break – even I suspect, if planes were to fall from the sky!

They are marketing an experience and an emotion, even if only by association.

How many marketing texts have told us that buying decisions are made with emotion and only backed up by logic?

What emotions were triggered in you when you first heard the “I Still Call Australia Home” commercial sung by those wonderful Australian children? (If by some chance you haven’t seen it, go to http://www.qantas.com.au/travel/airlines/i-still-call-australia-home/global/en)

Is it all just a cynical ploy by some unscrupulous advertising executives within Qantas? I don’t think so. There is far too much that Qantas is doing in their Sharing the Spirit Community Initiatives that demonstrates a real commitment to people, the environment, the arts, indigenous Australians, youth, sport and charity.

I especially like the Spirit of Youth Awards which aim to celebrate and reward young Australian creative talent in film and animation, fashion, industrial and object design, music, photography, visual arts and visual communication.

Very few of us have the deep pockets of Qantas, but we can all do something, according to our means, to make a contribution to our community. And along the way we can also benefit from the emotional connection this will allow us to form with our stakeholders, both internal and external. And this has been demonstrated to have a direct bottom-line benefit.

The singing budgie

I was at a business lunch last week and we happened to be talking about my blogs. Someone asked me “Where do I get my ideas from”. Part of my answer was that I do a lot of reading.

One article I came across very recently was how, simply by announcing that she was releasing a new single in just over 3 months time, Kylie Minogue caused a meltdown on her website. Kylie had used the Twitterverse to give her fans a sneak preview of her new single, which sparked a fan frenzy. The rush of interest was much bigger than anticipated - “Aaahhhhhhhh…you’ve overloaded the system!!!,” she Tweeted minutes after the clip’s release. “That is the strength of your combined power!!!!!!!
OMG!!!”

So I started to wonder, how is it that someone who was so pilloried in her early career, and who has suffered such major career and health setbacks, has survived, prospered and indeed become a global brand?

The old model of business is “work hard and get people to buy your stuff.”

The new model is “authenticity and service, which leads to wealth”.

When you learn to create your business in the new model, people thank you for being successful. They thank you for who you are and what you’ve created.

OK. So it is a given that:
a)    Kylie’s music is popular (maybe pop, but it also has dance roots);
b)    Her packaging is excellent (look at some of the great videos and you’ll see what I mean);
c)    She provides high levels of service to her fans (e.g. spectacular live stage shows).

But let’s look at her mode of communication for a moment…

When Kylie was first diagnosed with breast cancer and had to cancel her world tour to look after her health, her team made an immediate announcement. In it was an apology to the fans she would disappoint, and a solution (“hang on to the tickets – I’ll be back”).

Unlike Toyota, who was extremely reticent in announcing what was to become a far-reaching product recall, and took months to even apologise to their customers for a very serious safety issue, Kylie took a leaf from Johnson & Johnson’s book and went on the front foot.

Just in case you don’t remember it or didn’t catch it at the time (1982), Tylenol made a hero of Johnson & Johnson after seven people tragically died in the Chicago area after taking cyanide-laced capsules of Extra-Strength Tylenol, the painkiller that was the drug maker’s best -selling product.

What set apart J&J’s handling of the crisis was that it placed consumers first by immediately recalling 31 million bottles of Tylenol capsules from store shelves and offering replacement product in the safer tablet form free of charge. Before 1982, nobody ever recalled anything.

It was predicted that the Tylenol brand, which accounted for 17 percent of the company’s net income in 1981, would never recover from the sabotage. But only two months later, Tylenol was headed back to the market, this time in tamper-proof packaging and bolstered by an extensive media campaign. A year later, its share of the market, which had plunged to 7 percent from 37 percent following the poisoning, had climbed back to 30 percent.

Sure, these moves were costly, but Johnson & Johnson’s shareholders were hurt only briefly. The company has paid out increasing dividends for 39 years.

Of course cancelling a concert tour is not anywhere near as serious as people dying from ingesting poisoned pills or losing control of runaway vehicles, but the business parallel is fair.

Both Kylie and J&J responded with authenticity and great concern for their customers. They also offered an immediate solution to the problem, demonstrating highly effective customer service. And as a result, their respective customers showed loyalty and yes, thanked them for the way they do business.

Time will judge Toyota’s reticent response to their particular crisis.

For someone who had her first hit more than 20 years ago, Kylie’s longevity and remarkable earnings power is impressive.

She has moved from being the “singing budgie” to a global megastar. Although she has been regularly dismissed by some critics, especially during the early years of her career, she has achieved worldwide record sales of more than 68 million, and has received significant music awards including multiple ARIAs, Brit Awards and a Grammy. She has mounted several highly successful concert tours and received a Mo Award for “Australian Entertainer of the Year”. She was awarded an OBE “for
services to music”, and an Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Authenticity and service.

Over to you now…

www.quidditybusiness.com.au