Tuned In: Uncover the extraordinary opportunities that lead to business breakthroughs.

Sony confirms that they are tuned out.

After writing in September about Sony appearing to be tuned out, I came across a great article published in 2004 by the Wharton School on "identifying new products that consumers actually want." The article covers a panel held at the Wharton Marketing Conference with executive participants representing Campbell Soup, Merck, Coca-Cola and Sony.

What jumped out at me in this article was a comment made Chris Gaebler, director of market research and strategy for Sony Electronics, US. From the article, "I would like 10% of our products to be market driven", said Sony's Gaebler. "But I would say that 90% is market driving. This might be heresy on this panel, but I think true innovators often don't look for inspiration from (consumers). I think they look for it from design sources, technology sources."

Beverly Lybrand, Merck's vice president of marketing, HPV and new product franchise for the Vaccine Division got it right with her response. "I'm wondering if they both aren't the same thing. While your customers may not be able to articulate in exact words what they need, there is - in their underlying behaviors, attitudes and influences - the kernel of the idea. It's our job as marketers to draw that from them. It will appear as though you have driven this yourself, but you haven't."

Sony doesn't seem to understand that innovation for innovation's sake creates high risk. Maybe they have enough momentum that they can afford the risk and have, therefore, become complacent. The same company that pioneered the portable music market in the 80's with the Sony Walkman by solving a market problem "we saw people walking around with boom boxes on their shoulders" then subsequently missed the opportunity capatalized on by Apple with the ipod. Maybe if Sony spent less time "driving" the market, they would create more Walkmans and fewer product failures.

Forgetting that Simple is Smart

Too many companies try to outsmart themselves and end up with bigger problems than they started out with. Verizon Wireless just lost me. I've been a loyal Verizon customer for about 5 years now. They provide the best service in the area I live in and we've had a pretty economical family plan we've worked under for myself, my wife and our two college-age children. Up until this month, nothing but positive things to say. 

Then of course, we all discovered we needed new phones.   

My oldest son wanted an iPhone. Who wouldn't? All his friends at school had one and being the last on your dorm floor to get with the times is a minor catastrophe. And I was getting tired of my Treo (more Microsoft Mobile but that's a rant for another day). So, I decided it was time for me to upgrade as well. And my wife's phone was showing its age as well. So, we started thinking about iPhone's for the whole clan. The problem of course is that iPhone is limited to AT&T and we really didn't want to change carriers and plans.

Not to worry our friendly Verizon rep told us. We're introducing the Voyager and it's just as good. In fact, it's our iPhone killer! Why, you can even watch TV on this thing. There's something the iPhone can't do! I asked a few qualifying questions ... can it handle my basic e-mail needs? No problem was the answer. It's an Internet device and we'll just upgrade your plan to include enough Internet access to take care of all that stuff. 

Being the suspicious sort, I decided to be a guinea pig for the phone and try it out first before I bought one for myself, my wife and my son. 24 hours later, I own a new Blackberry, he's got his iPhone and my wife is still on the market. What a disaster.

The phone is sleek and cool as can be (looks just like an iPhone and the form factor is in many ways better). Problem is it does next to nothing well and the support team is terrible. When I asked how to get my e-mail, contacts and calendar synched, it was like I'd asked NASA about the secrets to flying the space shuttle. After I got disconnected and/or misled on how to set things up five times, I gave up. Digging in a little more on my own this morning, I was able to figure out how to do a bunch of things their support team actually told me I couldn't do (like retrieve e-mail from our corporate server) but by then the whole experience was in perspective for me and I'd realized the Voyager was a loser. It doesn't do e-mail well at all. It's inconvenient as a phone. The video and the games are pretty cool but who cares!

Another example of what happens when developers forget that simple is smart. 

Apple and RIM have it right. They've designed solutions for distinct audiences that are simple to use and serve their needs completely. I'm not sure what niche the Voyager is going after but it seems to me its just another rushed to market copy-cat product with lots of built-in complexity. Lots of marketing dollars going into this thing but my fear is they forgot the basics. I may have 'wanted to buy' this thing but when I discovered a bad experience, they've lost me as a customer.    

It doesn't play games, take pictures, or give you the weather

We're always fascinated with products and services designed for one particular buyer persona. Rather than one-size-fits-all, tuned in companies solve market problems for specific buyers.

The Jitterbug cell phone is just such a product, designed for people who don't want all kinds of features. The vast majority are older people who are scared of a regular cell phone.

Here is how the company Establishes authentic connections with its buyer persona using language that resonates.

Over the years, cell phones have gotten smaller and smaller and loaded with complicated features and gadgets. They've become harder to program and even harder to use. The screens are so tiny you can't read them anymore. The buttons are so small you can barely find them, and must use a pencil to dial them. To make matters worse, you end up paying for all these features and gadgets you'll probably never use.

With easy to use phones and service plans that provide unprecedented simplicity, Jitterbug makes a perfect gift for that special someone who is looking to stay connected with friends and family -- but without all the unnecessary complexity and expense.

Jitterbug Dial
Ideal for those who find today's cell phones just too small and complicated
Easier to use than any other cell phone
Extra-large buttons and text on the screen
Full 12-button keypad
So convenient: just dial the Jitterbug operator by pressing "0"

Here is one of the advertisements for Jitterbug Cell Phone service. Click the image to see it full size.

The Resonator Index

We get asked often how leaders measure their progress towards being tuned in. One of the interesting things we found was that only three factors really mattered -- unit sales growth, customer satisfaction and profitability. The best don't obsess over the details (there were plenty gathered but they largely ignore them all). Instead, they focused on the results that were the true indicators of success.

This knowledge still begged the question for us though of 'how do you get there?'  So, we dug a little deeper and found some characteristics that we ended up calling a Resonator Index.

A Resonator Index is your measurement of how tuned in or tuned out you are based on the factors that are the best indicators of whether you (or your company) work from an outside-in perspective or an inside-out perspective. They identify how likely it is that you will create products or services that the market will view as breakthrough (perfect solutions to a problem that is urgent). Five areas of competency emerged in determining this:

1. Market Sensing - how effective are you at uncovering extraordinary opportunities?
   * Tuned in companies are active at searching for and evaluating market problems.
   * Tuned out companies are relying on their own intuition and experience of internal teams.
2. Target Personas -- do you understand and map unique buyers?
   * Tuned In companies identify dozens of unique profiles and establish speciality channels.
   * Tuned Out companies generalize and communicate through network-style broadcasts.
3. Experience Creation -- how sophisticated are you at addressing all customer touch points?
   * Tuned In companies offer personalized solutions for discovery, buying, using & servicing.
   * Tuned Out companies focus only on delivery of a product and ask the buyer to fill in the gaps.
4. Positioning -- is your association in the marketplace valued?
   * Tuned In companies establish authentic links that buyers trust as thought leading. 
   * Tuned Out companies push promotions that are noisy to solicit sales interactions.   
5. Market Adoption -- can you quickly create market pull?
   * Tuned In companies grow rapidly through referrals from existing customers. 
   * Tuned Out companies grow slowly based only on direct connections to create awareness.   

You can score yourself on a normal 1-10 scale across these factors, with 10 rating how close you are to the tuned in dial and 1 signifying your nearness to being tuned out.

There are lots of underlying reasons why this Index works but the simple justification for it is that best-in-class businesses that lead their industries will almost always be able to rate themselves at 80% or above with most in the 90% range. For those companies, these characteristics are ingrained in the culture and daily operating styles. This foundation enables them to turn their full attention to programs and activities that will achieve higher growth, satisfaction and profit rates because they have the confidence that they are 'doing things right' at the core. 

What's your Resonator Index? A great way to end 2007 and prepare for 2008 is to measure it. When you find gaps that you'd rather not have, you've identified an area for improvement that will have a sustainable impact on your success. 

This Year in Marketing Blogs: GrokDotCom's list of Definitive Posts of 2007

GrokDotCom has created a list of the definitive marketing posts of 2007.

They say: "Blogs have taken over, creating a feedback loop between journalists and readers, businesses and customers, you name it — conversation has officially changed the game." We agree.

We're fascinated with popular blog posts that go viral. When people pass on your work to their friends, colleagues and family, it means that you are tuned in. You've created a resonator.

This is an absolutely terrific list. I've read about a dozen of the 39 posts and all are stellar examples of getting tuned in to what people are thinking. Good thing there is some holiday downtime coming up so I can read the rest.

BrandAutopsy names Secrets of Market-Driven Leaders Best Business Book of 2007

Great news for us today. We just learned that our 'Secrets of Market-Driven Leaders' e-book was named the 'Best Business Book that is not a Book' by John Moore's BrandAutopsy. Check it out at http://brandautopsy.typepad.com/brandautopsy/2007/12/2007-brand-auto.html.

Pretty good company on the list with best sellers like Made-to-Stick, The Strategy Paradox and a lifetime achievement award for Seth Godin. The e-book was a pre-cursor for Tuned In and outlines the seven common attributes that we found in leaders of businesses that were market-driven. It included mantra's for how their strategy was created, how they organized and measured their progress and most importantly, the philosophies they shared for how to build products and services that resonated. ChangeThis picked it up this fall and it's been spreading pretty rapidly through the community since then. You can download the e-book at http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/secrets.

Thanks to everyone who participated in helping us research and write this. We learned a great deal from our conversations and your ideas are a big part of its success. 

Top Ten Tuned In Strategies for 2008

Thanks to everyone for turning out for our webinar yesterday. It was a great session and we particularly enjoyed all of the follow-up stories and questions. It really helps us stay connected to the topics and issues you are finding most valuable. We appreciate it!

One of the key areas we've been investigating is providing a simple action plan for moving an organization's culture from being one that is primarily tuned out to one that emphasizes being tuned in. You all seemed particularly interested in two summary topics we presented on this subject--our Resonator Index and our Top Ten List of Tuned In Strategies for 2008. We'll review the highlights of the top ten list in this blog and talk about the Resonator Index in our next post. 

Top Ten Things to Do to Get Tuned In for 2008
1. Increase the time you spend in research -- tuned in businesses and leaders spend twice the amount of time researching the market as followers. Schedule time to increase both qualitative and quantitative studies.
2. Build plans around the top 5 new unresolved problems in your space -- instead of focusing only on incremental improvements to the things you have, identify new growth opportunities by aligning to the new market problems you've identified.
3. Develop one-page proposals for each -- simple communications that explain what problem you are solving, who they impact and how much 'incremental value' you can create.
4. Refine your buyer persona profiles -- to ensure that you have an accurate, up-to-date view of the needs, preferences and value criteria for each potential purchaser of your offering.
5. Prioritize investments -- based on how they rate in the categories of urgent, pervasive and willing to pay. Are they 'nice to have' or 'got to have' solutions?   
6. Benchmark experience breakthroughs -- to identify the quality of the total picture the customer evaluates you on ... from discovery to buying to packaging to using to servicing. 
7. Publicize your distinctive competence -- by making it the centerpiece of everything you do internally and externally, particularly in new marketing communications.
8. Communicate through 'new rules' -- by emphasizing thought leadership over promotion and referrals over leads. The key aspect of the new rules of marketing is an emphasis on publishing. 
9. Eliminate tuned out programs -- any aspect of your organization that is emphasizing pushing themes that sound like 'buy my product' or 'me, me, me' to your customers. 
10. Schedule time for culture and team alignment -- quarterly to refresh and recharge so that you can keep your team in the right frame of mind to act positively as real-time issues surface. 

These activities align very well with the cultures, strategies and execution philosophies of the successful companies (and leaders) that we studied. We're confident that if you made these a foundation for building your 2008 plan, best-in-class results will follow. 

Papa John's connects to college crowd

I'm amazed at how my son and daughter communicate with their friends. Between Facebook and texting it's almost as if they have found a way to interact without ever having to make a direct connection. It's definately a new language and for better or worse, a new style of building relationships. 

When I saw last week that Papa John's had introduced a new service to take pizza orders by text, I knew exactly why and marveled at how tuned in they were. There are few audiences for pizza's that are better at any time of the day than college students. Certainly they've never had trouble figuring out how to get one in the past. But, by being able to text for one guess what happens? 

Papa John's has built an authentic connection to a core buyer persona.

People love it when companies act in ways that show they 'understand me'. And today that means communicating through mediums and styles that your target buyers use. By adding a simple distribution option like texting, Papa John's will no doubt resonate more with the college crowd. Imagine the scenarios that will get created.  "Hey, anybody want a pizza?  Watch this!"  The first in class to find this out will proudly whip out their cool new iPhone and text an order in. Congratulations all around when it shows up in 30 minutes. Most importantly, word of mouth is started and Papa John's has an in. We found in our research that a real key to a tuned in company was that they had a high percentage of their business coming through referrals (some as high as 80%). What a great way to start that process. Building authentic connections like this is one of the most powerful things you can do to grow your business faster.   

I wonder when a beer distributor will catch on to this?