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

Video Game Becomes a "Billion Dollar Hero"

Note: This is the first post from the newest member of the Tuned In team, Mark Allen Roberts. Mark is Managing Director of Tuned In Businesses for Pragmatic Marketing.

The video game Guitar Hero has become a breakthrough success. Sales were estimated to be $1 billion in 2007, and growing in 2008. The inventors of this game, Activision, saw an unmet need in the market centered on family or group entertainment that everyone who ever wanted to be a rock star would enjoy. And now throughout the world, households are rallying around the TV playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band, having hours of fun. How did they do that?

When a product or service so perfectly connects to an unmet need there should be no surprises when sales numbers break records, and for the company’s shareholders, value increases.

I was intrigued by this Guitar Hero phenomenon when my son and daughter, and all their friends would want to play the game and interrupt my TV viewing. Admittedly, I was also humbled when I tried it and was  “booed” into moving to an easier level!

What was Activision thinking when they said lets launch a video game that makes kids play musical instruments; a game their parents would willingly spend double the price of a regular video game? It is unlikely the average 14 year-old Activision users who were playing Spiderman said “my unresolved problem is I want a new video game in which I play an instrument like a famous rock star.”

So, if their buyers and users did not state the problem, how did they come up with such a hit? They were tuned in to their market.

Much to my surprise, (and that of my son when I shared it with him) 85% of games purchased are in the ”E “ (for everyone) category. Only 15% are ”M” (for mature). I would have bet money the opposite to be true but that is my “gut” and, since I am not tuned in to this market, I would have been “assuming.” Further research helped me understand.

Who buys the most games?

Kids right? Wrong! The mean age for consumers who buy games is just over 35 years old with close to 49% of games bought by the 18-49 age group and those over 50 buying 26% of games.

Okay, but that has to be Dad’s wanting to play some sports game with their son right? Wrong again. Over 40% of games are bought by women.

I look at my children’s collection of games and most were holiday or birthday presents my wife or one their grandmothers bought them, and none fell into the 15% category. Activision did a fantastic job of connecting to the economic buyer of most games…Mom, and their unmet needs. They must have created a video game buyer persona for Mom.

What are some unresolved problems this buyer persona might have? I asked my wife…

• I want more time with my kids
• I want to have fun with my kids like we used to when they were little… now they just run off to their rooms and play video games or go on the internet… I feel like I am losing them
• I like playing video games, I wish there were more out there I could enjoy
• We need more family time
• I wish my kids would play games that do not reinforce things contrary to my family values

So how did she do?

The Entertainment Software Association conducted research and found the following reasons parents play games:

• Fun for the entire family: 72%
• We were asked to play: 71%
• Socialize with our children: 66%
• Monitor game content: 50%

Activision also connected with users of games and gave them an experience they would enjoy. Of the top 20 games sold in 2007, Guitar Hero held 5 positions in the ranking.

What if one unresolved problem is a deep desire to be a rock star, to make music without having to learn to play an instrument or know how to read music?  This destroys the musician’s paradigm of taking lessons, learning chords and notes…at first, but arguably this could cause a number of consumers to be exposed to music in a fun way and ultimately buy a real instrument and learn more.

Breakthrough products connect.

Whether you are playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band, you are having fun with others and spending more money to do so. When you play the game, it provides you a breakthrough experience. You can choose what you look like, the type of instrument you want to play, and which song. Retailers now sell products so you can decorate your guitar and clothing, and a large variety of other accessories. When you play the game you tell your friends and word of mouth makes cash registers sing!

Two questions come from this success story… How many “hero” products are waiting to be found in your market? And, why didn’t Fender, Gibson or PRS develop this billion dollar hero?

Please… Eliminate gobbledygook!

Oh jeez, not another flexible, scalable, mission-critical, industry-standard, cutting-edge product from a market-leading, well positioned company! Ugh. I think I'm gonna puke!

Just like with a teenager's use of catch phrases, I notice the same words cropping up again and again - so much so that the gobbledygook grates against my nerves and many other people's, too. Well, duh. Like, companies just totally don’t communicate very well, you know?

Most of the thousands of Web sites I've analyzed over the years and the hundred or so news releases I receive each week are laden with these meaningless gobbledygook phrases.

To create effective marketing, Web content that people want to share, you must eliminate gobbledygook.

Whenever you set out to create something to reach people, you should be developing content specifically for one or more of the buyers that you want to reach.  You should avoid jargon-laden phrases that are over-used in your industry. In the technology business, words like "mission-critical," "industry-standard," and "cutting-edge" are what I call gobbledygook. And the worst gobbledygook offenders seem to be business-to-business technology companies.

For some reason, marketing people at technology companies have a particularly tough time explaining how products solve customer problems. Because these marketers don’t understand how their products solve customer problems, or are too lazy to write for buyers, they cover by explaining myriad nuances of how the product works and pepper this blather with industry jargon that sounds vaguely impressive.

If you want to be successful online, eliminate the gobbledygook and speak like a real person. Use the words and phrases that your buyer personas use.

If you want to learn more, consider reading my (free) Gobbledygook Manifesto published by ChangeThis.

Addressing needs outside your expertise.

As a helicopter pilot, I have been amazed with the success of Robinson Helicopters over the last ten years.  While most helicopter manufacturers produce dozens of aircraft each year, Robinson set a world record by producing 831 helicopters in 2007.  That broke the previous record, set by Robinson, of 806 units in a single year.

Robinson has tuned into their market and is reaping the dividends.  One approach they take is to solve all of their clients problems.  As a helicopter manufacturer, you might think that means that you should focus on the aircraft but Robinson also detected that potential clients need to deal with establishing a landing pad.  In Aviation Week clink last month, Frank Robinson was quoted as saying "If helicopters have more places to land, we will sell more helicopters."  So he offers helipad kits. Robinson Helipads

A tuned out company might say, "We are in the helicopter business not the helipad business."  But Robinson knows that buyers are looking for a vendor that can provide a complete solution and has accepted the responsibility of solving the problem via buy/build/partnering. 

Instead of being in the helicopter business, Frank is in the business of continuous problem solving for his customers.

Photo copyright Robinson Helicopter Company

Search Engine Marketing: focus on buyers, not keywords

Whenever I begin a speech, I pose four questions to the audience and ask them to raise their hands if the answer to a question is "yes." How would you answer?

In your personal or professional life in the past two months, when trying to fix a problem or to research or buy a product, have you
(1) responded to a direct mail advertisement?
(2) consulted magazines, newspapers, TV, or radio?
(3) used Google or another search engine?
(4) electronically (email, Skype, Facebook, etc) contacted a friend, colleague, or family member who responded with a Web URL that you then visited?

Over the course of a year, in front of over ten thousand people from many dozens of groups including college students, marketing professionals, and executives at Fortune 500 companies, the answers were surprisingly consistent. Between 5 and 20 percent of people answer each of the first two questions affirmatively. These answers mean that the ways most companies have historically reached people—advertising, direct mail, and pleas to the mainstream media for coverage—are only effective in reaching a small portion of potential customers. However, between 80 and 100 percent of people raise their hands to indicate that they have used a search engine to find a solution to a problem or to research a product or that they have checked out a Web site suggested by a friend, colleague, or family member. Clearly, creating effective Web sites that are indexed by search engines is critical for any business.

Unlike non-targeted, in-your-face, interruption-based advertising, search engine results are content that people actually want to see. How cool is that? Rather than forcing you to convince people to pay attention to your products and services by dreaming up messages and ad campaigns, search engines deliver interested buyers right to your company’s virtual doorstep. This is a marketer's dream-come-true.

However, most marketers don't know how to harness this exciting form of marketing. Their most common mistake is to spend way too much time worrying about the keywords and phrases they want to optimize for and not enough time creating great content on their site–content that search engines will reward with lots of traffic and that visitors will find useful.

And nearly all organizations are terrible at building an effective landing page, the place people end up when they click on a search hit. Too often, buyers arrive at a site only to wonder what they're supposed to do now. It's like the outdoor part of a Hollywood movie set. Sure it's a beautiful facade, but if you actually went through the front door, you'd find nothing there.

OK, so that’s the bad news. The good news is that these common problems are easily solved… If you're Tuned In.

Smart companies create web content that actually meets the needs of your potential customers (instead of search engines). The information that people see when they link to your site is meant to be the beginning of a relationship. Here's the rule: When you write, start with your buyers in mind, not with search engines.

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.

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?    

Treat every patient as if they were the President of the United States

Dr. Connie Mariano wonders everyday what our health care system would look like if doctors treated every patient like they were the President of the United States. She tuned in to the quality-of-care differences between presidential care and the average person’s care and setup a service to bridge the gap.  In the process, she created a simple but powerful idea in which to center her practice. 

 

Mariano knows first hand about caring for US Presidents. While serving as a general internist in the United States Navy, she was selected to serve as the head of the White House medical unit, a position she held through three administrations. As the primary care physician for presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, Mariano oversaw all aspects of the president’s care. This included everything from yearly physicals (and the briefing of the world press on their results) to routine check-ins and check-ups to the mobilization of specialists as needed (such as those she assembled on 24 hours notice to travel with then President Bill Clinton to Helsinki for a summit with Boris Yeltsin less than two weeks after an operation to repair damage to his knee). 

After leaving the White House for the Mayo Clinic, Mariano experienced a small dose of the other side of patient care.  Despite working at one of the best facilities in the country, she found herself administering medical services as part of a machine that had standardized care.  Doctors like Mariano could see dozens of patients a day but the interactions were brief, impersonal and largely limited to packaged set of services that delivered the bell curve of care.  While at Mayo, she began a study of physician practices, meeting with hundreds of patients to tune in to their needs and preferences.  Four and a half years later, she broke away from the Mayo Clinic to create her own practice around the premise of providing the same kind of care the President receives using the same kind of resources that a clinic like Mayo can mobilize. Some key aspects that she built into her practice include:

·                          No waiting – the president’s time is valuable and he/she never waits.  Walk into Dr. Mariano’s Center for Executive Medicine, patients are greeted at the door, offered a cup of coffee and escorted immediately to the doctor who is waiting for the patient.

·                          No paperwork – the president doesn’t have time for it and certainly shouldn’t have to go through the excruciating re-entry of data for each visit.  Mariano’s practice is fully automated and paperless.  Patients never have to stop for payment nor have to provide written updates. Their credit cards are retained on file and charged for services provided at the time of the visit.

·                          Always respectful – the president expects to be treated as important and Mariano ensures that she and her staff are always on and always attentive to their patients.  They know them by name, they know their histories, and their families.

·                          Pleasant experience – the president can pick any doctor he or she elects. Mariano knows the quality of the experience is a key determining factor. She mixes diagnostic questions with questions like ‘what would make your life better’ and ‘how can we help you achieve that goal’.   

·                          Flexible service – when the president wants a doctor they are on call 24x7.  Dr. Mariano is as well, only a cell phone call away whether you are local, on the road or overseas.

·                          Establish a relationship – the president expects to talk to one and only one person on their issues.  Mariano enables the same for her patients, working as the quarterback of a distributed medical team that might include hospitals, specialists and even pharmacies. Patients make one call, Mariano takes care of the rest.

Mariano's practice is now one of 250 in the United States offering a concierge service where patients pay as little as $5-$10 a day to have a doctor on call to support their needs. With more than 310 patients, she has built one of the fastest growing, most profitable practices in the Phoenix metropolitan area.

How Stardoll became bigger than Barbie on the Web in just three short years

Barbie, the bestselling fashion doll in the world, was launched in 1959. Mattel, the doll's maker, says that a billion Barbies have been sold and three new Barbies are sold every single second. Barbie has always kept up with the times, her outfits, hobbies, and professions reflecting the society that she lives in and the interests of the elementary and middle school girls who play with her. In recent years, Barbie has even gone digital with a site "to engage, enchant, and empower girls. We inspire girls to be creative and explore their individual interests through a variety of exciting activities, from online art to interactive games." As of October 2007, the Barbie Web site is ranked as number 1,100 in the world based on traffic.

So how is it that Stardoll, a Web-based version of dress-up dolls launched only three years earlier, could have 6 million unique visitors per month and be ranked as the number 386 in the world based on traffic and have more than double the daily pageviews of Barbie.com? How could Stardoll become so much more popular than Barbie on the Web?

Simple, Stardoll is tuned in to "tweens" (girls from 8 to 12 years old). Stardoll members access the site in their choice of 16 languages (including English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Chinese), set up a profile to house their virtual doll and clothing collection and become online friends with others. The people behind the scenes at Stardoll understand their market and the breakthrough experience they created resonates with girls all over the world. Girls love that they can dress up virtual stars such as Ashley Tisdale, Stacy Ferguson, Hilary Duff, the Olsen twins, Rihanna, and Hayden Panettiere. Girls eagerly participate in live chat with idols like Avril Lavigne. And members maintain their very own blogs and photo galleries so they can share with their friends.

Editorial note: Dressing up the celebrity dolls is weirdly addictive. I dare you to try dressing Ashley Olsen.

Stardoll is tuned in mishmash of what girls love, particularly fashion. Every celebrity doll has a wardrobe full of unique clothes and outfits and new ones are released each week. The fashion industry has taken note, with Donna Karan's DKNY label and Sephora, both owned by French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH, offering virtual clothing and makeup to Stardoll members in specially designated online stores that are part of the Stardoll site. Stardoll originally started out as the hobby of the Scandinavian-born "Liisa"and is now backed by venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures.

Top two reasons why new products and services fail

Why do most new products fail?

1. Organizations base new products on what their current customers request rather than an understanding of the unresolved problems that people will pay money to solve.

2. Organizations try to create a need in the market through expensive advertising or relying on an army of salespeople instead of building products that the market wants to buy. 

The most successful organizations tune in to their markets.

In this blog and in our upcoming book, we’ll introduce you to dozens of tuned in organizations that develop products and services that resonate with buyers and help them to achieve success.

People who run tuned in companies largely ignore the competition. Instead they focus their energies on the problems that buyers are willing to spend money to solve. By first understanding market problems, then building the products people want to buy, and communicating to buyers that we solve their problems, everything else falls into place.

Sounds easy.

Actually, it is...

…if you’re tuned in.

Does anybody really understand Gen Y's?

My friend Mark Roberts who runs a business called Out of the Box Consulting was explaining something to me the other day that really resonated. It came about when I was sharing some of my frustrations at getting me teenage son and daughter to act on things we agreed to. In what might end up being the understatement of the century, he said:

"Phil, you need to understand they think different than you".

Duh. Of course they do. But Mark went further to explain that its not a matter of defiance but that todays Gen Y's process and act on information differently than we did as a kid. He explained some recent studies he's done that correlated how different age groups react to and process information.

Mark connected me with a simple example.

When your Dad told you to "go take out the garbage" what did you do?  Well, I got up from chair and took the garbage out to the street right then I responded.  Mark said that makes perfect sense for our generation because we were trained to process information directly from command (or hopefully request) to action in a straight line so we could both cross this off our list. 

Today's Gen Y's have a much different filter. They add in the request to all of the other things that are in their 'inbox' and dynamically assign both a sequence and time for execution. So, "take out the garbage" might mean no action immediately or even recognition because it went through a filter that says "OK, I'll slot that one right after I get back from my workout at 2:30". 

Can't say that knowing this made communication now a comfortable embrace of generations but I do have to admit that it got me to thinking a whole lot more about how I communicate and what followup questions make sense ... for instance "and exactly when are you going to do that?" is now a standard part of the process. I also now more fully understand the fascination of texting while driving although that's a subject for a later more critical post. 

So, why is this important?

Well, I'm wondering how many times do we tune out like this when we're marketing our products. We think we're communicating value or even creating an environment for immediate action to buy when in reality the message is ignored because it went into the "I'll get to it later filter".  This is particularly true of the Gen Y's which now dominate many buying categories. 

Which is why I'm particularly amazed at the work that Mark Batterson has done as the lead pastor at the National Community Churh in Washington DC www.theaterchurch.com. Mark's ministry targets the Gen Y audience and is the fastest growing church in terms of members in the area. Mark is an active blogger with www.evotional.com, he has MySpace and Facebook profiles, hosts lots of online webinars and podcasts, posts daily "spirit fuel" for download and keeps his messages fresh and entertaining.  His presentation focuses on authenticity, originality and creativity. And, it's available 24X7 to be processed dynamically. Perfect for his target. 

Mark solved the Gen Y communication gap by understanding this particularly buyer persona exquisitely well. And his ministry is now one of the leading case studies for how to connect in todays cluttered environment. 

Someone always figures out how to build real and deep connections with a target set of buyers who have a real unresolved problem. What a wonderful experience the theater church is. Coming to a convenient location in a movie theater near you and being entertained for an hour. Maybe I can learn something from this with my kids. I'm sure we all can in our businesses.   

Tuned Out: US Airways flight attendants paid $50 commissions to interrupt us in flight

Companies that you already do business with that deem it important to interrupt you with unwelcome marketing messages that you cannot stop and that annoy you are tuned out.

Many of the companies I deal with online send email marketing messages. You know the sort: "Special sale on XYZ – get free shipping today only." This is OK with me because I can either opt out of the list or take less than a second to delete the individual email. And many companies put me on print mail lists—again I'm OK with that because I just toss the mail into the recycling bin.

However, recently I have noticed more and more organizations using video (which is OK by itself because it can be ignored) with loud associated audio messages that are inescapable (which is definitely not OK because it cannot be ignored). This is a tuned out approach to marketing and communications.

US Airways has taken this tuned out behavior to a new level by paying flight attendants a $50 commission for each successful sale of its Signature Visa Card. This availability of commissions means loud interruptions during flight as the flight attendants try to drum up more business.

More here.

CARE: Tuned In to fighting global poverty

We're absolutely convinced that being tuned in is important for every kind of organization. But for a nonprofit charity, being tuned in takes on particular importance. Unlike a company that sells a product in exchange for money, the charitable contribution to a nonprofit is an intangible transaction. This subtle difference requires a need for the nonprofit to completely understand what problems it is solving for the buyer and this process takes significant effort to get right.

The buyer (in our definition, the person who is donating money) receives nothing tangible in exchange for money. For many buyers of charity services (people who donate money) motivations to donate (we call them market problems) may be very personal, requiring the marketer at the nonprofit to dig deep to understand what problems the buyer is solving through the charity donation. The tuned in process is tough because the true benefits to the buyer may be much more difficult to articulate.

Consider CARE, a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. Hundreds of thousands of individuals and dozens of U.S. corporations, foundations and other organizations support CARE USA's program expenses, which totaled more than $589 million in 2006. Poor women around the world are at the heart of CARE's community-based efforts to improve basic education, prevent the spread of HIV, increase access to clean water and sanitation, expand economic opportunity and protect natural resources. CARE also delivers emergency aid to survivors of war and natural disasters, and helps people rebuild their lives.

CARE attracts donors who are astute about international affairs. Their buyers are a group of highly educated people and they want to make a difference in the lives of people less fortunate than themselves. Marketers at CARE understand that individual donors have interests in certain areas that CARE serves, such as geographical regions of the world (such as Africa) or particular issues (providing help in the case of natural disasters perhaps).

Because CARE is tuned in to buyer problems (essentially the motivations of people to donate money), the company's Web site focuses on education of site visitors into the causes of global poverty. The site surfaces information based on people’s interests in learning about issues, geographies, volunteer opportunities, legislative action, and campaigns. People can subscribe to content that interests them.

Because CARE knows that their buyers are passionate about helping and many want to spread the word, the organization offers a virtual volunteer program with CARE Corps Online. People create their own personal space on the Web to let others know about CARE's lifesaving work and in the process generate interest and support for CARE from friends, family and others in their virtual network.

By being tuned in to their market, the organization garners tremendous financial support, providing the resources to further the CARE mission is to change the world by eliminating global poverty.