| "Selling Blue Elephants is a must for any marketer or product developer who wants to learn the art of success!" Iain Bitran President The International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM) |
Excerpts from Introduction
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© 2007. Moskowitz and Gofman. All rights reserved.
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Business Wisdom from the Mouth of Dr. Seuss
One of the most publicized stories of extremely aggressive development and marketing for a
“revolutionary” food product is Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham*.
Like any good salesman, Sam-I-am, the marketer and indefatigable creator of the new product, is full of
energy and passion. The story starts with a grumpy “customer” who leisurely reads his newspaper.
Using stratagem after stratagem, Sam tries to get his customer to try his revolutionary product: green
eggs and ham. The customer repeatedly refuses, claiming he simply does not like it. Sam tries multiple
tactics to win the customer, but without success, which, in the end, lead to frustrating trial-and-error
iterations, not particularly productive, always painful, and sometimes costly...
Sound familiar?
Sam randomly tests different ideas: a train meal (“on a train”), fast food (“in a car”), even an outdoor
picnic (“in a tree”). None works. Then Sam tries a “home-made” message (“in a house”). Different
packaging options still do not produce expected results (“not in a box”). Sam’s emotional messages,
playing on the appeal of friendly dinner situations (“with a mouse...with a fox”) still fail to increase
purchase intent. All those messages fall on deaf ears. Sam’s clever insight was to manipulate color (“in
the dark”), but by then, it was too late; his customer had already formed new and unwanted
preferences, so Sam simply ran out of luck.
Although successful (the product was finally sold, with an ecstatically happy customer as a result),
Sam’s nonsystematic “trial-and-error” approach was simply too inefficient. Even worse, Sam might
well have antagonized his customer during his pursuit, leading to the customer’s complete rejection of
the product - and possibly the rejection of Sam’s whole brand.
What was wrong? Sam felt that he was doing his best. He was sincerely following a typical strategy:
seemingly haphazard, random experiments to find a selling formula for his product. Sam wasn’t
particularly successful, expending lots of energy and going far out of the way to achieve his marketing
goal. The missing critical part was the systematic nature of the experiments - or, more correctly, its
absence.
Fast-forward. Meet Allison-the-Entrepreneur, a very ambitious and entrepreneurial recent MBA graduate
fascinated with Sam’s work. Armed with Sam’s experience, as limited as it is, and dedication, Allison
decided to put an even more revolutionary product, blue eggs, on the market. How would she design
and promote her innovative food item in today’s highly competitive market of egg-based products?
Instead of random, haphazard efforts, we will see how Allison grabs hold of the full power of Rule
Developing Experimentation (RDE). Allison-the-Entrepreneur will show how today’s new development
tools take her far beyond Sam, into a competitive world, with a lot less effort and a lot more success.
Indeed, she will soon discover that RDE can help her create, market, and sell virtually any product
better and faster. Even selling blue elephants will not be a particularly far-fetched business proposition
for Allison!
Companies Are Using RDE, Whether They Know It or Not
You don’t always find what you’re looking for - but you rarely find what you’re not looking for.
Skeptics might say, “Heck, RDE is just a scientific name for trial and error, right?” Actually, yes and no.
No because a trial-and-error approach is usually completely random, and RDE is all the way on the other
end of the spectrum. Yes because you set the scene for profitable learning by astutely designing and
executing the trials, by keenly observing the reactions of the customers, by shrewdly detecting what
part works and what does not (“errors”), and, finally, by making educated modifications to the trials and
iterating the process, if needed. You’ve set up the scenario to learn from your successes and your
mistakes. More than likely, you will succeed simply because you have thought through the problem, that
inner game so necessary for winning, and you have followed the process, making measurements that
quickly yield the rules.
It is difficult to ignore the power of being able to know the algebra of consumer minds before they can
even articulate the need. Many companies already use RDE to their advantage, in one form or another.
There is every reason for you to be up to speed, or even faster than them.
Electronics in Japan
Japan is the home of some well-known examples of RDE-like experiments. Japanese society is less
polarized in income compared to the West. People tend to buy products based not on their income, but
on their taste. This variation in taste leads to a huge variety of products on the market, brutal
competition, and, as you might expect, continual experimentation.
Tokyo is a vast market for testing new commercial ideas. Tokyo’s great size, density and diversity, and
excellent transportation system make it an ideal setting for social experimentation. There are whole
districts in Tokyo called antenna districts, where companies and consumers test out the newest product
ideas, as well as deliberately start fashion trends. These districts naturally attract otaku (“geeky funs”)
and professionals in fashions, electronic products, and so on.
Arguably, Japan’s most dynamic sector is high-tech. In the Akihabara district of Tokyo, sometimes
called the “Electric City,” a visitor can buy virtually any product or gizmo that uses electricity. Just a
few blocks of densely packed stores sell about 10% of the total electronics in Japan. Here otaku can
find products that anticipate the market and that will not be available anywhere else in the world for
months or perhaps even years to come.
Many products sold there will never find their way to the shelves of other stores because Akihabara,
dubbed as Mecca for early adapters, is also the place for the marketers to test what “flies” with the
consumers and what does not. One example is Seiko Corporation. Annually, Seiko develops more than
2,500 watch designs and introduces them in test markets. The winning designs are further improved,
tested again, and only then launched in target markets. Japan’s icon, Sony, also develops, tests, and
measures about 1,500 products annually. About 20% of them are completely new designs, and only a
portion of those find their way to the global market. Some believe that the global success of Japan’s
electronics manufacturers begins in Akihabara. In their race to be the first to market with the season’s
latest products, electronics manufacturers send prototypes of their new products to Akihabara to see if
they will fly. The rivalry is fierce, with some product lifecycles reduced to a few months, turning
Akihabara into a churning, self-renewing experimentation paradise. The sales and feedback are closely
monitored by the companies for further modification and the ultimate launch decision. In a sense, it has
been done at the expense of traditional market research. On the flip side of this Japanese innovation
phenomenon is the fact that some of the most successful products in history, such as Sony Playstation,
have been developed against the corporate view.
Buying In and Getting Started
In a natural world, mutation and sexual recombination allow a species to thrive. The same is true for
innovation in any type of business: Permanent mindful experimentation enables companies to survive the
competition and succeed. Read on - you will see for yourself that RDE is the easiest, most affordable,
and most manageable way to innovate.
What are the key points of RDE to keep in mind when you read on? The bottom line is simple:
- You create a culture of disciplined experimentation and learning that is critical for the competitive
market that faces you today.
- You learn while doing. The benefit is simple. You optimize your development and communication over
time. This should bring substantially more market success because you are delivering what your
customers want, even before they know it - and before your competitors discover it (unless they’re
reading this book right now).
We’re not alone in promoting this disciplined experimentation. Two icons in the marketing world, Jerry
Wind and Vijay Mahajan, consistently promote the benefits of experimentation because of its “ability to
continuously learn, added incentive to develop and test innovative strategies, making it harder for the
competition to figure out what your strategy is and creating a culture of experimentation and learning...
even more critical in the changing and turbulent... environment.” (Jerry Wind and Vijay Mahajan,
Convergence Marketing: Strategies for Reaching the New Hybrid Consumer).
RDE is practical; in many cases, it can be easily handled by a small team or even one person in a very
reasonable time with a modest budget. The beauty of the RDE process is that it does not require (nor
even expect) deep knowledge in advanced statistical areas. RDE generates knowledge and business
results at the same time, with relatively little effort, but with enormous payouts for years to come.
So why do you want to read about RDE and use it in your everyday business life? It is quite simple.
RDE...
- Solves problems instead of just identifying them.
- Generates rules - it’s actionable.
- Needs no advanced knowledge - it’s accessible.
- Promotes logic and learning. No more guesswork is needed when you can be right and “hit the nail on
the head” far more often.
- Applies to a wide range of real-life problems. It’s not limited to products or advertising only.
Read on and enjoy this new field of Rule Developing Experimentation. There’s a lot here, and the road
beckons.
One of the most publicized stories of extremely aggressive development and marketing for a
“revolutionary” food product is Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham*.
Like any good salesman, Sam-I-am, the marketer and indefatigable creator of the new product, is full of
energy and passion. The story starts with a grumpy “customer” who leisurely reads his newspaper.
Using stratagem after stratagem, Sam tries to get his customer to try his revolutionary product: green
eggs and ham. The customer repeatedly refuses, claiming he simply does not like it. Sam tries multiple
tactics to win the customer, but without success, which, in the end, lead to frustrating trial-and-error
iterations, not particularly productive, always painful, and sometimes costly...
Sound familiar?
Sam randomly tests different ideas: a train meal (“on a train”), fast food (“in a car”), even an outdoor
picnic (“in a tree”). None works. Then Sam tries a “home-made” message (“in a house”). Different
packaging options still do not produce expected results (“not in a box”). Sam’s emotional messages,
playing on the appeal of friendly dinner situations (“with a mouse...with a fox”) still fail to increase
purchase intent. All those messages fall on deaf ears. Sam’s clever insight was to manipulate color (“in
the dark”), but by then, it was too late; his customer had already formed new and unwanted
preferences, so Sam simply ran out of luck.
Although successful (the product was finally sold, with an ecstatically happy customer as a result),
Sam’s nonsystematic “trial-and-error” approach was simply too inefficient. Even worse, Sam might
well have antagonized his customer during his pursuit, leading to the customer’s complete rejection of
the product - and possibly the rejection of Sam’s whole brand.
What was wrong? Sam felt that he was doing his best. He was sincerely following a typical strategy:
seemingly haphazard, random experiments to find a selling formula for his product. Sam wasn’t
particularly successful, expending lots of energy and going far out of the way to achieve his marketing
goal. The missing critical part was the systematic nature of the experiments - or, more correctly, its
absence.
Fast-forward. Meet Allison-the-Entrepreneur, a very ambitious and entrepreneurial recent MBA graduate
fascinated with Sam’s work. Armed with Sam’s experience, as limited as it is, and dedication, Allison
decided to put an even more revolutionary product, blue eggs, on the market. How would she design
and promote her innovative food item in today’s highly competitive market of egg-based products?
Instead of random, haphazard efforts, we will see how Allison grabs hold of the full power of Rule
Developing Experimentation (RDE). Allison-the-Entrepreneur will show how today’s new development
tools take her far beyond Sam, into a competitive world, with a lot less effort and a lot more success.
Indeed, she will soon discover that RDE can help her create, market, and sell virtually any product
better and faster. Even selling blue elephants will not be a particularly far-fetched business proposition
for Allison!
Companies Are Using RDE, Whether They Know It or Not
You don’t always find what you’re looking for - but you rarely find what you’re not looking for.
Skeptics might say, “Heck, RDE is just a scientific name for trial and error, right?” Actually, yes and no.
No because a trial-and-error approach is usually completely random, and RDE is all the way on the other
end of the spectrum. Yes because you set the scene for profitable learning by astutely designing and
executing the trials, by keenly observing the reactions of the customers, by shrewdly detecting what
part works and what does not (“errors”), and, finally, by making educated modifications to the trials and
iterating the process, if needed. You’ve set up the scenario to learn from your successes and your
mistakes. More than likely, you will succeed simply because you have thought through the problem, that
inner game so necessary for winning, and you have followed the process, making measurements that
quickly yield the rules.
It is difficult to ignore the power of being able to know the algebra of consumer minds before they can
even articulate the need. Many companies already use RDE to their advantage, in one form or another.
There is every reason for you to be up to speed, or even faster than them.
Electronics in Japan
Japan is the home of some well-known examples of RDE-like experiments. Japanese society is less
polarized in income compared to the West. People tend to buy products based not on their income, but
on their taste. This variation in taste leads to a huge variety of products on the market, brutal
competition, and, as you might expect, continual experimentation.
Tokyo is a vast market for testing new commercial ideas. Tokyo’s great size, density and diversity, and
excellent transportation system make it an ideal setting for social experimentation. There are whole
districts in Tokyo called antenna districts, where companies and consumers test out the newest product
ideas, as well as deliberately start fashion trends. These districts naturally attract otaku (“geeky funs”)
and professionals in fashions, electronic products, and so on.
Arguably, Japan’s most dynamic sector is high-tech. In the Akihabara district of Tokyo, sometimes
called the “Electric City,” a visitor can buy virtually any product or gizmo that uses electricity. Just a
few blocks of densely packed stores sell about 10% of the total electronics in Japan. Here otaku can
find products that anticipate the market and that will not be available anywhere else in the world for
months or perhaps even years to come.
Many products sold there will never find their way to the shelves of other stores because Akihabara,
dubbed as Mecca for early adapters, is also the place for the marketers to test what “flies” with the
consumers and what does not. One example is Seiko Corporation. Annually, Seiko develops more than
2,500 watch designs and introduces them in test markets. The winning designs are further improved,
tested again, and only then launched in target markets. Japan’s icon, Sony, also develops, tests, and
measures about 1,500 products annually. About 20% of them are completely new designs, and only a
portion of those find their way to the global market. Some believe that the global success of Japan’s
electronics manufacturers begins in Akihabara. In their race to be the first to market with the season’s
latest products, electronics manufacturers send prototypes of their new products to Akihabara to see if
they will fly. The rivalry is fierce, with some product lifecycles reduced to a few months, turning
Akihabara into a churning, self-renewing experimentation paradise. The sales and feedback are closely
monitored by the companies for further modification and the ultimate launch decision. In a sense, it has
been done at the expense of traditional market research. On the flip side of this Japanese innovation
phenomenon is the fact that some of the most successful products in history, such as Sony Playstation,
have been developed against the corporate view.
Buying In and Getting Started
In a natural world, mutation and sexual recombination allow a species to thrive. The same is true for
innovation in any type of business: Permanent mindful experimentation enables companies to survive the
competition and succeed. Read on - you will see for yourself that RDE is the easiest, most affordable,
and most manageable way to innovate.
What are the key points of RDE to keep in mind when you read on? The bottom line is simple:
- You create a culture of disciplined experimentation and learning that is critical for the competitive
market that faces you today.
- You learn while doing. The benefit is simple. You optimize your development and communication over
time. This should bring substantially more market success because you are delivering what your
customers want, even before they know it - and before your competitors discover it (unless they’re
reading this book right now).
We’re not alone in promoting this disciplined experimentation. Two icons in the marketing world, Jerry
Wind and Vijay Mahajan, consistently promote the benefits of experimentation because of its “ability to
continuously learn, added incentive to develop and test innovative strategies, making it harder for the
competition to figure out what your strategy is and creating a culture of experimentation and learning...
even more critical in the changing and turbulent... environment.” (Jerry Wind and Vijay Mahajan,
Convergence Marketing: Strategies for Reaching the New Hybrid Consumer).
RDE is practical; in many cases, it can be easily handled by a small team or even one person in a very
reasonable time with a modest budget. The beauty of the RDE process is that it does not require (nor
even expect) deep knowledge in advanced statistical areas. RDE generates knowledge and business
results at the same time, with relatively little effort, but with enormous payouts for years to come.
So why do you want to read about RDE and use it in your everyday business life? It is quite simple.
RDE...
- Solves problems instead of just identifying them.
- Generates rules - it’s actionable.
- Needs no advanced knowledge - it’s accessible.
- Promotes logic and learning. No more guesswork is needed when you can be right and “hit the nail on
the head” far more often.
- Applies to a wide range of real-life problems. It’s not limited to products or advertising only.
Read on and enjoy this new field of Rule Developing Experimentation. There’s a lot here, and the road
beckons.
| "I have seen first-hand the dramatic impact that the creative use of RDE/IdeaMap can have on a business. Beyond this incredible technique.., they personally bring unparalleled experience and insight into the realm of accurately predicting human behavior and preference." Don Lowry Vice President, SEI Wealth Network (Former Marketing Executive, Campbell Soup Company) |
| | | | | | |
Selling Blue Elephants
By Howard Moskowitz and Alex Gofman
By Howard Moskowitz and Alex Gofman
| Moskowitz Jacobs Inc. |
(*) Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham, (Random House: New York, 1976). According to Luis Menand (“Cat
People: What Dr. Seuss Really Taught Us,” The New Yorker 23 December 2002 and 30 December 2002),
this book is the fourth-best-selling children’s hardcover title of all time. The book originated with a wager
between Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss’s real name) and his publisher, Bennett Cerf. Dr. Seuss won the bet.
Forty-nine of the words in Green Eggs and Ham are one-syllable words. Cerf made out even better than
Menand realized: As Seuss himself noted 25 years later, “Bennett never paid!”
People: What Dr. Seuss Really Taught Us,” The New Yorker 23 December 2002 and 30 December 2002),
this book is the fourth-best-selling children’s hardcover title of all time. The book originated with a wager
between Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss’s real name) and his publisher, Bennett Cerf. Dr. Seuss won the bet.
Forty-nine of the words in Green Eggs and Ham are one-syllable words. Cerf made out even better than
Menand realized: As Seuss himself noted 25 years later, “Bennett never paid!”
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