Guest blog
A chartered engineer, David Falzani is president of Sainsbury Management Fellows which was founded over 25 years ago by Lord Sainsbury to encourage better management skills in UK engineering. David is also chief executive of Polaris Associates which helps entrepreneurial companies develop and grow as well as a visiting professor at Nottingham University Business School where he teaches how to bring technology, innovation, entrepreneurialism together to create successful businesses.
What’s often missing for a successful product?
The short answer: emotional content.
I was at the Manufacturing Summit at 1 Bird Cage Walk a few years ago listening to the success stories of some of the show case British manufacturers, when it occurred to me that a piece of the story wasn’t being explained properly.
The first company, I remember, had developed a metal detector door portal used by hospitals to prevent any metal objects being brought into an MRI scanning room. Apparently watches, instruments, and even wheel chairs have been inadvertently brought within range of the magnetic field and required a crow bar (and possibly a traction engine!) to remove them. The study talked about the technical capability, the IP and the supply chain and so on, but it struck me that the physical design of the product was attractive and elegant. This aspect seemed to be taken for granted. It had real emotional value. I never did the analysis, but it would have been interesting to see if the competitors of this successful product were quite different in look and feel.
Emotional value has been one of the biggest changes in the way that people purchase things over the last 30 years. In particular, consumers often purchase products such as branded FMCG and technology goods largely based on emotional value. In his book, Thinking Fast & Slow, Daniel Kahneman explains the two systems active in the human mind which drive the way we think and make choices. One system is fast, intuitive and emotional and the other is slower, more deliberative and logical. Both systems are busy working in the background of the usually oblivious consumer’s mind. We think the logical system is making the decisions, but multiple studies show it’s the emotional fast system that’s really often in charge.
The second company I recall from the summit is Brompton, whose folding commuter bicycles have innovative functionality and designs, as well as over 20 patents. They also, crucially, generate enormous emotional value for their community of customers attaining near “cult status”. Their huge fan base even spends weekends on Brompton rallies and participates in 24 hour races with their folding premium commuter bicycles!
In other words, these products connect with peoples’ lives. The brand triangle is a useful tool to assess the value tradeoffs of a product. It was introduced to me by Dr Dipak Jain, who, as Dean of Kellogg School of Management, home of marketing guru Philip Kotler, took that school to a #1 ranking in the world.
The triangle is a map or 3 sided field (not a pyramid) with 3 corners: Emotional, Functional and Low Cost. Emotional products are bought by people because they make them feel good. Examples include most luxury products. Functional products do exactly what they say on the label but without any particular love. In the old days this would perhaps be British Rail, but perhaps Microsoft would sit here today. Finally, Low Cost products compete primarily on price. Examples here are discount stores and airlines. Products can be 100% in one of the ‘pure’ corners, or a mixture of 2 or 3 to varying degrees. By placing products in the triangle, marketers can assess or contrast where a product sits compared to its competition. It’s worth noting that a long string of failures have highlighted how difficult it is to survive for long in the Low Price corner, without structural advantages.
This analysis has its roots in consumer marketing, but it’s also applicable to business to business. Ultimately, professional buyers are human beings too, subject to emotional messages. Furthermore, organisations such as hospitals, with a public facing mandate, will wish to communicate the correct image and visual assurance messages in any case.
Of course, this is best epitomised by the Apple phenomenon. In workshops, when I ask people why they bought Apple, they are often unable to offer a rational reason that survives much scrutiny. Actually, it’s not the fact that they purchased Apple that’s most interesting; it’s that they paid a premium price. This is perhaps the reason why Apple currently has a cash pile of over $178,000,000,000, or about twice that of the US Treasury. I’ve written out the zeros long hand on purpose. Those zeros perhaps demonstrate, better than anything else, the fruits of getting the emotional value right within the selling proposition.
I recall, as a very young Engineer asking why firms who made machine tools and other highly technical/industrial equipment, used to take small mast-head advertisements on the very top-first page of the Financial Times and other economic/financial journals . “Its so that the Financial Director (who has to place his -and it always was his that long ago! signature on the order…at least knew the name of the supplier! Nice touch.
In the late 60s in the USA, Kodak started to offer a polyester fiber! (they had made the polyester polymer and film base for decades and going to fiber was a logical step. They called it Kodel and the earliest advertising campaign(s) were a disaster. Whilst Kodak was literally a household name in photography, they were quite unknown in the textile industry, nor amongst consumers of clothes. They started to put their flagship logo (a Kodak sign at the bottom right corner of a page, looking as though it has turned-up from the page beneath) and used throughout their photographic advertising/marketing onto their textile advertising. Immediately the textile industry and individual consumers recognised it and linked such with Kodak, a well known and trusted brand.
Success followed.
Another outstanding brand was of course Singer (as in sewing machines) The original decoration(s) -particularly on treadle/foot operated units on such were gold lettering on Japaned black. Singer did later branch out into making the machines for tufted carpets (larger gauge but actually a bunch of sewing machines side by side) and their brand name was entry into this business. I recall a very old (as MJB is now!) salesman telling me that there were certain parts of the world where the possession of a Singer -with the proper decoration’- in a place of prominence in a home was more important (emotionally) to the householder than actually using it.
There were thousands of machines still with their original factory ‘grease’ to show they had never actually sewn a single stitch! Absurd, but then so is so much of the reality of the human state!
Of course, there is another side to this.
Who remembers Terylene, Bri-Nylon, Courtelle, Acrilan, Dacron, Kodel! Lycra, -a few of the many brand-names developed by the early fibre-producers which were literally dominant in the 50s, 60s, 70s and later.
But -the rise of the power of the retailers, who sought to enhance their own status (and who objected to paying the praemium required to support this image- stopped this. Indeed the UK, European and US retailers actively sought to decry fibre-brand: by encouraging nylon, polyester, elastomer, acrylic, viscose…(look on almost any label on garments and carpets now)
The power of multiple retail is, I have always contended, not necessarily a force for good! You ask, what the H*ll has this to do with Engineering: well, actually quite a lot!
Mike B
The key thing with this point is how do you add emotional content to a sub contractor or business to business company. It’s important because that is what 95% of UK manufacturers are these days.
It can be done – but it needs a subtle twist in the way those companies talk to the outside world.