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ONE
Create a Compelling Product
Now you know there are two critical parts of the success equation: a compelling product (the what) and a significant platform (the who). In this book you will find a wealth of information on the second element in the equation, but if you donât slam-dunk the first elementâthe compelling productâyou wonât win the game.
There is no sense in wasting your valuable time and resources trying to build a buzz about a ho-hum product. As one of my favorite marketing gurus, David Ogilvy, once wrote, âGreat marketing only makes a bad product fail faster.â How true.
For years I have argued, âItâs the product, stupid.â The secret to success in any business is to deliver a great, compelling product. And when I say product, I mean anything you are trying to say or sell. It may be yourself, if youâre a speaker or entertainer. It might be a stellar service you provide for profit or nonprofit. Perhaps itâs a cause you are championing, a message you are passionate about. Or it could be an actual physical product, like a book. Regardless of the form your product takes, no amount of marketing savvy, salesmanship, or operational excellence can overcome a weak product.
The purpose of marketing is to prime the pump. But if people donât want to use your product andâmore importantlyâif they wonât recommend it to their friends, youâre hosed. You canât spend enough money or be clever enough to overcome a lack of word-of-mouth marketing. It just wonât work.
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In light of this, it was fascinating to watch how Apple first introduced the iPhone. Like millions of other Mac fans, I read all the articles and even worked my way through Appleâs slick, interactive website. I thought to myself, Very cool. I definitely want one of these. But I also thought, I can wait until the second generation. Let them work out the bugs first.
But then I watched Steve Jobâs 2007 keynote presentation from MacWorld. If you are involved in any aspect of product development, this is a must-watch video.1
I garnered three insights:
1. Create products you would personally use. Watching Steve, you get the sense he loves the product. He is so familiar with it, because he has been using it. He thinks it is âway cool,â and heâs not afraid to say so. He sprinkles words like awesome, incredible, and even magical throughout his speech. He exhibits the wonder of a five-year-old on Christmas morning. You really believe him. Heâs not trying to sell you something. Heâs simply sharing the experience.
What about the products you create? If youâre speaking about business, do you deliver exciting and powerful messages that you know can make a difference in peopleâs lives? If youâre in sales, do you even use the items you sell? Would you recommend them enthusiastically to a friend? Do you really love these products or are you only trying to meet some arbitrary quota or generate revenue?
2. Create products that solve problems in unexpected ways. It was interesting to watch some of the biggest cell phone manufacturers get hammered in the press the week before the iPhone was announced. They essentially said, âWeâve saturated the market. Thereâs nothing compelling left to build. Investors need to get used to the idea of slower revenue growth and tighter margins. From this point forward, competition is going to be brutal.â
Then Steve announced a new phone that essentially reinvented the category. Not surprisingly, Appleâs stock soared. Motorolaâs, Nokiaâs, and Samsungâs took a nosedive.
Apple wasnât content to create a phone that just had additional features. It completely rethought the solutionâfrom the ground up. Appleâs engineers put themselves in the userâs place and refused to be constrained by the past. They didnât start with the technology. They started with the dream and then went in search of technology. This is a completely different way of doing business.
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What about you? We too often think inside the box. We let the past constrain us. We donât get in the consumersâ shoes and ask, âWhat would make this really cool? What would take this to a whole new level? What would we create if the limits of current technology werenât an issue?â You have to get outside the box and learn to dream again.
3. Create products that exceed your customersâ expectations. As I watched Steveâs presentation, I couldnât help but notice the crowd. It was like they were watching a master magician. As Steve demonstrated each new feature, the crowd erupted in applause. To my surprise, I found myself laughing with glee. I felt like a kid again. Most of all, I wanted one of those phones!
Part of the charm is that Apple seems to execute its product vision with such amazing simplicity and elegance. Every icon on the phone is understated but beautiful. Every feature is easy to use but not complex. Everything seems not only as good as Apple could make it but as good as Apple could imagine it.
What about your products or services? How often have you rushed something to market with a sigh and a collective, âWell, I guess that will have to do. Itâs not great, but itâs good enoughâ?
Sadly, we donât start with a lofty vision. Iâm afraid we have become content with mediocrity; we aim low and execute even lower.
If you want to build a platform, itâs time to get the passion back. Push one another and yourself to deliver great products that you are delightedâyes, delighted!âto offer. If you donât, then your attempt to build a platform is doomed to failure.
If you create outstanding products, everything else becomes much easier. Apple spends a fortune on product development. But relatively speaking, it doesnât spend much on marketing. Nevertheless, when it introduced the iPhone, Apple got more press coverage than the entire Consumer Electronics Show that was going on simultaneously in Las Vegas. Apple has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that âitâs the product, stupid.â
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Letâs take a lesson from the Apple playbook and get the first part of the success equation right: start with a wow product.
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TWO
Bake in the Wow
Now I want to tell you about Blake Mycoskie, who creates wows of a different, but no less magical, kind than the late Steve Jobs.
In 2006, Mycoskie was traveling in Argentina and saw that many children there had no shoes. So when he returned home to America, he created a new company, TOMS Shoes. For every pair sold, TOMS matches itâone for oneâwith a pair of new shoes given to a child in need. When he returned to Argentina with reinforcements the next year, they placed ten thousand pairs on little feet. And by September 2010, TOMS and its affiliated partners such as Feed The Children had given more than one million pairs to kids in need around the world.1
Now, you may not think a pair of shoes is a wow product, but for many of these kids, TOMS shoes will be their very first pair. Without shoes they cannot go to school, and they are susceptible to soil-transmitted diseases that penetrate the skin. One child in Kenya said, âIâm excited because when I woke up in the morning, I did not know when Iâll have something like this.â And a teacher said, âI can tell you, these children will not sleep today. They will be talking about those shoes the whole night!â2 Now thatâs wow.
If you, like Steve Jobs or Blake Mycoskie, have a message to share, or a product or service to sell, I have significant news for you. We donât need more messages or products or services. Instead, we need better messages, products, and services. Specifically, we need those that wow. This is the âcompelling productâ part of the success equation. But what is wow and how can we develop it? How can we make sure our message, product, or service creates a wow experience?
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The first step is learning to recognize it. Most of us have experienced wow moments. We just havenât taken time to think deeply about them.
For example, a few summers ago, I took my wife and youngest daughter to Scotland. It was our first visit. We rented a car and spent a week touring the western Highlands. We started in Edinburgh and drove north to Inverness. We then drove down the west side of Loch Ness to Fort Augusta and then headed west across the Highlands to the Isle of Skye. We took our time and savored every moment.
As we neared the town of Portree, the capital of Skye, we saw the Sound of Raasay f...