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Jan 16, 2012

The trail of clown-faced shopping bags

As a young boy and a new comer to Canada living south of Mirvish Village, I remember following the trail of shoppers coming down Markham Street with their clown faced shopping bags, and was lead to the ultimate Toronto shopping experience – Honest Ed’s. Honest Ed’s featured value priced products and merchandize in a kitschy and nostalgic circus theme with a huge sign encompassing an entire city block made up of about 23,000 light bulbs and catchy slogans such as, “Come in and get lost!” and “Only the floors are crooked!” The inside of the store reminds us of a time before the giant big-box stores moved in, with its vintage bargain-basement type feel. The retailer gained fame for its marketing stunts, including loss leader specials, free turkey giveaways before holidays and extravagant yearly street parties for founder, Ed Mirvish’s, birthday.

After 63 years, Honest Ed’s is more than a store; it’s a well established and successful brand. Its architecture brings together vision, voice and benefits that together provide the inspiration and personality of a lasting brand. That is why, year’s later, Honest Ed’s remains memorable, instantly recognizable and has an emotional community-based appeal and relevance.

Successful brands are unique and beyond compare; they are instantly recognizable and build an emotional connection with their customers. A great brand should be distinct, exude personality and resonate loudly with a lucrative set of customers. Simply put, brand is the personification of your product or service, enabling customers to engage and build a relationship with it.

Are your customers still following a trail back to you decades later? If not, make 2012 your first step in building a lasting brand experience to delight your customers.

By John Paulo cardoso Blog, branding, business, business strategy, marketing, Spyder Works, strategy, The 90% Rule No comments Tags: 90 percent rule, 90% Rule, brand recognition, branding, spyder works

Dec 7, 2011

Make yourself obsolete, or someone else will

by Ken Tencer
Originally published as a Special to Globe and Mail Update, Wednesday, Dec. 07, 2011

With Dyson’s new bladeless fans, generation of kids will be denied the chance to stick pencils through screens to see what happens when they touch fast-spinning blades.

For any other reason, you have to love the British-based company because its innovations are so obvious yet so breakthrough.

Safe, bladeless fans that move air without all the rumbling and rattling.
Technology patterned after jet engines.
Dual-cyclonic vacuums that suck up more dirt, more efficiently.
Airport hand driers that actually work.

Why were these products not developed sooner? Did no other company listen to generations of frustrated consumers? Or were the former market leaders simply too afraid to cannibalize existing products and markets by introducing something truly innovative?

Dyson’s success is a lesson to all business leaders: Don’t be afraid to make yourself obsolete, or someone else will do it for you.

For most companies that’s easier said than done. I used these words while co-chairing a recent innovation conference in New York City, and I heard the groans from the audience.

I have heard their thoughts out loud too often:

“We are the market leaders. We are too big to fail.”
“Our technology dominates the market, no need to worry,” said the buggy-whip maker to his horse.

Too many great companies have disappeared because they resisted change instead of embracing it. We may now be watching the demise of yet another giant, in photography company Eastman Kodak Co. The incredible thing is that Kodak actually saw and invented a future when digital photography would replace film. But somehow it managed to resist it. As analyst Chris Whitmore of Deutsche Bank told The New York Times: “The big story here is that their core business — the yellow box business — got cannibalized by the digital camera, which ironically they invented.”

The “good news” for investors is that Kodak is now soundly and strategically focused on digital-printing technology (in an increasingly paperless world?). I don’t mean to pick on Kodak, as it is not the first company to resist change, and it won’t be the last.

So where do we turn to find an example of an industry successfully making itself obsolete? Look at autos. Car makers recognized it was only a matter of time before the traditional combustion engine model gave way to newer, cleaner technology. So over the past decade they have gradually introduced us to the future, in the form of clean diesel, hybrid and now fully electric engines.

Each of these introductions started small, with expensive pioneering products sold to early adopters. This is how the industry developed its ability to introduce alternative technology, test demand, optimize production, and manage the transition. Today auto makers have a clear understanding of their market and possess the production capacity to ramp up a full-scale transition – fully cannibalizing the old combustion technology – without endangering their revenues.

The car industry didn’t just stay ahead of the curve – it created and managed the curve. If more of Dyson’s vacuum-cleaner competitors had shared that kind of vision, they wouldn’t be sucking air.

By Ken Tencer Blog, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurial Thinking, entrepreneurship, Innovation, marketing, optimzing innovation, planning, Spyder Works, strategy, The 90% Rule No comments Tags: branding, Entrepreneur, Innovation, social media, Spyder Works Inc., strategy, The 90% Rule

Dec 1, 2011

Innovation Insight: You Don’t Have To Be an Inventor to Be an Innovator

One of a series by Ken Tencer, Spyder Works CEO

Many people confuse the words innovator and inventor; they can be synonymous, but they don’t have to be. Some of the world’s most successful and well known innovators aren’t inventors at all; they are masters of the art of taking an idea or concept and making it better. Often, they are able to make good ideas into the best ideas of all time.

Take Steve Jobs, for example. Famous author, Malcom Gladwell, has dubbed him, “The Tweaker” in a recent article he wrote for The New Yorker. Jobs was a masterful innovator because he was able to take the ideas of others and turn them into winning products and concepts. For example, Jobs got the ideas for the main characteristics of the MacIntosh operating system from Xerox PARC, stemming from a famous visit there in 1979. The revolutionary iPad evolved from an engineer at Microsoft’s idea for a tablet computer. His idea made use of a stylus – an old idea that wasn’t revolutionary enough for Jobs. He did away with the stylus and the iPad made history as one of the most coveted devices of its era.

The moral to this innovation story? You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to become an epic success.

By Ken Tencer Blog, business strategy, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurial Thinking, entrepreneurship, Innovation, optimzing innovation, Spyder Works, strategy, The 90% Rule No comments Tags: 90% Rule, business strategy, Entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, Innovation, strategy, The 90 percent rule, The 90% Rule