Category Archives: Applying "The Alpha Factor"

• The answer to thriving through the financial “meltdown” is in an unlikely place

  Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 by Wes Ball

  Every marketer has good reason to be worried about the effects of the current financial “meltdown.”  But this could be the best time in years to create dramatic, sustainable growth without huge investments in innovation or marketing.

  This current crisis is the result of long-term mistakes, and it probably won’t be an easy fix.  Even though the government is certainly going to step in and take some of the immediate pressure off short-term money, there is reason to be conservative about longer-term effects.  And that’s exactly what your competitors will be doing:  cutting budgets, keeping low, maintaining the status quo.  

  Every time we have seen a situation like this, we have been able to help a few forward-looking companies make huge jumps in sales, profitability, and market share.  And they were able to do it for a fraction of what their competitors were spending to just maintain things the way they were.  Because the secret to creating sustainable growth during such times is not in expensive product innovation or other major changes.

  The answer to not just surviving it, but also to creating dramatic, sustainable sales and market share growth right now comes from a very unlikely place.  And because the need there is so high, you don’t even have to invest all that much to get significant gains.

  What most companies have failed to recognize is that the current market share positions of any given product or service category were created more by the lack of competitive pressure than by the presence of it.  In every research study we have conducted, there are huge unfulfilled growth opportunities that have been overlooked simply because everyone assumed that they had to do things the way the top guys do it.  So almost everyone ends up reinforcing the strengths that the top guys used to become the top guys.

  The real secret is to be “disruptive.”  But not with product innovation.  Disruptive product innovation is far too costly for this kind of environment.  Instead, you do it by using the Alpha Model.  Understand first of all that in every product or service category most customers feel unfulfilled and under-satisfied… no matter what they have been telling the companies from whom they are buying.  These customers are just waiting for someone to figure out how to make them feel better about themselves, when they buy or use a product, and to make them feel that others feel better about them, when they buy or use that product.  Time and again, we have discovered that even highly-loyal customers of well-entrenched brands will change their buying habits to a product, service, or company that fulfills these “ego-satisfaction” factors better than their current supplier does.

  And it happens faster and for less investment than most companies would ever believe, especially when everyone else is terrified and standing still, as is about to happen in the marketplace.  This is indeed probably the best opportunity I have seen in decades for creating dramatic changes in market share for small investment.

  This is the secret that made the poorest-earning investment product in America (U.S. Savings Bonds) create double-digit growth, gaining more than $2 million per week in new sales in the late 1990s, when the stock market was averaging three to four times higher earnings for the average investor.  It’s the same method that more than doubled per store sales for Subway retailers while reducing discounting, when almost every other competitor offered a better product selection at similar or better prices.  It’s the same way we tripled market share for the “worst-tasting” food product in its category, making it the number one brand, …again while reducing discounting, without changing the product formulation, and without spending more than 25% of what any of the top brands were spending on advertising and marketing.

  The answer is in understanding and using the Alpha Model to change customer expectations in ways that supersede product performance or quality or price.  Customers are vulnerable to competition because so few companies have figured out how to fulfill basic customer ego-satisfaction needs, which are far more important to driving buying decisions and loyalty than are functional product performance or quality. By understanding how customers wish they could bond emotionally to products in your category, you can create growth no matter what is happening to everyone else in the category.  

  It doesn’t matter what the economy is doing.  It doesn’t matter what your competitors are doing.  It doesn’t even matter what your retailers or distributors are saying or doing.  You can create growth in any economy and leave your competitors wondering what happened to them.

  So, instead of worrying about how to just stay where you are, spend the same money you would to maintain the status quo and use it to make yourself the Alpha in your category, using customer ego-satisfaction as the key.  Change customer expectations through addressing unmet ego-satisfaction fulfillment using the Alpha Model, and you can drive growth no matter what the rest of the world is doing.

   

   

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• The secret to sustainable innovation (managing change with Alpha Innovation)

  Thursday, September 18th, 2008 by Wes Ball

  Harnessing change as the key to innovation dominance.

  No one likes change.  Even the 15% of the population with the personality type that can thrive on change doesn’t “like” it.  Change causes pain – personally and organizationally.  And pain causes uncertainty, which makes everyone uncomfortable.  So we all try to avoid it, if at all possible.

  But creating and managing change is the key to market dominance.

  Change is going on all the time – and at an alarmingly increasing rate.  It is also what every C-Suite executive is tasked with driving in order to survive in the job.   It may be called “profit growth,” or “sales growth,” or “innovation,” but what it really comes down to is  the need to create “change.”  And it causes pain.

  The good news is that change can be managed and controlled to your benefit, if you understand the Alpha Innovation model.  Most innovation creates little dynamic, profit-enhancing change; it just creates minor “noise” in the marketplace that briefly changes the focus of customers until some new “noise” occurs.  In most cases, it is either a reaction to another marketer’s efforts, or it is a simple extension of what you have been doing before that has not created dominance for you and won’t any time soon. 

  These kinds of innovation are the most costly and the most painful, because they not competitively sustainable or defensible over the long term.  Competitors can create their own noise that redirects customer attention away from you, defeating your efforts and investment.  It takes a continual effort to be more creative than the last time to come up with something to create more noise to re-attract customers.

  The most profitable innovation is the one that drives a new “thread” of future changes or innovations that increasingly focuses customers upon your offerings to the exclusion of your competitors’.  That is Alpha Innovation.  Alpha Innovation typically is less painful, because competitors actually make it easier for you.  They follow your lead, giving you control over the innovation thread for the entire category.

  The secret is in understanding how customers view innovations.  There are three elements to their view of anything new:

  1.     How it works (function)

  2.     How it makes them feel about themselves buying or using your product or service (self-satisfaction)

  3.     How they believe others view them using or buying your product or service (personal significance)

  All innovators start with identifying an unmet functional need.  They spot something that could be improved functionally to make customer experiences better or more efficient or more fulfilling.  The trouble is that most innovation stops right there.

  If I make a soap that cleans better than the leading brand, I have created a functional innovation.  I may have created a brief window of advantage.  My competitors find out what I did and create a way to make a soap that cleans at least as good as mine PLUS makes things smell nice, as well.  Suddenly, that competitor has a brief window of advantage.  And so it goes, on and on with one competitor gaining a brief advantage until another creates a brief advantage. 

  Each one focused upon creating a functional innovation that one-upped the previous leader.  This innovation was costly, requiring retooling and investment in new marketing and perhaps even in new distribution.  The result was no sustainable advantage; just an on-going battle of one-upmanship that required careful management of backend costs to avoid losing whatever gains might have been generated during the window of advantage.

  Now, add in the other elements of the Alpha Innovation model and a very different result is created. 

  The rule is this:  “Satisfy function to the minimum; satisfy ego-satisfaction to the maximum.”

  I create a soap that works at least as well as the minimum basic functional expectation of soaps in the category (among at least 80% of the current buyers in that category).  Instead of innovating further on the basic functional side of cleaning (unless I have discovered that no soap is fulfilling the basic functional need to the level desired by customers) and instead of just trying to reduce costs to make myself the low cost provider (that then puts me in a “who will charge less” game that no one wins), I start looking for satisfaction and significance opportunities.  (NOTE:  What I describe from here on is wildly hypothetical, so don’t go running out to create a new soap like this without competent Alpha model research to discover the real ego-satisfaction opportunities.)

  For instance, I could start looking for any clues that might lead to benefits customers would spend almost anything to get.  What would make a customer say, “It’s the most expensive soap out there, but it’s worth every penny of what I pay?”  You may never reach that goal, but the insights you get will lead you to an area for focus of innovation that competitors will have a tough time beating.  Like l’Oreal’s, “I’m worth it,” you will discover things that, if you functionally innovated to provide them, would prove enough ego-satisfaction to make your product not just the one everyone aspires to own, but the one that customers will pay more for.

  The really amazing thing is that that the basic core functional performance of most products that address innovation in this way may not be much better than competitors’, but the effective value customers place on that product is dramatically higher than that of competitive products.

  Apple’s iPhone is a great example of this.    I compared the original to RIMM’s Blackberry.  In many ways the Blackberry’s performance was better, especially for anyone used to typing with two fingers using their tiny keyboard.  The iPhone’s user interface was much prettier, and certainly the internet looked significantly better on an iPhone than on a Blackberry.  The cost of the iPhone was much higher than the Blackberry (even at its “new lower” price flowing its original introduction at almost $600).

  So why did more than 3 million iPhones get purchased?  It was more than the “new” factor.  It was more than the “sexy” graphics and interface.  It was even more than the media hype that made it sound like the greatest thing to hit planet Earth.  What made it so different were all the non-functional things that Apple so adeptly built-in that did not really affect the functional performance.  For instance, the tactile feel of it – it just feels great to hold in your hand.  Or the black glass screen that covers the entire front.  It looks like something from another planet, or at least from three generations of Earth time from now.  For me, it was the “feel.”  Holding it made me smile.

  I bought one.  I love it.  Even now that generation two is out, I still have people stop me and ask to “see” it, which means, “Let me touch it, feel it, etc.”

  Apple could have just innovated like Blackberry and one-upped them functionally.  The result would have been a more and more costly war of functional improvements.  Instead, they focused upon the ego-satisfaction side, ignoring the fact that their functionality was only comparable to Blackberry’s, and the result was that they are out there alone, leading the pack.  Competitors are trying to mimic the iPhone, but they all fall short because they are focusing upon functional innovation and missing the ego-satisfaction hold that Apple has gained.

  The innovation thread now is open for them and will take a completely new set of ego-satisfaction elements to be addressed by a competitor to overcome it.  Apple’s newer generation iPods (the original was certainly a “disruptive” innovation, but it could have been overtaken functionally by competitors, even with iTunes being the core element of the disruptiveness) have followed the same innovation thread.  They have taken the design and feel of the iPhone to another level with Nano – small, wonderful to feel in your hand; it even feels good in your pocket.  Then came the MacBook Air that reminds me of a big Nano in feel and design.

  While their competitors are beating their brains out on functional improvements, Apple is using the ego-satisfaction elements that they now “own” to increase profitability, sales, and stock value.   While “tech-heads” are busy extolling the benefits of their super-dooper PC laptops tat only they can understand and use efficiently, people are paying more for the MacBook Air and are being swamped by people in airports, coffee shops, and the office to touch and see it.

  This recognition of the “value” customers place upon ego-satisfaction over function is critical to becoming and remaining an Alpha.  It’s how Apple is making itself (finally) into an Alpha.  It’s how Harley-Davidson became one.  It’s how Victoria’s Secret became one.  It’s how John Deere became one.  It’s how Intel became one.  It’s how Mercedes and BMW became one. 

  It’s even how Wal-Mart became one.  They certainly don’t fit the profile of the others, but their hold on the retail industry has been based totally upon customers wanting to believe that they are making the smartest shopping decision.  No other general merchandise retailer has done what Sears did in the past – making itself the trusted place to go for household items, no matter what anyone else’s price was – so Wal-Mart has made retailers become followers in their “price is everything” model.  The funniest part of this is that Wal-Mart is not and never has been the lowest-price provider.  They just make sure that they provide enough functional proof of that idea to be able to make their claim of lower prices believable and trustworthy.

  So the trick to managing change is to use the Alpha Innovation model to create change that focuses everyone (customers and competitors) upon your offering.  The way to do that is through functionality that at least meets the minimum basic functionality required AND that proves that the customer will gain more ego-satisfaction by buying your product or service.

  Deliver ego-satisfaction.  Prove it with function.  Become the Alpha.

   

  Posted in Applying "The Alpha Factor", Business, Innovation, Uncategorized | Comments (0)

• Alpha learning applied: Good enough is good enough… Until an Alpha makes it better

  Friday, August 1st, 2008 by Wes Ball

  Why is everyone obsessed with the idea that better quality sells? There has been more than enough evidence that this isn’t true.  Better quality or performance for the same price as what something else costs sells, but not better quality…UNLESS it helps prove that emotional fulfillment needs are being satisfied better through your product or service.

  I sat for half an hour listening to the tirade of a marketing guy from a major manufacturer who had gone down the quality path only to find over and over again that lower quality, lower cost product from Asia was being chosen in lieu of his product.  What he had missed (and I tried to tell him, but he was far too focused upon the unfairness of it all to hear it) was that unless there is a clear emotional fulfillment provided by your product or service, quality means little.

  What the Alpha Factor Project discovered was that functional performance (quality, product performance, features, etc.) only have to meet the minimum acceptable functional requirements to be considered and purchased. Once that hurdle is crossed, the battle becomes one of which brand offers the most emotional fulfillment? That means “self-satisfaction” (how I feel about myself when I buy or use your product or service) and “personal significance” (how I believe others feel about me using or buying your product or service).  If none of the other products provide any emotional fulfillment, then the choice becomes one of price.  Among those that do provide some level of emotional fulfillment, the comparison is one of which provides enough to warrant the greater price?

  I may buy Kraft cheese to make cheeseburgers, but I will probably buy a much more expensive and more unique cheese to serve to friends with wine.  If the Kraft cheese is acceptable to me (meets minimum functional performance) and I don’t think anyone will see what’s going on the meat, then why would I spend the extra money?  Where the cheese will be seen and it will be a major focus of the entertainment, then I may spend ten times as much to make sure it’s really something that will please and gain points with my guests.

  This kind of behavior can be quite predictable with a range of brands or products getting my attention based upon the situation and likelihood of anyone noticing. When an Alpha company enters the game, however, things start to change very rapidly.

  The Alpha, by definition, is in the process of continually defining what it means to be in that category or product or service. It defines the expectations and the aspirations of customers in that category.   There may be a minimum acceptable functional requirement, but that starts to move upward as the Alpha defines new, higher expectations.  Almost every competitor begins to focus its attention upon competing with the Alpha.

  Even though Starbucks is having troubles right now, it has been the Alpha in the coffee shop category for a long time.  It neither invented the coffee shop concept nor did it better than everyone else.  It did, however, bring a new minimum acceptable functional requirement to the category that pushed many local shops to do a much better job than they had in the past.  Every other shop out there (whether they were better or worse than Starbucks) competes with Starbucks and compares itself to them.  Sadly, it is because Starbucks has fallen below the minimum acceptable functional requirement that they set that they are now experiencing the problems they are.  It isn’t just the fact that they over-expanded; it’s that they over-expanded for the lower functional performance they were providing.

  Harley-Davidson, another slipping Alpha, has fallen into the same trap. When Harleys started becoming better motorcycles after the company was purchased by some employees in the early 1980s, a new and higher acceptable functional minimum was established.  Despite their poor quality, up until that point in time they had been the minimum acceptable functionality.  Most Japanese bikes were already far above that, so it did not affect them, but it did establish a new higher minimum that had to be met.

  Unfortunately, H-D (like Starbucks) fell below that minimum they set.  They also allowed other manufacturers to begin to define the leading edge of the “cruiser” and “chopper” categories that they had owned.  Now a new, even higher functional minimum has been set, and Harleys don’t measure up either in functional performance or in emotional fulfillment.

  Apple, on the other hand, is setting a much higher functional minimum in both its iPod and iPhone products.  What was acceptable just two years ago is no longer acceptable.  If someone chooses one of the competitive products, they do it knowing that they are sacrificing something they aspire to own and experience. Even among those of us that thought that there couldn’t be that much difference between lesser brand versions and the “real thing,” the truth becomes quite apparent after enjoying the “i” experience for even a few minutes.  This new higher experience has become the benchmark for everyone else to reach.

  The secret to Apple’s success, however, is not the technology that looks far beyond competitive products, but actually is probably less cutting edge than it seems.  It is the emotional fulfillment that comes from owning, feeling (they really have a terrific tactile character to them), and sharing them with others.  Competitive products tremble in comparison.

  Apple’s Mac computers have long had a much higher experiential factor that should have made them the Alpha of the personal computer category.  Because they focused so heavily upon the “artistic” market with software and marketing, they missed being able to drive minimum functionality higher in the overall category.  Unfortunately, Microsoft (through a lot of shenanigans) made themselves the minimum functionality required for most businesses and computer technicians, which drove the choices most individuals had, as well.

  Now that Apples has been able to make their product more available to all the poor souls who had to put up with Microsoft products for all those years, they are emerging as the clear Alpha of the category.  Who would not aspire to own a MacBook Air?  It feels great, looks great, performs better than any PC laptop I’ve owned, lets me do beautiful presentations, displays none of the software “crankiness” that my old XP-Pro machine did, AND runs Microsoft Office programs.  I also have people walk across the room to ask me about it.

  Quality is not and has not ever been the real “Holy Grail” that is has been purported to be.  Emotional fulfillment is the core of Alpha learning, leadership, and innovation.  Good enough is truly good enough until emotional fulfillment comes into the picture.

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