I’ve found another must read Top Shelf Pick for 2009: Kevin Maney’s Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On and Others Don’t. Any book that makes me rethink my biz plan is a must-read, and while this didn’t cause me to change direction, it did solidify that our new plan is taking us in the right direction.
Initially, I thought this was going to be a marketing book (sort of like Made to Stick), but it’s really more of a discussion around your company’s mission statement and core values. The main premise is that every business has a trade-off. You can either excel in providing a high-fidelity experience or in being extremely convenient. If you’re in the middle for both, you end up in the “Fidelity Belly” (kind of like the doldrums . . . or to use a dating example . . . it’s like dating someone who is vanilla–everything about them is fine, but nothing is outstanding. )
Any company or product that tries to capture both fidelity and convenience ends up in the Fidelity Belly and will more than likely fail. Maney provides Starbucks and Coach bags as examples. They both tried to mass market a luxury product, which when you think about it is a bit of an oxymoron: mass-marketed luxury? Not possible . . . the definition of luxury is something expensive or hard to obtain.
If you’re chasing convenience
A super-convenient product is one where people will forgo a nicer experience due to time, cost or easy accessibility, i.e. Wal-Mart.
But in addition to being affordable and easy, if you can add a social dimension, it acts as an adoption accelerant. This is why teens will buy a cell-phone ring . . . Downloading it is convenient, but a ring tone also announces your taste in music to the world, giving it great social value.
However, manufacturing a social dimension doesn’t always work. Maney points to USA Today’s 2006 attempt to create a social network around its newspaper. They found out that you can’t force a social aspect onto something that is not inherently social. I started to debate this example in my head because, in some sense, the comments on NYTimes.com sort of work like a social dimension (and I probably e-mail an article or two per week to friends). But, then again, I feel an affinity with someone who reads the NYTimes, and not sure USA Today readers feel the same.
If you’re hoping for fidelity
You need the following formula: Experience + Aura + Identity = Fidelity.
Experience means giving someone a feeling/situation that is high-quality, i.e., iPhone, high-fidelity experience; exceptionally inconvenient access(price/AT&T).
Identity: Maney uses the Kindle for this example–stating that it’s missing the Identity component: that is, you are what you read, and when you read on a Kindle, no one knows what you are reading. As I write this I realize that this is also a component of convenience . . . but it seems that Maney is saying there needs to be identity when it comes to fidelity; but if your goal is convenience, then it’s a nice bonus, but less necessary.
The Kindle is an interesting example that Maney brings up. It’s very expensive, so not convenient, so it must be a high-fidelity play. Yet, does it improve the experience of reading a book? The jury is still out on that one. Besides, when you think about it, the majority of book purchasers are “mass market,” and most people buy paperbacks, which are still quite convenient. So the Kindle seems to be in the Fidelity Belly.
Aura: Super-fidelity is sustainable, but it can’t be done on Aura alone. Maney uses Crocs as an example. The more a company relies on Aura, or being cool and trendy, the more easily it can be toppled from its perch.
Should you be convenient or high-fidelity?
Convenience is needed; fidelity is loved. In other words, people tend to choose the most convenient product or service most of the time but treat themselves to fidelity. This is why it might not be wise to launch a high-fidelity product during an economic recession, although the iPhone seemed to defy those odds.
High-fidelity products have a smaller audience and therefore need a higher profit margin. Convenient products have lower margins and therefore need to reach larger audiences.
While Maney promotes an almost all-or-nothing approach, one or the other, he does note that adding the right touch of fidelity to a high-convenience product or service, or the right touch of convenience to fidelity, can make for a powerful, competitor-beating concoction.
Warning: Don’t forget the Tech effect. Technology drives fidelity and convenience. Wherever your product or service lands today on the fidelity or convenience spectrum, it may well be in a different position tomorrow.
Throughout the book Maney focuses on a lot of different companies and products: iRobot’s Roomba, Tiffany’s, newspapers and higher education. Being a Washington Capitals fan, I was really interested in his take on how the team turned into one of the most exciting in hockey. But Maney also brought up something that’s been bugging me for a while–instead of trying to boost TV ratings for NHL hockey, i.e., only showing playoffs on obscure cable channels (I had to follow some games via Twitter), why not live stream them on the internet? Go for the convenience. Especially if the majority of the NHL’s demographics have access to a computer. After all, the existing plan isn’t working.
Top Shelf Bottom Line. Like most trend books, it gets to a point where the author is saying the same thing over and over but with more and different illustrations. Nevertheless, it kept me reading to the end and I could easily grasp the different examples. This is a definite must-read if you don’t know where your company falls on the Fidelity/Convenience Trade-offs chart, or you want to fine tune your future growth.
DKD Sidebar: I tried applying this to my business, the Downtown Women’s Club. Last year we launched our new tagline: Professional networking that’s affordable, effective and fun! Clearly we’re going for convenience.
But this book made me realize that people still want a high-fidelity networking experience. Some of our local clubs do provide this in abundance (which is our high-fidelity aspect). However, after reading this book, I came away with the idea that we need to provide more networking “content” as opposed to “contacts.”
Let the other 99 percent of our competitors focus on making introductions for only a select group of people. Instead, we’ll provide the skills and tools everyone needs to create her own networks, wherever they may be. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I’ll keep you posted.
How can you apply this to your own company/service/product? Ask yourself the following:
- Are you high-fidelity or convenient?
- Do you have a high or low profit margin?
- Can you add a social component to your product/service?
- Do you rely too much on your aura?
- Can you be displaced easily by new technologies?
- Are you in the Fidelity Belly?
Need help answering those? Buy the book!
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August 13th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
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