Innovate or Die

Peter Drucker the renowned management guru once remarked “there are only two things that a company has to do for its continued success in the market, Innovation and Marketing”.

In Drucker’s view innovation is the corner stone on which the company builds its reputation. Even the most innovative idea will die if it is not made into a great product that reaches the market through a concerted and focused marketing effort.

Shoes with detachable uppers:A new concept and a great innovation. It reminds me of a watch with detachable straps to suit the moods of the wearer. A Shoe with a detachable upper too is a great idea.

The sole remains the same and there is zipper provided that can fit any type of shoe upper that the customer wants to wear. The customer can change from wearing sneakers, walking shoes, formal shoes with laces, slip-ons, tennis shoes, running shoes or any other type of shoe easily and instantaneously.

The entire set would cost a fraction of the cost of individual shoes bought separately. Detachable shoes also make more sense for travellers who want to minimize luggage! The product idea looks so simple that we ponder “why is thatthis idea did not occur to someone else earlier?” It all boils down to innovativeness.

Facebook
We always wanted to get connected with our friends, relatives and family and keep in touch. We all wanted to check the photos of others and show off our own snaps. We wanted to know where our friends were located and wanted to say Hello. But we all waited and waited for a young man to come along and realize our wishes.

The young man is ‘Mark Zuckerberg’, who created a new concept called “Facebook” and created a business empire out of nothing. The beauty of it is that Mark does not own any content that is on Facebook. He has no copyright either. The content belongs to us and based on our content he is laughing his way to the bank!

By creating the world’s best meeting place Mark Zuckerberghas become one of the richest persons. Today Mark Zuckerberg aged only 32, is worth US Billion 53.8 (data from Forbes Magazine, January 2017) which is a jaw dropping 3,47,655 crores. The Richest Indian, Mukesh Ambani’s net worth is 1,51,896 crores which less than 50% of Mark’s total net worth.

If Facebook is a nation it would be the most populous country in the world! It has over 1.86 billion active users per month. In contract the total population of China stands at 1.36 Billion people! So what is so great about Facebook? The simplicity of the idea and the clarity of execution! The credo that Facebook and Google follow is incredible. The home pages of both Facebook and Google are the plainest in the world.

If they so desire Facebook and Google can make billions of dollars by making their home page display advertisements. After all their home pages are the most prized real estate (space) in the world. But the reasoning is solid. Both Facebook and Google do not want their users to be on their homepages for long.

The USP of Google is the incredible speed of search results that its search engine can give us in a fraction of a second. Same is the case with Facebook; they want us to experience it as fast as possible. The focus is on the faster access to our own page where we can interact with our friends! Like the saying ‘achieving simplicity in execution is the most difficult task in the world!’

Home-stay concept
Taking Vacations have become very popular in the stressed out modern world. Allof us eagerly wait for the break from our regular work. Vacations reenergize and make us look at the future with a sparkling smile and an eager heart. But the biggest dampenerfor a vacation is the hotel stay. Hotels are impersonal, boring and tend to be exorbitantly expensive. Most people simply can’t afford to stay in a hotel where the maximum possible occupancy is two per room.

Out of this problem, emerged the concept of a home stay. A home stay is a home away from home. Home Stay conceptis one where owners of large houses, farmhouses or tea/coffeeestates in popular tourist locations temporarily let tourists stay in their houses for a reasonable cost.It is not simply letting the visitors stay at their house; they become part of the family.

Visitors are given a traditional welcome and are given rooms in the house where the hosts themselves stay. Breakfast/lunch/dinner isserved in the host’s dining room. Visitors become part of the extended family and there is no better way to experience a culture rather than soaking it in in a home stay.The family members become our friends and guide us in experiencing the famous locations and tourist spots. The charges at the home stay are economical and are not as expensive as a five star hotel!

Ivy League B-schools offer free online courses: It is a dream for many to study and be a part of anUS based Ivy League Business School or a university. But the tuition fees, the travel to USA and the cost of boarding andlodging are so prohibitive that the dream remains a dream. Innovation is the key! In the modern world with the advent of the efficient computers with superfast internet access, the world has become a global learning centre.

Ivy Leagueschools have launched FREE online courses that would have costed lot of money only a few years ago. Everything is free, registration, the course ware, the interactive lectures, examinations and evaluations. In short everything is offered free. At the end of the course, an online examination is conducted and the candidate is certified.

A print out of the certificate too can be generated. Economistsare always quick to add “there is no free lunch in this world”. Sohow do these Ivy League schoolsmake money? The students who have been certified from the Ivy league B-schoolsare not satisfied with a mere paper print out. Theywant a properofficial certificate that says the same which is signed and certified by the dean.

This is where the innovation kicks in! The Ivy League school would say “if you want a proper official looking certificate you will have to pay US 750/-“. US 750 dollars is 48,750/- Indian rupees. Some might say “Still not much money for the Ivy League school”,but the numbers are on their side. Let us assume that 10,000 students aroundthe world take the free online Digitalmarketing course. Let us also assume that 900 are certificated at the end ofthe course.

20% of the 900 certified want to possess a proper official degree. That would mean 180 people are ready to shell out US 32,400 or 87,75,000 rupees! That is almost a crore Indian rupees on a single online course that does not significantly tax any resources of the Ivy school. It is additional money with very little outlay of any sort of expenditure! It is a classic win-win situation that leavesall the stake holders happy and contented.

Five second Advertisement: I was browsing the Internet when I saw the Horlicks advertisementon the YouTube. It said "for the first time in 100 years of its existence, Horlicks introduces a new Instant chocolate flavored Drink'. The voice over got my attention. Horlicks is steeped in history. For generations of Indians, Horlicks was the ultimate drink. It was the drink for recuperations. And it was also the drink that we have to bear with, if we wanted to miss the school. All said and done Horlicks was more fun eating rather than drinking! Remember the iconic advertisement “I don’t drink Horlicks, I eat it!”

Thus it was very interesting to note that Horlicks wanted to introduce a new flavour that too after 100 years! The world has moved towards instant gratification and Horlicks had to take cognizance of that fact. The customer no longer had the patience nor the time needed to wait for water to get boiled and mix it with Horlicks. Instant Horlicks is wonderful news. Instant Horlicks is faster; mix it directly with water or milk.

To drive home the concept of instant gratification Mindshare the advertising agency deployed a unique strategy. Mindshare used the 5 second skip button of YouTube to highlight the brand’s new unique proposition – Instantness!

The advertisement shows Chocolate Horlicks getting mixed instantly in milk and added a small crawly that preceded the original commercial. The crawly reads – ‘Instant Chocolate Horlicks -mixes in milk even before you can skip this advertisement’.

This is brilliant conceptualization and even more brilliant understanding of Consumer Behaviour. Online viewers tend to be impatient and hardly watch any advertisements. They do watch - only if they are compelled.

Most of us automatically search for any videos first on YouTube and wait impatiently for the first five seconds of the advertisement to play out before skipping the later part of the advertisement (the first five seconds of the advertisement has to be watched compulsorily before one can watch the interested video).

By executing the entire advertisement in first five seconds Horlicks is ensuring eyeballs. Not only is Horlicks ensuring eyeballs it is also ensuring that its USP is highlighted.

It mixes with-in 5 seconds! Perfect marriage of a brilliant idea and excellent execution.