Luck, Innovation and Everything Else

It was in my Social Marketing class today that I learned a real hard lesson in life. The class, taking on an innovative stance of field work regarding the subject matter, decided to reserve a date two months from now in the Ateneo academic calendar and work our way into making that date a huge success.

The challenge: Lead a team of 20+ people in the classroom as well as tieup with different non-governmental organizations, people’s organizations, social enterprises, and Ateneo-accredited organizations and conceptualize a marketing plan in order to come up with a major social developmental marketing event for the benefit of the organizations involved.

The reward: Letters of recommendations from all three professors handling the class, letters of recommendations from most, if not all, of the organizations involved, huge opportunities for networking, a lead in initiating positive change, and personal growth and self-development, among others.

As such, I decided to volunteer for the position as I saw this as a nice venue to further improve myself and actually provide a little bit of my skills and capacities for a larger lot of those who might actually need it. Plus, I craved for the challenge. Certainly, I was more than passionate to convince my group to step up and commit to such an endeavor. But, it was not just us who wanted the position but two groups as well.

After hours of deliberation, one backed out and two groups remained. We were at a loss at how the selection would go, only to find out that it would all end up with a major decision — heads or tails. We chose heads.

We lost.

That’s life for us. Sometimes, the world never really merits the other factors that play into a certain fate and, as such, a little luck goes a long way. Come to think of it, so many innovations of our time are merely results of lucky strikes along the way. The invention of the Penicillin is crowd favorite in this arena owing itself to how Alexander Fleming’s culture was contaminated by fungi which sourced the drug’s essential component. There’s also the potato chip by George Crum who accidentally (or, intentionally as to piss of a customer who kept complaining about his potatoes) sliced the potato so thin that it turned thin and crispy as a potato chip should be. From ice cream cones to X-rays, from microwaves to popsicles, from pacemakers to Viagra, the list goes on and on and on.

As much as we don’t (or perhaps, do) like to admit it, we all need to take luck into accord simply because of the fact that, without it, life would not have been as challenging (and perhaps, fun) as it is now.

But, at some point, not everything need be dependent on luck. Certainly, a bit of brain adds up to the luck of the draw. The ice cream cone is nary accidental rather is creative. It’s inventor supposedly used rolled-up thin waffles in order to make up for the lack of plates to put his ice cream in. The same is true with the invention of the sandwich whose inventor was so busy gambling that he did not want to be bothered eating food so he sandwiched it between two slices of bread so he could eat it simultaneous with his stint. Chocolate chip cookies are also products of an out-of-the-box strategy to compensate for the lack of resources. Its inventor, wanting to make chocolate cookies but were short of chocolate, crumbled the available chocolate to chips which, upon baking, did not melt.

Most often than not, businesses become too centered on what (they think) the customer wants and not on what the customer needs. These then becomes tools of dictate of what the customer thinks he/she need (by focusing its market on the want and making it appear as a need) and taking focus away from what the customer actually needs. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with doing so, simply because it earns most companies the right profit for their efforts. But, to simply rely on what the customer and the business think that the customer wants leaves little or no room for innovation. New things are not bound to happen with this mode of operation.

What then is a nice manner of acquiring leeway towards innovation? Listening closely to what people know they need in any manner of doing so. Crowdsourcing.

Just recently, L’oreal had its hands on such a wonderful strategy. (I’ll get back on this the time I confirm the event’s name) By recruiting ideas through a competition among top university students, L’oreal has had entries flowing in from so many places, several of which are either not on L’oreal’s current line or not available in the market at all. That’s the power of the people at its finest.

Of course, Viagra was something accidental altogether, but we wouldn’t have enjoyed much of the benefits of it without ice cream cones and chocolate chip cookies to get us sugar rushed for it.

Would you like some fries with that?

That Little Extra Push

Just last semester, our Industrial and Complex Organizations class had a sudden farewell party of some sort as the semester drew to a close. Our professor, Dr. Wilfredo Arce, ordered for delivery an 18″ Four Seasons Yellow Cab pizza and a 1.5 L Coke whereas one of our classmates brought in a half-gallon Cookies and Cream Selecta ice cream and a whole Red Ribbon Chocolate Mousse. Given the randomness of the entire thing, we almost did not have anything to eat with — no plates, no knives, no spoons, no forks, no nothing! As such, we scampered everywhere just to have the basic stuff we needed, only to end up with a few plastic spoons.

In this light, we knew that what we could eat from the entire lot would only be the pizza given the fact that it didn’t require much for consumption. But, that fact alone did not hinder Yellow Cab to throw in a few extras just to pamper their consumers. I’m not merely talking about the sachets of dried chilli pepper and chilli sauce (which, I say, is worth appreciating altogether because I do not eat my pizzas without a little of both), but the other things you never knew would come handy. I’m referring to that ubiquitous pizza topper which prevents the pizza cardboard from sticking to the pizza which doubles as a pizza slicer once the tripod legs are removed (which, for us, functioned also as an ice cream scoop and a cake slicer). Not only that, I’m also referring to those little plastic cups which Yellow Cab throws in with the Coke everytime you have it delivered (which, for us, doubled as a makeshift bowl for our ice cream and cake).

What would we have done without that little pizza topper and those little plastic cups? The answer would have been nasty for a hungry class compared to the memorable time we actually had. Now, think of it this way: as a product or service provider, what would you have preferred to bring into the table — a brand experience worth recounting or an ice cream melting to nonconsumability?

It is those little extras that define the totality of your consumer’s experience. Be it in simply providing those little napkins or those little plastic cups, or pouring time, money, and effort over redesigning the common pizza topper to serve more than it’s supposed to, it all adds up to the core message which your company might be sending (intentionally or unintentionally) to your market. Whatever that message might be contributes so much to your brand that the actual product itself might actually depend on it.

Take, for example, that book you did not purchase just because the cover seemed like any other cover from those other books that you felt shying away from. Or that website you did not even scan just because the layout seemed like any other layout from those other websites that you felt contained nothing. It is those little details that most marketers tend to overlook that matter so much that paying little attention to it causes the extreme downfall for the brand even way before it gets tested.

Of course, your ice cream or your cake might have worked a few years back, and you know well enough that consumers have the right utensils to actually consume your product. Your consumers have knives to slice your cake or at least spoons to scoop your ice cream. But, knowing well enough that their sturdy cardboard would not sag under its weight did not stop Yellow Cab from providing a pizza topper to prevent a cardboard pizza disaster. Knowing well enough that (1) they have already sliced the pizza for their consumers and (2) their consumers could have knives with them did not stop Yellow Cab from providing a pizza slicer.

Why? Because of the two things they actually do know:

1. They know that they do not know well enough.
2. They know service meant going for the extra mile.

Perhaps, its time for Selecta and Red Ribbon to assume that people could potentially say yes when asked:

Would you like fries with that?

Out Of The Frying Pan

…and into your tray of McDonaldized information, ready for consumption. I offer you food for thoughts, hot and fresh off the Gen Y fryer, albeit the seeming lack of academic background in marketing, literature, and social sciences, to name a few of what you could (and probably should) expect from a supposed Web 2.0 blog. But, this is not just another Web 2.0 blog. This might very well be your penultimate drive-thru for the road towards actually taking on the upsized information highway. As you roll out on your next stop to a more classy, edgy, fine dining experience, remember that, among all other highrollers in the world, only fastfood asks:

Would you like some fries with that?