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JetBlue – What Everyone Will Be Talking About

August 25, 2010 By

Unless you have been out of the country (and I mean way out in the backwoods), you have heard a lot about a certain JetBlue flight attendant.  JetBlue is no stranger to conversation, however, usually not this strange.

Normally when JetBlue comes up, it’s around how much better it is than other carriers.  Looking more at what the company is doing, it was no surprise to find out that the experience JetBlue has created for its customers has delivered big results .  FastCompany reported back in June that JetBlue was not only the top airline brand in the industry but also the #1 brand in the U.S when it comes to social currency.

Looking at the brand report and who else is in the top 5 (BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, Apple), Jet Blue’s rapid rise is nothing but incredible.  The airline is a little over ten year old and is in the same ranks as premium brands that have been around for decades.  I also thought it was interesting that JetBlue was the only service company on this list.  This is remarkable considering it is in an industry that is filled with customer frustration (mechanical break-downs, weather, and traffic control are just a few ways that your day can be spoiled while flying).

From FastCompany, [Read more...]

Filed Under: innovation, Product Management Tagged With: ,

Kudos To The King For A Successful Product Launch

June 15, 2010 By

I have always enjoyed BBQ but since moving to Texas, I have started to appreciate the almost religious dedication that goes into making exceptional BBQ.  So, when I heard that Burger King was going to start offering BBQ ribs my first thought was that this going to be another McPizza.  Why would anyone want to buy ribs from a burger joint?

This must have been a bad brainstorm idea that somehow escaped the lab, right?  Tom Fishburne’s  latest cartoon adds great color commentary on the  brainstorming process:

10 million ribs later, the King seems to be onto something.  From the WSJ article this week,

Amid brisk demand, some Burger King outlets have already exhausted their supply of the relatively pricey new pork ribs, and the company expects to use up its entire rib order in the next week or so, said John Schaufelberger, Burger King’s senior vice president of global product marketing and innovation…..The company based its rib allotment on results from test markets of Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Greensboro, N.C., and Orlando that showed customers favoring the three-piece order, which sells at a suggested price of $2.99 on its own or $1.99 as a combination meal add-on.

Taking an idea from a brainstorming session and productising it is tough.  Even tougher, doing it inside a complex, risk adverse franchise environment.  I am willing to bet there was more than a couple internal hurdles that had to be overcome to connivence management that this product had merit.

Kudos to the King for not shredding this idea before getting it in the hands of customers and hearing what they have to say.  As an additional bonus, they have inserted a new slot into the menu that is a premium offering during a time that most of the industry seems focused on discounting and the dollar menu.

Now that being said, you will still find me at Rudy’s Country Store and BBQ when I need a quick order of ribs or brisket.  Once you fall in love with Texas BBQ, there is no turning back.

Resources:

  1. The McPizza
  2. WSJ – After 10 Million Ribs, Burger King Begins to Run Out
  3. Brand Camp – Law of the Brainstorm
  4. Rudy’s Country Story and BBQ

Filed Under: innovation, Product Management Tagged With: ,

Surely, You Can’t Be Serious (a SXSWi post)

March 16, 2010 By

If you would have told me that one of the best sessions at SXSWi that I would attend this year would be on cartooning, I would have had trouble taking you seriously.

Truth be told, Tom Fishburne’s talk on Innovation Lessons from Cartooning pleasantly surprised me.  Tom works as a brand manager by day and as a cartoonist by night.  On his blog he takes a look at the humorous side marketing, business, innovation.  A few examples:

  • The Ivory Tower – “If it wasn’t for those pesky consumers our business would be doing great”
  • Influencer Stalking – “Instead of indiscriminately marketing to the world, we’ve learned to shout at a handful of influences”
  • Definition of Insanity – “We’re going to hold the same meeting with the same people every week and expect the same results”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: innovation

Crazy Ideas

January 18, 2010 By

I spent last week putting the final touches on a Voice of the Customer research effort we conducted near the end of 2009.  As a product manager there is something very satisfying about coming back to the office with a list of potential ideas.

Listening to your customers is a great way to generate ideas.  Some of these ideas will align nicely with your current thinking and some will present challenges.  Then there are ideas that sound just plain crazy.

The just crazy ideas are usually the quickest to be dismissed.  The idea maybe technically impossible or cost prohibitive.  Often, it comes down to a belief that customers just won’t buy it.

However, paying attention to crazy ideas can pay off, and LEGOs are a great case study to prove it.  LEGO (eventually) started listening to the 5% minority of their customers (adults) who had become enthusiastic fans of the product line.  This minority set of customers were spending 50 times more a year than the 95% majority customer (the Gaspedal word of mouth marketing blog has a good overview of the LEGO case here).

[Read more...]

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Disciplined Innovation

November 7, 2009 By

Great story on P&G’s ability to use consumer insights to deliver innovation, one small win at a time.  From the Harvard Business article:

Innovation doesn’t always involve new features, functions, services, or business models. Sometimes it can be as seemingly simple as a new marketing message.

Of course, I’m a fan of big bang disruptive innovations that create categories and land entrepreneurs on the cover of magazines. But the Hipoglos story shows how a disciplined approach — coupling a point of customer frustration with an innovative approach to address that frustration — can lead to small wins. And enough small wins can combine to create major impact.

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Starbucks Via – Instant Success, Long Term Failure?

October 8, 2009 By

photo(6)

Kellogg Professor Tim Calkins has a great take on his blog about the new StarBucks Via instant coffee.  Tim’s take is that the coffee is not bad but that it seems to run counter to the Starbuck’s brand experience.  Tim explains,

Starbucks has long worked to embrace the coffee experience, the crisp beans coming from exotic lands all over the world, the grinding noise, the wonderful aroma, the ritual of precisely measuring coffee and water and then waiting for it to brew.  Starbucks has taught us that coffee isn’t just coffee.  There is much, much more to it.

On the surface, you could argue that instant coffee makes sense for Starbucks, right?  You can definitely see how the case for it was argued from a product perspective:  Starbucks sells coffee, instant coffee is a big market, Starbucks should sell instant coffee.   At least it is a coffee product and not something as crazy as Burger King’s “Flame” body spray (who doesn’t want to smell like a whopper).

[Read more...]

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The Perfect Is The Enemy Of The Good

August 24, 2009 By

Voltaire’s famous quote can explain a lot these days.  Instead of waiting for the perfect solution, customers are settling on at what at first glance seems like imperfection.  Why would anyone use a simple document editor (Google docs) when it doesn’t have the litany of features that Microsoft Word has been building for years?  Why stop to see a general doctor at a pharmacy when you can go to a hospital and have access to many doctors?

In this month’s Wired article, “The Good Enough Revolution” , Robert Capps covers several products/industries that are being radically changed by new products/services that focus on simplicity, accessibility, and cost:  flip video cameras, online TV, netbooks, e-laywers, and more.  And for why he explains:

The world has sped up, become more connected and a whole lot busier.  As a result, what consumers want from the products and services they buy is fundamentally changing.  We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished.  Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect.

Lots to consider for the product manager here.  The general rule is that the next release must have more features, right?  Who wants to go backwards?

In the new reality, there may be opportunies to meet your customer’s needs with a simpler (and cheaper solution) than you are currently offering.  The question is, can you and should you try to offer it first?  Not an easy question (see the Innovator’s Dilemma).  The risk is that if you don’t, you may be playing catch-up or worse, left behind.

Filed Under: innovation, Product Management Tagged With: ,

Slowing Innovation

August 23, 2009 By

Unfortunately, buybacks are rampant in industries where investment in innovation is crucial—energy, technology, and pharmaceuticals….And five high-tech leaders—Microsoft (MSFT), IBM (IBM), Cisco Systems (CSCO), Intel, (INTC) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)—are in the Top 10 of repurchasers, each having spent more on buybacks than on research and development from 2000 through 2008. (While spending $73 billion to buy its own stock, IBM increased its offshore employment by 133,000, reducing U.S. jobs by 36,000.)

Via BW’s The Buyback Boondoggle.

Filed Under: innovation, Marketing Resources Tagged With: ,

Nokia & New Technology Adoption

August 13, 2009 By

nokia2110

Nokia believes there are three reasons why people adopt new technology:

Survival
Social
Entertainment

via Fast Company’s September ’09 article, “Nokia’s Plan to Rule the World“.

Filed Under: innovation

A.G. Lafley On Innovation

April 7, 2009 By

Procter & Gamble’s CEO, A.G. Lafley, is interviewed in this week’s Business Week magazine on managing during these troubled times.  In the article, he as some great quotes on innovation:

We continue to invest in our core strengths. First, we don’t skimp in understanding the consumer. Second is innovation. Our capital spending will go up in 2009 for new engineering and manufacturing technology.

You need creativity and invention, but until you can connect that creativity to the customer in the form of a product or a service that meaningfully changes their lives, I would argue you don’t yet have innovation.

Read the full article here.

Filed Under: innovation Tagged With: ,
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