Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?: And Other Provocations, 2006-2012 (39 page)

Return on investment is easy to measure. You put money in, you measure money out, divide, and prosper.

But return on design? (Design: graphics, system engineering, user interfaces, etc.)

Design can take money and time and guts, and what do you get in return? It turns out that the sort of return you’re getting (and hoping for) will drive the decisions you make about design.

I think there are four zones of return that are interesting to think about. I find it’s more useful to look at them as distinct states as opposed to a graduated line, because it’s easy to spend a lot of time and money on design but not move up in benefits the way you might expect. Crest
might have a better package than Colgate (or the other way around, I can’t remember), but it doesn’t sell any more units.

Negative return.
The local store with the boarded-up window, the drooping sign, and the peeling paint is watching their business suffer because they have a design that actually hurts them. Software products suffer from this ailment often. If the design actively gets in the way of the story you tell or the utility you deliver, you lose money and share.

No impact.
Most design falls into this category. While aesthetically important, design in this case is just a matter of taste, not measurable revenue. You might not like the way the liquor store looks, or the label on that bottle of wine, but it’s not having any effect on sales. It’s good enough.

Positive return.
We’re seeing a dramatic increase in this category. Everything from a bag of potato chips to a Web-based service can generate incremental sales and better utility as a result of smart design.

The whole thing.
There are a few products where smart design
is
the product (or at least the product’s reason for being). If you’re not in love with the design of a Porsche 911, you would never consider buying it—same with an OXO peeler. The challenge of building your product around breakthrough design is that the design has to, in fact, be a breakthrough. And that means spending far more time or money than your competitors, who are merely seeking a positive return.

Knowing where you stand and where you’re headed is critical. If you have a negative return on design, go ahead and spend enough money to get neutral, ASAP. But don’t spend so much that you’re overinvesting just to get to neutral. If a local store builds an expensive but not stellar custom building, that is a perfect example of this mismatch.

If you’re betting the whole thing, building your service launch on design first, skimping on design is plain foolish. The Guggenheim in Bilbao would be empty if they’d merely hired a very good architect.

In a down economy, marketers fret a lot about price. We think that since times are tough, people care about price and nothing but price.

Of course, people actually care more about
value
. They care about
value more than they used to because they can’t afford to overpay; they don’t want to make a mistake with their money.

Value = benefit/price.
That means that one way to make value go up is to lower price, right?

The thing is, there’s another way to make the value go up. Increase what you give. Increase quality and quantity and the unmeasurable pieces that bring confidence and joy to an interaction.

When all of your competitors are busy increasing value by cutting prices, you can actually increase market share by increasing value and raising benefits.

Amazon just announced that they’re spending $800,000,000.00 (looks better that way) to buy
Zappos.com
.

But wait.

Amazon already has plenty of shoes.

Amazon already has great technology.

Amazon already has relationships with FedEx and UPS.

What you buy when you spend that kind of money is what matters now. And what matters is:

• A corporate culture that’s not the same (and where great people choose to work)
  
• A tight relationship with customers who give you permission to talk with them
  
• A business model that’s remarkable and worth talking about
  
• A story that spreads
  
• Leadership
  

These things are available to organizations of every size. If you want them and choose to work for them.

Lots of things about work are hard. Dealing with trolls is one of them. Trolls are critics who gain perverse pleasure in relentlessly tearing you and your ideas down. Here’s the thing(s):

1. Trolls will always be trolling.
   
2. Critics rarely create.
   
3. They live in a tiny echo chamber, ignored by everyone except the trolled and the other trolls.
   
4. Professionals (that’s you) get paid to ignore them. It’s part of your job.
   

“Can’t please everyone” isn’t just an aphorism; it’s the secret of being remarkable.

How much time, staffing, and money does your organization spend on creating incredible experiences (vs. avoiding bad outcomes)?

At the hospital, it’s probably 5% on the upside (the doctor who puts in the stitches, say) and 95% on the downside (all the avoidance of infection or lawsuits, records to keep, forms to sign). Most of the people you interact with in a hospital aren’t there to help you get what you came for (to get better); they’re there to help you avoid getting worse. At an avant-garde art show, on the other hand, perhaps 95% of the effort goes into creating and presenting shocking ideas, with just 5% devoted to keeping the place warm or avoiding falls and spills as you walk in.

Which is probably as it should be.

But what about you and your organization? As you get bigger and older, are you busy ensuring that a bad thing won’t happen that might upset your day, or are you aggressively investing in having a remarkable thing happen that will delight or move a customer?

A new restaurant might rely on fresh vegetables and whatever they can get at the market. The bigger, more established fast-food
chain starts shipping in processed canned food. One restaurant is less reliable with a bigger upside; the other is more dependable with less downside.

Here’s a rule that’s so inevitable that it’s almost a law:
as an organization grows and succeeds, it sows the seeds of its own demise by getting boring.
With more to lose and more people to lose it, meetings and policies become more about avoiding risk than about providing joy.

Successful organizations spend a lot of time saying, “that’s not what we do.”

It’s a requirement, because if you do everything, in every way, you’re sunk. You got to where you are by standing for something, by approaching markets and situations in a certain way. Sure, Nike could make money in the short run by licensing their name to a line of wines and spirits, but that’s not what they do.

“That’s not what we do” is the backbone of strategy; it determines who you are and where you’re going.

Except in times of change. Except when opportunities come along. Except when people in the organization forget to ask, “why?”

If the only reason you don’t do something is because you never did, that’s not a good reason. If the environment has changed dramatically and you are feeling pain because of it, this is a great reason to question yourself, to ask why.

The why factor is really clear online. Simon & Schuster or the
Encyclopedia Britannica
could have become Google (organizing the world’s information), but they didn’t build a search engine because that’s not what they do. Struggling newspapers could have become thriving networks of long-tail content, but they chose not to, because that’s not what they do.

Why?

That’s the key question, one that organizations large and small need to ask a lot more often now that the economy is officially playing by new rules.

Marketers rarely think about choosing customers. Like a sailor on shore leave, we’re not so picky. Huge mistake.

Your customers define what you make, how you make it, where you sell it, what you charge, who you hire, and even how you fund your business. If your customer base changes over time but you fail to make changes in the rest of your organization, stress and failure will follow.

Sell to angry cheapskates and your business will reflect that. On the other hand, when you find great customers, they will eagerly co-create with you. They will engage and invent and spread the word.

It takes vision and guts to turn someone down and focus on a different segment, on people who might be more difficult to sell to at first, but who will lead you where you want to go over time.

Getting someone to switch is really difficult.

Getting someone to switch because you offer more of what they were looking for when they chose the one they have now is essentially impossible. For starters, they’re probably not looking for more. And beyond that, they’d need to admit that they were wrong for not choosing you in the first place.

So, you don’t get someone to switch because you’re cheaper than Walmart. You don’t get someone to switch because you serve bigger portions than the big-portion steakhouse down the street. You don’t get someone to switch because your hospital is more famous than the Mayo Clinic.

The chances that you can top a trusted provider on the very thing the provider is trusted for are slim indeed.

Instead, you gain converts by winning at something that the existing provider didn’t think was so important.

The great brands of our time are not about what they are. They are about what they represent.

Apple, Sarah Palin, Harley-Davidson, TOMS Shoes … In each case, the reality of the product means far less than what the brand represents.

The facts of iPod battery life, knowledge of world affairs, gas mileage, and foot comfort are almost irrelevant. What matters is the Jungian rush these brands connote, their ability to allow us to identify ourselves and fellow tribe members, the sense of belonging and labeling and the journey we’re on (or not, our choice).

Great brands represent something bigger than themselves. You can create this accidentally if you’re lucky, but you can create it on purpose if you try.

The first stand is run by two kids. They use Country Time lemonade, paper cups, and a bridge table. It’s a decent lemonade stand, one in the long tradition of standard lemonade stands. It costs a dollar to buy a cup, which is a pretty good price, considering that you get both the lemonade and the satisfaction of knowing you supported two kids.

The other stand is different. The lemonade is free, but there’s a big tip jar. When you pull up, the owner of the stand beams as only a proud eleven-year-old girl can beam. She takes her time and reaches into a pail filled with ice and lemons. She pulls out a lemon. Slices it. Then she squeezes it with a clever little hand juicer.

The whole time that she’s squeezing, she’s also talking to you, sharing her insights (and yes, her joy) about the power of lemonade to change your day. It’s a beautiful day and she’s in no real hurry. Lemonade doesn’t hurry, she says. It gets made the right way or not at all. Then she urges you to take a bit less sugar, because it tastes better that way.

While you’re talking, a dozen people who might have become customers drive on by because it appears to take too long. You don’t mind, though, because you’re engaged, almost entranced. A few people pull over and wait in line behind you.

Finally, once she’s done, you put $5 in the jar, because your free lemonade was worth at least twice that. Well, maybe the lemonade itself was worth $3, but you’d happily pay again for the transaction. It touched you. In fact, it changed you.

Which entrepreneur do you think has a brighter future?

[PS: A few hours after I posted this, Elizabeth sent in this photo of her daughter doing exactly what I imagined. She said, “she made a fortune.”]

Sure, there are playoffs in football, but competition is everywhere; we just forget to notice it.

There are 300 photographers looking for work in a particular specialty. One photographer puts a Creative Commons license on his shots in Flickr and they start showing up in many places, from presentations to brochures. Which of the 300 photographers has won the competition for attention? Which one of the 300 has shared his ideas enough to be noticed?

There are twenty towns you can choose for your family’s new home. One town invests in its schools and has a focus on inquiry, AP courses, and community, while the others are muddling through, arguing about their future. Which one commands a higher premium for its houses?

There are a hundred new kinds of snacks and energy bars at the supermarket checkout. One bar is a little bigger, a little more exciting, and a little closer to eye level. Which one of the hundred wins the battle for your impulse buy?

There are fifty people applying for a job. Forty-nine have great credentials and beautifully standard layouts on their résumés. One résumé was hand-delivered to the CEO by his best friend, together with a glowing recommendation about a project the applicant did for the friend’s nonprofit. Who gets the interview?

There are ten great jobs for the superstar programmer who is looking for a new challenge. One job offers offices (not cubicles), free lunch, great customer support, and the freedom to work on interesting projects. Where does she choose to apply?

There are thirty places that sell bumper stickers. One place shows up first in the Google ads when I do a search. Which one gets my business?

There are seventy houses for sale in town. One of them is represented by a broker who is a pillar of the community, a friend of many, and a role model for the industry. Which broker gets more people to the open house?

[There are 80 million blogs to choose from. Thanks for picking mine to read today.]