Start With Why

tempted youngsters to grow up and be just like Michael Jordan if they drink Gatorade. With many other examples of celebrity endorsements, however, it is harder to see the connection. Sam Waterston of Law & Order fame, for example, sells online trading from TD Ameritrade. But for his celebrity, it’s uncertain what an actor famed for convicting homicidal maniacs does for the brand. I guess he’s “trustworthy.”
    Impressionable youth are not the only ones subject to peer pressure. Most of us have probably had an experience of being pressured by a salesman. Have you ever had a sales rep try to sell you some “office solution” by telling you that 70 percent of your competitors are using their service, so why aren’t you? But what if 70 percent of your competitors are idiots? Or what if that 70 percent were given so much value added or offered such a low price that they couldn’t resist the opportunity? The practice is designed to do one thing and one thing only—to pressure you to buy. To make you feel you might be missing out on something or that everyone else knows but you. Better to go with the majority, right?
    To quote my mother, “If your friends put their head in the oven, would you do that too?” Sadly, if Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods was paid to do just that, it might actually start a trend.

Novelty (a.k.a. Innovation)
    “In a major innovation in design and engineering, [Motorola] has created a phone of firsts,” read a 2004 press release that announced the launch of the mobile phone manufacturer’s newest entry to the ultracompetitive mobile phone market. “The combination of metals, such as aircraft-grade aluminum, with new advances, such as an internal antenna and a chemically-etched keypad, led to the formation of a device that measures just 13.9mm thin.”
    And it worked. Millions of people rushed to get one. Celebrities flashed their RAZRs on the red carpet. Even a prime minister or two was seen talking on one. Having sold over 50 million units, few could argue that the RAZR wasn’t a huge success. “By surpassing current mobile expectations, the RAZR represents Motorola’s history of delivering revolutionary innovations,” said former Motorola CEO Ed Zander of his new wunder-product, “while setting a new bar for future products coming out of the wireless industry.” This one product was a huge financial success for Motorola. This was truly an innovation of monumental proportions.
    Or was it?
    Less than four years later, Zander was forced out. The stock traded at 50 percent of its average value since the launch of the RAZR, and Motorola’s competitors had easily surpassed the RAZR’s features and functionalities with equally innovative new phones. Motorola was once again rendered just another mobile phone manufacturer fighting for its piece of the pie. Like so many before it, the company confused innovation with novelty.
    Real innovation changes the course of industries or even society. The light bulb, the microwave oven, the fax machine, iTunes. These are true innovations that changed how we conduct business, altered how we live our lives, and, in the case of iTunes, challenged an industry to completely reevaluate its business model. Adding a camera to a mobile phone, for example, is not an innovation—a great feature, for sure, but not industry-altering. With this revised definition in mind, even Motorola’s own description of its new product becomes just a list of a few great features: a metal case, hidden antenna, flat keypad and a thin phone. Hardly “revolutionary innovation.” Motorola had successfully designed the latest shiny object for people to get excited about . . . at least until a new shiny object came out. And that’s the reason these features are more a novelty than an innovation. They are added in an attempt to differentiate, but not reinvent. It’s not a bad thing, but it can’t be counted on to add any long-term value. Novelty can drive sales—the RAZR proved it—but the impact does not last. If a company adds too many novel ideas too often, it can have a similar impact on the product or category as the price game. In an attempt to differentiate with more features, the products start to look and feel more like commodities. And, like price, the need to add yet another product to the line to compensate for the commoditization ends in a downward spiral.
    In the 1970s, there were only two types of Colgate toothpaste. But as competition increased,