Start With Why

version that starts with WHY:
    If you’re the kind of person who likes to have total control of every aspect of your life, boy do we have a product for you.
    It pauses live TV.
    Skips commercials.
    Rewinds live TV.
    Memorizes your viewing habits and records shows on your behalf without you needing to set it.
    In this version, all the features and rational benefits serve as tangible proof of WHY the product exists in the first place, not the reasons to buy, per se. The WHY is the belief that drives the decision, and WHAT it does provides us a way to rationalize the appeal of the product.
    Confirming their failure to tap the right segment of the market, TiVo offered a very rational explanation of what was happening. “Until people get their hands on it,” Rebecca Baer, a spokeswoman for TiVo, told the New York Times in 2000, “they don’t understand why they need this.” If this line of logic was true, then no new technology would ever take hold. A fact that is patently untrue. Though Ms. Baer was correct about the mass market’s failure to understand the value, it was TiVo’s failure to properly communicate and rally the left side of the bell curve to educate and encourage the adoption that was the reason so few people “got their hands on it.” TiVo did not start with WHY. They ignored the left side of the curve and completely failed to find the tipping point. And for those reasons, “people didn’t get their hands on it,” and the mass market didn’t buy it.
    Fast-forward almost a decade. TiVo continues to have the best digital video-recording product on the market. Its unaided awareness continues to be through the roof. Nearly everyone knows now what the product is and what it does, yet the company’s future is by no means secure.
    While millions of viewers may say they “TiVo” things all the time, unfortunately for TiVo, they aren’t using a TiVo system. Rather, they “TiVo” shows using a digital video recorder provided by the cable or satellite company. Many try to make the argument that TiVo’s failure was due to the cable companies’ superior distribution. But we know that people often go out of their way, pay a premium or suffer an inconvenience to buy a product that resonates on a visceral level with them. Until recently, people who wanted a custom Harley-Davidson motorcycle waited upwards of six months to a year to take delivery of their product. By any standard, that’s just bad service. Consumers could have just walked into a Kawasaki dealership and walked right out with a brand-new bike. They could have found a very similar model with similar power and maybe even for less money. But they suffered the inconvenience willingly, not because they were in the market for a motorcycle, but because they wanted a Harley.
    TiVo is not the first to ignore these sound principles and won’t be the last. The meager success of satellite radio technology like Sirius or XM Radio has followed a similar path. They offered a well-publicized, well-funded new technology that attempted to convince users with a promise of rational features and benefits—no commercials and more channels than the competition. Throw in an impressive array of celebrity endorsements, including rap star Snoop Dogg and 1970s pop icon David Bowie, and the technology still didn’t stick. When you start with WHY, those who believe what you believe are drawn to you for very personal reasons. It is those who share your values and beliefs, not the quality of your products, that will cause the system to tip. Your role in the process is to be crystal clear about what purpose, cause or belief you exist to champion, and to show how your products and services help advance that cause. Absent a WHY, new ideas and technologies quickly find themselves playing the price-and-feature game—a sure sign of an absence of WHY and a slide into commodity status. It is not the technology that failed, it was how the companies tried to sell it. Satellite radio has not displaced commercial radio in any meaningful way. Even when Sirius and XM merged, hoping the joined force of their companies would help change their luck, shares for the combined company sold for less than 50 cents apiece. And, last time I checked, XM was offering a discount, a promotion, free shipping and a claim of being “America’s #1 satellite radio service with over 170 channels” to push their product.

Give the People Something to Believe In
    On August 28, 1963, 250,000 people