The Cart before the Horse?

I've been watching a new series on the Discovery Channel called Pitchmen . In this show, self-proclaimed informercial superstars Billy Mays & Anthony Sullivan speak with aspiring entrepreneurs each week whose sole goal is to get a shot at a national infomercial and the resulting overnight riches. The show does a good job of showing both high-potential ideas as well as ridiculous ones.

Last week's show had a product being pitched called the "Spin-Gym". The inventor was Forbes Riley, a woman who is a QVC celebrity in her own right. She developed a fitness product that will "fit in your purse" and yet provide you with "total upper body fitness". She was understandably passionate about the product and is promoting it across every channel imaginable.

The problem is two-fold. First, the product is hardly unique. I had a toy as a child that does essentially the same thing (except that my toy made a cool sound when you spun it really fast). I'm not sure how she patented the thing, but evidently she did. But more importantly, this seems to be the classic solution looking for a problem. On the show she had huge body-builders using this product as if to imply their shape somehow came from this tiny product. Yes fitness is a growing trend across America. However, the form of any new product must suggest its intended use in a manner that is believable. Be honest, can you believe in a fitness product that you hold only with your thumbs? You really got the opinion that the "research" they did consisted of putting the Spin Gym into people's hands with the question of "Isn't this the greatest?" or "Can't you feel the muscle burn?". On the show the product was tested in two markets at different price points. Almost no interest was generated in either market.

Having this unique opportunity to see this real-life, time-compressed example was fascinating. This same thing happens across our country everyday, both with entrepreneurs as well as with established corporations. Somebody falls in love with an idea, and becomes blind and deaf to feedback. They are determined to muscle their way into the market, regardless of what they hear.

How much time, money and energy could be saved if they sought the feedback early in the process, at a time when they could still make modifications (to the product or the messaging)? Let's be outrageous here... What if they actually spent the time to understand the needs of their targeted consumer, then designed a product to satisfy it?

It sounds so simple. But it seems to fly in the face of the way so many do business.

What are you really selling?

We spend a lot of time with consumers in their home watching them interact with products and asking them questions about their likes & dislikes. One thing that never fails to amaze me is the disconnect between what people are buying and what companies are selling.

In a nutshell, companies sell products. People buy remedies for their pain, or solutions to their unmet needs (choose your analogy). A couple of years ago, we did a project on patio heaters. Looking at the offerings in the marketplace, you could see where each manufacturer had changed the form of the product slightly to differentiate themselves at retail. Little shelves, different shaped posts, multiple domes on the top. I'm sure the respective manufacturers thought they were setting themselves apart with their "unique" styling. And from their perspective, they all put out heat, which is what they were designed to do.

We spent many cool evenings with consumers, on their patios and decks so that we could better understand how to improve upon this offering. The first thing we learned was that the products on the market were "all the same" from a home-owner's perspective. The efforts toward differentiation was lost on them. More importantly, we learned that patio heaters were not strictly about outdoor warmth (as had always been assumed). It was really about enabling consumers to entertain outdoors. We heard comments about how much easier it is to hose off the deck after a party than to clean red wine off the light colored carpeting indoors. Outdoor parties were seen as less formal, more friendly and generally more fun. Patio heaters help people to move their parties outdoors.

While on the surface, that might not seem breakthrough, that is a finding that should reinvent the category. Once you are in the outdoor party business, you start to incorporate new attributes into your product. Other unmet needs like lack of surface space for plates and drinks, need for additional ambient lighting, and fire as a focal point all start to come into play. Our client introduced a couple of award winning heaters that satisfied some of these other needs as well. One walk through a big-box retailer this spring, and you'll see that this notion has caught on across many providers. Low round tables with gas logs burning in the center, natural gas heater/lamp combinations, other forms of heater tables can all be found. It seems everybody is trying to help people entertain outdoors these days... the market may be shifting. So, what is it that you are really selling? Are you sure that's what people are actually buying? If your market is shifting to a new direction, are you ready to still support it? Most importantly, how do you know?