Start With Why (4 page)

And another ad intended to scare the hell out of any brash teenager: “Cocaine doesn’t make you sexy . . . it makes you dead.”

Likewise, when politicians say that their opponent will raise taxes or cut spending on law enforcement, or the evening news alerts you that your health or security are at risk unless you tune in at eleven, both are attempting to seed fear among voters and viewers, respectively. Businesses also use fear to agitate the insecurity we all have in order to sell products. The idea is that if you don’t buy the product or service, something bad could happen to you.

“Every thirty-six seconds, someone dies of a heart attack,” states an ad for a local cardiac specialist. “Do you have radon? Your neighbor does!” reads the ad on the side of a truck for some company selling a home-pollution-inspection service. And, of course, the insurance industry would like to sell you term life insurance “before it’s too late.”

If anyone has ever sold you anything with a warning to fear the consequences if you don’t buy it, they are using a proverbial gun to your head to help you see the “value” of choosing them over their competitor. Or perhaps it’s just a banana. But it works.

“Quitting smoking is the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” said Mark Twain. “I’ve done it hundreds of times.”

If fear motivates us to move away from something horrible, aspirational messages tempt us toward something desirable. Marketers often talk about the importance of being aspirational, offering someone something they desire to achieve and the ability to get there more easily with a particular product or service. “Six steps to a happier life.” “Work those abs to your dream dress size!” “In six short weeks you can be rich.” All these messages manipulate. They tempt us with the things we want to have or to be the person we wish we were.

Though positive in nature, aspirational messages are most effective with those who lack discipline or have a nagging fear or insecurity that they don’t have the ability to achieve their dreams on their own (which, at various times for various reasons, is everyone). I always joke that you can get someone to buy a gym membership with an aspirational message, but to get them to go three days a week requires a bit of inspiration. Someone who lives a healthy lifestyle and is in a habit of exercising does not respond to “six easy steps to losing weight.” It’s those who don’t have the lifestyle that are most susceptible. It’s not news that a lot of people try diet after diet after diet in an attempt to get the body of their dreams. And no matter the regime they choose, each comes with the qualification that regular exercise and a balanced diet will help boost results. In other words, discipline. Gym memberships tend to rise about 12 percent every January, as people try to fulfill their New Year’s aspiration to live a healthier life. Yet only a fraction of those aspiring fitness buffs are still attending the gym by the end of the year. Aspirational messages can spur behavior, but for most, it won’t last.

Aspirational messages are not only effective in the consumer market, they also work quite well in business-to-business transactions. Managers of companies, big and small, all want to do well, so they make decisions, hire consultants and implement systems to help them achieve that desired outcome. But all too often, it is not the systems that fail but the ability to maintain them. I can speak from personal experience here. I’ve implemented a lot of systems or practices over the years to help me “achieve the success to which I aspire,” only to find myself back to my old habits two weeks later. I aspire for a system that will help me avoid implementing systems to meet all my aspirations. But I probably wouldn’t be able to follow it for very long.

This short-term response to long-term desires is alive and well in the corporate world also. A management consultant friend of mine was hired by a billion-dollar company to help it fulfill its goals and aspirations. The problem was, she explained, no matter the issue, the company’s managers were always drawn to the quicker, cheaper option over the better long-term solution. Just like the habitual dieter, “they never have the time or money to do it right the first time,” she said of her client, “but they always have the time and money to do it again.”

“Four out of five dentists prefer Trident,” touts the chewing gum advertisement in an attempt to get you to try their product. “A double-blind study conducted at a top university concluded . . .” pushes a late-night infomercial. “If the product is good enough for professionals, it’s good enough for you,” the advertising eggs on. “With over a million satisfied customers and counting,” teases another ad. These are all forms of peer pressure. When marketers report that a majority of a population or a group of experts prefers their product over another, they are attempting to sway the buyer to believing that whatever they are selling is better. The peer pressure works because we believe that the majority or the experts might know more than we do. Peer pressure works not because the majority or the experts are always right, but because we fear that we may be wrong.

Celebrity endorsements are sometimes used to add peer pressure to the sales pitch. “If he uses it,” we’re supposed to think, “it must be good.” This makes sense when we hear Tiger Woods endorse Nike golf products or Titleist golf balls. (Woods’s deal with Nike is actually credited for putting the company on the map in the golf world.) But Tiger has also endorsed General Motors cars, management consulting services, credit cards, food and a Tag Heuer watch designed “especially for the golfer.” The watch, incidentally, can withstand a 5,000-g shock, a level of shock more likely experienced by the golf ball than the golfer. But Tiger endorsed it, so it must be good. Celebrity endorsements are also used to appeal to our aspirations and our desires to be like them. The most explicit example was Gatorade’s “I wanna be like Mike” campaign, which 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.

“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, Colgate’s sales started to slip. So the company introduced a new product that included a new feature, the addition of fluoride, perhaps. Then another. Then another. Whitening. Tartar control. Sparkles. Stripes. Each innovation certainly helped boost sales, for a while at least. And so the cycle continued. Guess how many different types of toothpaste Colgate has for you to choose from today? Thirty-two. Today there are thirty-two different types of Colgate toothpaste (excluding the four they make for kids). And given how each company responds to the “innovations” of the other, that means that Colgate’s competitors also sell a similar number of variants that offer about the same quality, about the same benefits, at about the same price. There are literally dozens and dozens of toothpastes to choose from, yet there is no data to show that Americans are brushing their teeth more now than they were in the 1970s. Thanks to all this “innovation,” it has become almost impossible to know which toothpaste is right for you. So much so that even Colgate offers a link on their Web site called “Need Help Deciding?” If Colgate needs to help us pick one of their products because there are too many variations, how are we supposed to decide when we go to the supermarket without their Web site to help us?

Once again, this is an example of the newest set of shiny objects designed to encourage a trial or a purchase. What companies cleverly disguise as “innovation” is in fact novelty. And it’s not only packaged goods that rely on novelty to lure customers; it’s a common practice in other industries, too. It works, but rarely if ever does the strategy cement any loyal relationships.

Apple’s iPhone has since replaced the Motorola RAZR as the popular must-have new mobile phone. Removing all the buttons and putting a touch screen is not what makes the iPhone innovative, however. Those are brilliant new features. But others can copy those things and it wouldn’t redefine the category. There is something else that Apple did that is vastly more significant.

Apple is not only leading how mobile phones are designed, but, in typical Apple fashion, also how the industry functions. In the mobile phone industry, it is the service provider, not the phone manufacturer, that determines all the features and benefits the phone can offer. T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, AT&T all dictate to Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson, LG and others what the phones will do. Then Apple showed up. They announced that they would tell the service provider what the phone would do, not the other way around. AT&T was the only one that agreed, thus earning the company the exclusive deal to offer the new technology. That’s the kind of shift that will impact the industry for many years and will extend far beyond a few years of stock boost for the shiny new product.

Novel, huh?

I cannot dispute that manipulations work. Every one of them can indeed help influence behavior and every one of them can help a company become quite successful. But there are trade-offs. Not a single one of them breeds loyalty. Over the course of time, they cost more and more. The gains are only short-term. And they increase the level of stress for both the buyer and the seller. If you have exceptionally deep pockets or are looking to achieve only a short-term gain with no consideration for the long term, then these strategies and tactics are perfect.

Beyond the business world, manipulations are the norm in politics today as well. Just as manipulations can drive a sale but not create loyalty, so too can they help a candidate get elected, but they don’t create a foundation for leadership. Leadership requires people to stick with you through thick and thin. Leadership is the ability to rally people not for a single event, but for years. In business, leadership means that customers will continue to support your company even when you slip up. If manipulation is the only strategy, what happens the next time a purchase decision is required? What happens after the election is won?