Saturday, October 9, 2010

Rule #7: Products are the New Services

This is the first of three or four posts about Rule #7.

CONCEPT

In Rule 7, Mathieson moves us from rethinking the way we market the product to rethinking the product itself. The line between product and product marketing blurs when we’re able to add value, service and experience to what before was simply the “product.”

The big example provided near the top of the Rule write-up is Nike+. In the past, you’d simply choose a pair of Nike running shoes at a retail outlet, pay for them, take them home, then put ‘em on sometimes and run. Now, the same purchase provides a rich, technology-enabled experience.



Your shoes interact with your iPod and your laptop.
They provide statistics and feedback. They connect you to other runners and new routes. They feed updates to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. The product is the shoe, as well as all these integrated services.

Several new Nike+ services are in development, including performance comparison to similar runners, monitoring of shoe wear, recommendations on technique, GPS location awareness (elevation gain, speed, heading, calories burned).

Rule 7 is really this simple: the product itself is just the start. Find ways to add valuable utility. In this way, products can become “the new services.”


ILLUSTRATIVE QUOTES

“Technology is something that is invented. If it’s any good, you use it. If it’s insanely great, it changes your life.” – Bob Greenberg, founder, R/GA (p 160)


“To give the average consumer the opportunity to order pizza while never getting up from watching Sunday football … is pretty amazing” – Rob Weisberg, BP-precision and print marketing, Domino’s Pizza (p 160)


“And I do think most of the best work has a kind of an application and a kind of utility to it” – Derek Robson, managing partner, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (p 163)


“If you look at most mature categories, the way you can continue to generate decent margins, and the way you can continue to deliver increased value and increase relevancy to customers is to take your products and turn them into services” – Andy Bateman, CEO, Interbrand (p 165)



QUESTIONS


"Interactive TV, in general, is the future" - Rob Weisberg, VP-procision and print marketing at Domino's Pizza Is the quote: a) right on, b) mildly insightful or c) grossly overstated? Why?

Can you think of a technology so "insanely great" that it changed your life? Tell us what and how.

Can you think of another good example of a product infused with utility such that it became a service (like Nike+)? Tell us what and how.

7 comments:

  1. "Interactive TV, in general, is the future" - Rob Weisberg, VP-procision and print marketing at Domino's Pizza Is the quote: c) grossly overstated? Why?
    SO: I wonder if something like Nike+ will replace "real world" experience such as your local running store, offering expertise on what is the best shoe for you or replacing local running clubs and communities where you don't need Nike to connect?

    Can you think of a technology so "insanely great" that it changed your life? Tell us what and how.
    SO: I tend to benefit from disruptive technology inventions such as the Internet itself, email and skype but less from digital media.

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  2. "Interactive TV, in general, is the future" - Rob Weisberg, VP-procision and print marketing at Domino's Pizza Is the quote: a) right on, b) mildly insightful or c) grossly overstated? Why?

    GR: We all know the true visionary behind interactive TV was Willie Wonka who developed it in his Chocolate Factory back in 1971 with his Umpa Lumpa Research and Development Team...(kidding). I would agree. The more an audience can engage the TV the more people will enjoy it. People appreciate being a part of something and it may not be enough anymore to have a one-way conversation with the target consumer.

    Can you think of a technology so "insanely great" that it changed your life? Tell us what and how.

    GR: Cell phones. I have no clue how people did anything before this technology. I am guessing they had to make these things called "plans" with other people and follow through with them such as meeting at a predetermined time. I think this would be interesting to have to commit to plans a few days earlier. It is interesting how technology has changed our lives and how once it is in our lives we cannot see how we lived before it.

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  3. Insanely great technology that has changed my life: I agree with George on this one, I was in high school when cell phones came out, when they became affordable, and not just for emergency use is when cell phone use sky rocketed. Tied in with cell phones was the birth of the smart phone. This allowed me to work away from my desk and keep up to date on all e-mail from customers, and co-workers.

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  4. I agree on the cell phone and internet. Try watching a movie with regular phone and answering machine. The whole way people communicate has changed.
    But the killer app for me was e-mail. It is the central way I organize my communication. Try getting hold of me more quickly any other way....

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  5. As the class has probably already figured out, I work in software, and software in and of itself blurred the lines between products and services, because it isn't something tangible. it's not like a shoe that you can hold in your hand. Growing up I was always exposed to computers even though PCs weren't quite as common, but my Dad worked for HP so we tended to be at or ahead of the curve with that technology, and I can't even imagine life without things like a word processor, and the transition from the old worldbook encyclopedia to search engines like alta vista and google really did change everything. I don't know that you could call Google a product, but the encyclopedias it replaced certainly were. and when you consider the fact that now "Google" is even used as a verb you really can see how that search technology changed our lives.

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  6. I think Google TV, and other TVs that are implementing similar features, are products with such great features they've transformed into a service as well. The ability to "browse" stations, have a home page with favorite channels, shortcuts to favorite shows on Hulu, etc.

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  7. I agree with the idea that interactive tv is the future. Already we see a big transition to on demand programming with the major providers.

    A technology that has changed my life is the cell phone, and subsequently the smart phone (I'm writing this comment from one!). That actually ties into the next question: integrating data devices with cellular devices has added immense value to communication products.

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