Focus vs. Innovation?

Idris Mootee recently blogged a response to an AdAge article (paid subscription required) by Al Ries.

Here are some excerpts from the Ries article:

"What makes a powerful automobile brand today is not innovation, but a narrow focus on an attribute or a segment of the market."
"Innovations outside of a brand’s core position can undermine a brand."
"Most brands don't need innovations; they need focus. They need to figure out what they stand for and then what they need to sacrifice to get there."

Yep, sounds like vintage Ries. But Mootee disagrees:

Mr. Ries is so wrong on this one.

Mootee counters:

What the automobile industry needs today is NOT a narrow focus or an attribute or another brand. They have been doing that for decades and look at Detroit today.

Really? When I ponder the Detroit automobile industry, I think "scattered", not "focused". This counterexample from Mootee is not convincing. As a matter of fact, it tends to support Ries's point.

Next, Mootee cites Samsung as an example of company that innovated outside its focus and thereby established a powerful brand:

The company focused on product innovation that was not limited by their brand, and saw a meteoric rise in sales and brand value in just a few years and is not a serious threat to big boys like Sony.

Maybe. I don't know much about Samsung.

But I don't think you measure the power of a brand by the success of the company. A company can be hugely successful despite a weak brand, and vice-versa. I don't think you measure the power of a brand by mere recognition, either. Brand recognition is only one ingredient of a brand's power.

How many people go out and buy a Samsung as a result of their perceptions of the brand? The Samsung brand means nothing to me; I buy Samsung products only when their commoditized products come out on top in my feature and price comparisons.

Finally, Mootee avers:

Brand strategy and marketing can only give them a Botox, innovation brings new life.

But Ries hasn't argued against innovation. He has merely argued that innovation is most effective when it establishes or reinforces a focused brand position.

Comments

Why Spreadsheets Suck for Prioritizing

The Goal As a company executive, you want confidence that your product team (which includes all the people, from all departments, responsible for product success) has a sound basis for deciding which items are on the product roadmap. You also want confidence the team is prioritizing the items in a smart way. What Should We Prioritize? The items the team prioritizes could be features, user stories, epics, market problems, themes, or experiments. Melissa Perri makes an excellent case for a " problem roadmap ", and, in general, I recommend focusing on the latter types of items. However, the topic of what types of items you should prioritize - and in what situations - is interesting and important but beyond the scope of this blog entry. A Sad but Familiar Story If there is significant controversy about priorities, then almost inevitably, a product manager or other member of the team decides to put together The Spreadsheet. I've done it. Some of the mos...

5 Ways Companies Make Product Decisions

In the last blog entry, we reviewed the four problems that companies face, or are trying to overcome, as they make product decisions . Now we'll look at the ways that most companies make their product decisions. Companies that develop, market, and sell products and solutions make strategic and ongoing tactical decisions. They decide what features to include in their products, what messages they will use to communicate the value of their products, what marketing tactics they will use, what prospective customers they will target, and many day-to-day choices. Whether or not these decisions are deliberate or ad hoc, most companies use some combination of the following ways of making product decisions. (A downloadable "map" that summarizes the product decision landscape is included at the end of this article.) Customer Wants Product decisions based on feature requests, focus groups, and what prospects and customers say they want. Companies are selling products to ...

Is Customer Development Pseudoscience?

The “Science” of Lean Startup Lean startup practitioners embrace the scientific method, seeking the "truth" about what business model and strategy will lead to product success. We do so by: Formulating hypotheses Crafting and running experiments to test them Learning from the experiments Iteratively feeding our learnings back into revised hypotheses Sounds pretty scientific, at least in spirit, doesn't it? Yet this process actually neglects a key ingredient in the scientists' mode of operation. To identify what’s missing, let’s examine “customer development”. Customer Development Steve Blank is one of the pioneers of the lean startup movement. He introduced into the lean startup lexicon the term “customer development”. Customer development consists of sessions and interactions with customers to test hypotheses. For example, a product manager might interview a prospect, asking if she agrees with the product manager’s hypotheses about the problem...

Cauvin

Search This Blog