The Potato Chip Story
When I was a younger man, I worked as an account executive
and then a senior account executive at advertising agency Foote
Cone & Belding’s main office in Chicago. One of my accounts
was Frito-Lay, so I learned more than I ever wanted to know
about potato chips. One of the first things I learned was the lesson
of the potato chip story.
One thing that packaged goods companies like to do is to get
together a group of heavy users of a product and do a focus
group. They put 10 or 12 people in a room around a table and
talk about products, with marketing people watching and listening
on the other side of a two-way mirrorIf you asked those
heavy users—heavy buyers—of potato chips what kind of chip
they liked best, you always got the same answers. If you asked
them if they preferred light salt, medium salt, or heavy salt, what
do you think they said? Overwhelmingly, they would say, “light
salt.” If you asked them about heavy oil, medium oil, or light oil,
most would come back with “light oil” every time.
The next step would be to do a blind taste test, sometimes literally
with a blindfold, and ask them which ones they liked best.
What kind of potato chips do you think they would choose?
They would prefer the saltiest, oiliest ones every time.
“The customer is always right” may be good advice in the service
business. But when you are talking about product development,
new business initiatives, or growth plans, the customer is
not always right. You need to know your customers better than
they know themselves. When I was working at that same agency
in Chicago, cable television was still in its infancy. The TV net
works at that time were armed with studies showing that fledgling cable offerings such as ESPN, MTV, and CNN were small ideas,
with the majority of consumers not willing to pay for them.
And
guess what? They were right. Their studies did show that most
consumers were not interested in paying for these products. Remember,
cable penetration reached less than half of American
homes in the mid-1980s.
Here’s the moral of the potato chip story: You need to anticipate
your customers’ needs and give them what they are looking
for, before they have even thought about asking for it. Growth
comes from understanding customers so well that you can set
about meeting their needs before they even perceive those needs..
I began my career in the rough-and-tumble world of a large
Chicago advertising agency. There, when asked to develop an advertising
campaign, we usually divided the planning process into
three distinct phases.
The first phase was characterized by the large amount of time
(months, in many cases) every...
more »
When I left the advertising business, I took the reins of a small
uniform apparel company. I literally went from Michigan Avenue
to Main Street, U.S.A., and I carried my small bag of tricks with
me. You can probably imagine the looks on the faces of my veteran
crew of sewing machine operators when I...
more »
Do you want to transfer your personal pension plan? You need to give it a serious thought before you come to any decision. It is important to consider a few things before you go for pension transfer. Go through the tips given below to know about the steps to be taken for transferring your pension...
more »
If you got the plans, design and money to start your own catering business, then all that's left to do is to get all the niggly parts out of the way.
You'll need to register the premises from which you plan to operate your company. Environmental health needs to be aware that yomore »
If you've got a thriving business and are keen to grow it even further, then you'll likely need the help of a sales lead generation specialist. There are myriad benefits to investing in a specialist of this kind, but if...
more »
