It’s not surprising then that replica guitars are good business. Guitar brand Gibson have made replicas of legendary Led Zeppelin Jimmy Page’s favourite guitars, and charged a premium for the first 50, each signed by the man himself. Now Gibson have made a limited edition of fifty copies of his famous double-necked Gibson Les Paul guitar, complete with the scratches and marks of his original. It’s what happens next that is novel.  Jimmy plays a Led Zeppelin riff on each one. Then he signs it. The pick he used is taped to the neck of the guitar, though perhaps not by him.

Page says a bit of his DNA is in each one. For this, the price goes up to $50,000. You get a guitar that Jimmy played, not on stage, not with the band, just in the Gibson showroom for a matter of seconds, as he demonstrates in the promotional film.

It is simultaneously real and contrived. It is not Jimmy Page’s guitar, but he did play it. This feels like a brilliant way to create value, by letting the customer feel close to his guitar hero. If you can’t meet Jimmy Page, still less afford to buy one of his actual guitars, this is a sort of shadow version of that. He was there, and now you are there. This guitar, your guitar, was in his hands.

Now I’m musing on what else could get the Gibson/ Jimmy Page treatment. If guitars aren’t your thing, how about a limited edition tennis racquet that Roger Federer or Serena Williams had served a few balls with? Not one of their racquets, but a brand new one which they took a few swings with before signing it and putting it down. Or a pair of football boots that Lionel Messi slipped his feet into – one of fifty pairs, of course, each of which he wore for a minute or two and maybe kicked one ball with.

This is transparently a commercial transaction. Jimmy picked out a few notes so that the guitar can cost ten times as much as if he had not. Guitar fans tell me they think it is worth it. His touch has created value. He’s been paid for an hour of strumming, Gibson have taken $2.5 million for fifty guitars that probably cost less than a thousand dollars each to make, and there are fifty contented, starstruck buyers. It’s a glorious example of value creation in which everyone wins.

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I’d also recommend John Carreyrou’s book about the rise and fall of Theranos. It’s called “Bad Blood: secrets and lies in a Silicon Valley start-up”. It’s a great read.

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+  Process and service innovation

Enforced change doesn’t have to be for the worse. Some businesses have responded to enforced changes to create new ways to serve customers, which generate efficiencies and keep the show on the road. They’re mostly process-related, and they can be beneficial to customers too. Mostly we don’t bother to consider change unless we have to, but we may well stick with it once tried, as described here.

+  Brand-building

Cutting marketing communications is a common response to recession, but there’s robust evidence that brands that maintain their visibility through advertising reap long term benefits that last way beyond the recession period. This is a good time to revisit your brand proposition and ensure it’s relevant and focused. Then communicate that with confidence. Not sure what to say in these troubled times? Have a look here

+  Stimulating consumption with product and usage ideas

Big data has transformed our ability to see changing trends. It used to be a long slow and esoteric process. Now, businesses like Black Swan crunch all sorts of data sets in real time to give businesses early warning of changes in demand, new tastes and emerging preferences. Spotting behaviour change can be very simple. If you know Google searches for cocktail shakers are up, then promoting cocktail recipes and launching new flavours, as Gordon’s did, isn’t such a shot in the dark.

Remember the home-baking frenzy early in lockdown? Marketers at Baileys picked up online chatter about making “luxurious desserts” and started sending out recipe ideas involving – of course – Baileys. They followed through by making sure it was easy to shop the recipes at food retailers’ online stores. UK sales of Baileys are reportedly up this year. There’s more on the Baileys story here.

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The BBC reported the case of a fish and chip shop which had offered a click and collect service for years to get people to pre-order, with limited success. Customers just kept rocking up and joining the queue. When reopening after lockdown was allowed, counter service was off the menu. Everyone had to order online, for collection or delivery. Although forced into it, people seemed quite content. Pre-ordering meant no queuing, and the timed pick-up meant they could know exactly when they’d be home with their dinner. Why didn’t they try this before? No particular reason. They just didn’t need to.

Public transport strikes can have the same effect. People are forced to find alternatives to their regular commute. It’s been reported that a decent minority, maybe one in five, discover a better route which they stick with when the strike is over. Why didn’t they try this sooner (they may ask themselves)? No reason.

Habits are convenient and easy. We don’t waste brain effort in making choices every time. We also don’t engage in solving problems we haven’t seen. An acceptable food-ordering process, a reasonable commute, don’t need improving. People generally seek easy, frictionless processes. Innovation often focuses on making good things better. But if something is good enough, we may be unwilling to invest any effort at all in changing to a new way of doing things. We may not even notice. I would guess that lots of those chip shop customers hadn’t even looked at the website and certainly hadn’t weighed up the pros and cons of pre-ordering. It was the chip shop that wanted people to change their approach.

Businesses can persuade customers to adjust in ways that are mutually beneficial, but it may require a different starting point, one that lets you see what’s in it for the customer. It can also be fruitful to look for things that aren’t quite right, and remove the obstacles. That’s why customer dissatisfaction can be a better stimulus to innovation, especially process improvement, than the more celebrated customer satisfaction. Good scores are nice, but they aren’t always that useful.

Of course, legislation can force behaviour change. On 24 July, after months of fence-sitting about whether wearing a face-covering is beneficial in the drive to reduce the spread of Covid-19, it became compulsory to wear one in shops in England. In Scotland it’s been mandatory since 10 July.

The government’s desired outcome is that people will once again go shopping and spend money, for the sake of the economy. So the critical question is, Would wearing a mask make people more likely to go shopping?

In a large-scale survey I saw reported (which I can’t now find), 51% said it would make no difference. 25% said they were more likely to go shopping now that masks are compulsory in shops while 20% said they were less likely to go. A government minister might be encouraged by that. I read it differently. The 51% is the key number. Half of us believe we will not change our behaviour because of mask rules. That tells me there is a big communication task ahead for anyone trying to re-energise high street retail. To solve that problem, they will have to understand what’s stopping us. That 51% includes people who are already doing all the shopping they want, no stimulus needed. But it must be mostly people who aren’t going shopping much, since retail footfall is still well down on its pre-pandemic levels. Still we don’t know what problem to solve. Maybe people are still worried about the virus, and don’t feel masks will make enough difference. But maybe also they’ve discovered just how much you can do online. Maybe they’ve realised that going for a walk can be as enjoyable as a trip to the shopping mall. In either case, they may never return to their pre-Covid shopping habits. Businesses will have to adapt. To do that, they’ll have to dig deeper, to find sources of dissatisfaction they can solve for people, or to find new offerings that are good enough to get our attention and consideration.

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Holmes’s company was reported to be worth $10 billion by 2013 and she was a paper billionaire. Now she’s facing fraud charges. Yet her purpose, to make blood screening for infection and disease accessible to all, was laudable. Her idea was to miniaturise blood analysis machines so that one piece of kit the size of a desktop printer could screen for many diseases, using a single blood sample from a simple pinprick on the finger instead of an intrusive needle in the arm. Great idea. Hugely desirable aim. Solves many problems with the current approach. No wonder the great and good of US politics and business pumped $700 million into Theranos. Rupert Murdoch invested $125m. He ended up with nothing. In 2015 it all unravelled amid scandal and accusations of fraud, and the company collapsed, worthless.

Was it just that they needed more time? Maybe, if you think twelve years isn’t long enough to make demonstrable progress. Was it wrong to claim they had made a breakthrough, rather than just hoping to? That isn’t unusual in Silicon Valley, where “fake it until you make it” is seen as a sign of confidence in the future.

Failing fast is part of never giving up – as long as the failures are teaching you something. The original Edison’s many failures represented progress towards success. By contrast, it seems Holmes’s main tool was to demand that no one talk down their progress, and just try harder.

Perhaps it simply wasn’t achievable. If it was, someone would have done it already, wouldn’t they? But there’s a counter-argument to this, from Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, which he calls “the innovator?s dilemma”. He says radical innovation isn’t usually in the incumbents’ interests. We’ve seen this in other industries. Until Nest came along, home thermostats were ugly beige boxes that hadn’t changed in decades, making nice money for market leader Honeywell. The global leaders in medical syringes for vaccination, Becton Dickinson, are alleged to have stamped out an upstart competitor that created an alternative syringe (one that prevented reuse and hence the spread of infection), in order to protect BD’s own products. In the case of Theranos, a couple of companies dominated the blood testing industry, with huge labs full of dedicated machines and skilled staff. The fact it’s not yet been done can never be a reason not to try. Here’s how to check you’re on the Edison track and not the Holmes one.

1. Is it just a wish? Idea generation often starts with “I wish there was a ….” “What if we could…” That’s a great way to identify unmet needs. But it’s not, in itself, an idea. “I wish I could fly” only starts to be an idea when someone starts suggesting ways that could be made to happen. A machine with propellers. A suit with air jets. They might not work, but it’s a “how” to work on, to prototype and refine.

2. Is it constrained by real-world physics or chemistry? Most Silicon Valley backed start-ups are for services. Write the code and see if enough people will pay for it. Theranos did have a prototype Edison but it wasn’t remotely viable. Battery size is a major constraint for electric cars. I can put a few bits of copper, lithium and acid in an old tin can and tell you it’s a prototype for a miniaturised car battery. But all I’ve done is illustrate the problem.

3. Is there a credible hypothesis as to how to solve the problem? Try it, test it, improve it. That’s where Edison’s approach was different from Holmes’s wish. With a basic idea about heat and light generated by electrical resistance in metals, Edison kept experimenting until finally something worked. Holmes was not a scientist and relied on staff to work it out. Another lesson. Who’s going to solve this problem you’ve identified? Do the people with the skills believe they can do it? Can they say anything about how? It seems Holmes never did, and investors never got to talk to the experts in R&D.

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I think it’s an entirely rational move. Trying to create a winner is difficult so it makes sense to imitate success. All brands start small, usually with somebody’s simple idea or personal conviction, or by chance. The marketplace is a real-time test market in which some thrive. Big brands are the ones left standing. It’s not that they all did something amazing, it’s just that not everyone can achieve critical mass. Those that do have a huge advantage that tends to compound.

It’s tempting to study the winners for lessons in success. But how can you tell which factors were causal? Walkers is number one in crisps mainly because just as PepsiCo was deciding to enter the UK market, the Golden Wonder factory burned down. PepsiCo bought Walkers instead and used their distribution reach to get it into shops all over the UK, making it the first national snack brand. A stroke of luck or genius with the Gary Lineker advertising certainly helped. Golden Wonder struggled on for some years but couldn’t achieve the scale to compete, and eventually went bust under the weight of its pension commitments.

Logically, then, the only option is to copy the successful brands in full. But why would anyone choose a copy when there’s already a familiar brand out there? Hence the trial and error approach (euphemistically called “test and learn” by Coke and others) that looks for something that meets a proven need but is distinctive enough to have a place in people’s repertoires and on retailers’ shelves. With that in mind, here are a few tips for product innovation:

Do: keep your eyes and ears open. Listening to your own customers and other people’s is essential for a realistic view of your market. There may be ways you can improve on current offerings, whether from your own company or competitors. A better version of your own product may be the most valuable innovation.

Do: Spot up-and-coming brands and products. Watch how your core market is fragmenting, and provide range extensions or new brands to cover the emerging new sectors. Big companies will nearly always win out over small ones if the product is comparable. If they don’t, they may be able to acquire the upstart.

Do: keep it simple. Decoding cryptic brand hierarchies or ambiguous product messages is of limited interest to most people.

Don’t: be too proud to imitate a successful product. A structural advantage, like distribution scale or manufacturing efficiencies, can be enough to win out.

Don’t: pretend it’s different if it isn’t. If there is really no reason why your version will succeed, why are you investing in it?

Don’t: be afraid to fail. Trying new things can’t always work out. The old adage, fail fast, still applies.

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This happened years ago but it stuck with me, because of what it shows about how we see the world. As Mark Twain said, “It ain’t what you don?t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Now think about what you know for sure about your market, your customers, your business, your brand. Was it ever, really, so? Is it still so? Things change – and that creates opportunities.

Think of the familiar gripes you hear in focus groups. Or from friends. I’d pay more to get it faster, to have it delivered, for someone to assemble it for me, not to have to wait in line. Why can’t I have it cheaper? Make a simpler version, it’s all I need. It?s easy to dismiss as the same old stuff people always say, before you get to the good stuff, the real purpose of the research, the thing you want to hear about – a new product, maybe, or some new advertising, or a new pack design.

But to other people, that throwaway warm-up chat is gold dust. Why? Because it inspires disruptive innovation. While the established airlines were refining their in-flight food and entertainment to justify the prices people were complaining about, South West and Easyjet and Ryanair got rid of it all, to give people cheap air travel. While Ford and GM offered ever-bigger discounts on new cars, ZipCar dispensed with car ownership altogether, realising some people don’t care about cars, they just want to be able to get around.

Ford and GM’s biggest barrier was their current business model. Those huge production lines have to be kept running. The main job of marketers is to help fill them. Who in Ford is going to champion an idea that might shut some of them down? By proposing a radical alternative to the current business, you’re betting against the company – what Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen calls “the innovator’s dilemma”. You could call it career suicide.

Most businesses are alive to this challenge now. You just have to say “Eastman Kodak” – who held patents for digital photography but didn’t want to harm their film business. There are solutions for the innovator’s dilemma, like separate innovation teams, or running parallel competing businesses, or by being watchful of upstarts and buying them. Zipcar was acquired not by a motor manufacturer but by Avis car rental.

But what if you don’t even know you’re filtering out the awkward realities? That’s the Santa Claus effect. Are we seeing the world as it is, or as we believe it to be? That’s where marketers have a critical job to do. It’s our responsibility to listen, without fear or prejudice, and to share what we hear. There’s plenty of talk about bringing the voice of the customer into the organisation, and even into the boardroom. Our challenge is to make sure it’s the true, uncensored voice, not the convenient voice. If you can do that, your business may not get everything it wants for Christmas. But there’s a good chance it will live happily ever after.

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First, think of being disruptive as an outcome, not a strategy. It’s rarely an end in itself. No, not even for Uber. I’m sure their funding pitch talked about being disruptive but the essence of the idea was using mobile technology to match capacity with demand in real time. It prospered because it delivers a consumer benefit. Any minicab firm could have done it. Or even, as it turns out, a firm without minicabs. It?s a brilliant and simple idea which made incumbents cry foul, but it was not born out of any malice towards them. Likewise, Airbnb didn’t set out to disrupt the hotel industry. They didn’t even see themselves as being in that industry. In both cases, the founders felt a need, and created a solution. It grew. That should give hope to insight-seekers everywhere.

Second, practise thinking as if your current business doesn’t exist. Embrace”the innovator’s dilemma”, so-called because it assumes that disruptive innovation will be damaging to the core business. It doesn’t have to be, and you don’t know until you try. There?s a perfect case study in the world of running. As parkruns sprung up all over the country, running clubs felt threatened by the arrival of a new timed 5k run, offered weekly, and free, on their doorstep. Why would people pay to compete in runs if they could do it free? parkrun now has three million registered runners worldwide, but it’s not hurt established running clubs, it’s stimulated category growth. Running clubs have more members than ever.

Third, look for as many different ways as you can to segment your market, based on people and their needs, preferences, attitudes and habits. Forget about the product categories that exist. It’s natural to segment a market how a retailer organises the products on shelf, or how a website lists a range of services. That’s a useful round-up of today’s responses, not a definition of today’s needs. New segmentations can reveal latent demand that is invisible to the incumbents in the market. The music business is stacked with examples, from Sony Walkman’s music on the go to Spotify’s music you can listen to but don’t own. Market segmentation can also show us how old technologies can make a comeback, if they deliver a benefit. Both camera film and vinyl are no longer the easiest way to do the job, but they’ve both found a new reason to exist, for the aficionado.

Fourth, play with mobile and digital technology. Chances are your business would not be like it is today if these technologies had been around when it started. That’s not unique to current tech; new has always displaced old. The ultimate example is the US railroads, largely bankrupted by air travel. Theodore Levitt called it marketing myopia. Know what business you are in, from the customer’s point of view. The way your business does it now is only one way, based on yesterday’s technology.

Fifth, as always, keep looking for consumer problems to solve. Ask any independent optician, if you can find one, whether Specsavers was disruptive. Its founders were driven by a consumer need, which pushed them to find a new business model. Proof you don’t have to be a tech-enabled upstart to be disruptive and successful.

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Mark Twain, writer

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