The SUV Idea

Forty-three years ago marketing guru Theodore Levitt wrote about businesses and industries that failed or faltered owing to product orientation instead of customer orientation. Railroads hit hard times because they saw themselves as being in the railroad business rather than in the business of moving people and things. Movie studios couldn't fend off the competition of television because the studios said they were in the business of making movies rather than broadening their mission and vision to encompass all modes of entertainment. When people stop at a gas station, Levitt wrote, they do not actually buy gasoline: "What they buy is the right to continue driving their cars" ("Marketing Myopia," Harvard Business Review, July-August 1960). Specialized librarians may be in that same myopic downdraft. It can be reversed.

In the years between Levitt's classic article and now, technology, business, consumers, products, and the world have changed dramatically. Levitt's concept remains valid. Know your audience and their needs. Only then build your message. Creating a marketing or advocacy message without first focusing on what it is that customers are trying to accomplish is counterproductive. At the very core, people are not looking for information. They need solutions and ways to stand out in the crowd.

Today, Joe Calloway reflects the Levitt legacy in Becoming a Category of One: How Extraordinary Companies Transcend Commodity and Defy Comparison (Wiley, 2003). Each of the companies he presents has a clear sense of what it is. "They all define themselves not in terms of what they sell but in terms of what the point is for their employees, stakeholders, and customers," he writes. Begin with a customer need and then link to your services.

How do you get your message heard in an era of information overload? "You need a Big Bang," write Linda Kaplan Thaller and Robin Koval in Bang! Getting Your Message Heard in a Noisy World (Currency/Doubleday, 2003). Their ad agency, the Kaplan Thaller Group, created the wildly successful frustrated duck in commercials for AFLAC insurance.

A Big Bang "turns occasional users into fierce loyalists," they add. Information professionals could use some fierce loyalists, so let's listen up to their advice: "A Big Bang cuts through the clutter and gets people to sit up and take notice…. A Big Bang idea is about taking the spotlight."

To achieve a Big Bang, abandon the accepted thought process and rearrange and reevaluate the existing information. What is less logical than SUVs, selling bottled water, and charging $3.95 for a small cup of designer coffee, the authors ask. Products in these categories and many others have been marketed well and are wildly successful because they fill a need. SUVs are not just transportation, the ad execs say. They are fantasy—in a world where we feel unnoticed, they make us impossible to overlook. As an information professional, what is your SUV idea—what can you communicate to your organization that will make you impossible to overlook? Let the illogical, innovative part of your brain go to work, unencumbered by how it's always been done.

Your messages should be:

• lively and compelling—do they make readers see the benefit in taking action?
• stripped of "library" jargon
• focused on what's in it for the customer
• designed to inform and build trust
• based on a clear mission and vision of the library as key to the success of the organization

If you can't state your mission in two sentences—an "elevator message" that can be delivered between floors on an elevator ride—you don't understand it. Go back and try again. Share it with staff, frequent users, and others who will give you critical feedback. If they don't understand, rethink it until you get it right. Then revisit it at least every six months. The challenges and opportunities you must face to remain viable will probably change even more rapidly than that.

A stream of messages on the SOLOLIB-L online discussion list earlier this year shared mission statements. All of the responses were within an "acceptable" range, based on the wisdom of the profession. One talked about providing information in support of research. One library referred to itself as an "information conduit" for knowledge and information assets found in the firm. Two said their mission was to help employees perform their duties. Another promised to deliver quality reference and research with fast turnaround time.

All of the above are noble, but they do not recall Levitt's 1960 example of defining what customers need to achieve. In later years, Levitt shifted from the gasoline example to tell his classes of marketing students at Harvard Business School, "People don't want to buy quarter-inch drills; they want to make quarter-inch holes." Selling them on the merits of your drill isn't the answer. Demonstrating that you understand the problem and that you have the tool that will do the job well will make them a loyal customer.

Calloway says a "category of one" organization, transcending all competitors, should differentiate itself "by making the experience of doing business one that commands loyalty." This begins with what he characterizes as a "moment of truth," triggered by a crisis or by a recognition that complacency has set in. "The willingness to let go of what used to work is…the most daunting challenge of all," Calloway writes. "The trap of past success is a seductive, almost irresistible force. Category of one leaders constantly encourage their employees to look for the next great idea…. It takes real courage to innovate and real leadership to create the space for innovation." Do you have what it takes to be a category of one leader? How often do you search for that next great idea? Are you flexible as you apply old truths to our new environment?

A sign in a Starbucks features a photo of the new store manager. It explains that he describes himself as a "coffee purist." He could simply call himself a Starbucks store manager, but this playful description broadens the horizons of his job and gives his customers a more positive perception of the value he will bring to buying a cup of coffee. There is a lesson here for specialized librarians. Have you thought about how you describe yourself in casual conversation?

A Staples delivery truck carries the slogan "I brake for empty staplers." If there is anyone who doesn't know what Staples is, that slogan at least gives a hint about the type of problem it helps to solve—office supplies, delivered—while using a touch of humor and a play on a familiar line. Use commercial advertising as inspiration as you create the two or three brief statements that describe the benefits people in your organization will derive from partnering with you in problem-solving.

One description of marketing says it is activity directed toward making an exchange that intends to satisfy human needs or wants. Another defines it as the process of planning and implementing the development and distribution of goods (or in our case, services) to produce profits (create value). Another version says that marketing creates special business relationships for pricing, promoting, and distributing products and services for stakeholders' mutual benefit. Relationships are the foundation of any definition of marketing. Do you know the opinion leaders in your organization and have you forged relationships with them? More important, do those opinion leaders know you and value their partnership with you? If not, you have work to do.

My first boss, after I left library school, introduced me to the concept of a "thwunk file." He was a newly minted Harvard MBA and head of the marketing department, and I was starting a bank library from scratch. He told me to begin collecting evidence of my value to the bank—in the form of statistics, stories, and informal comments from people I had helped, as well as formal letters of thanks or congratulations. All of these were kept in one file. He explained that every time he went to his boss, to ask for more of anything—money, staff, space, etc.—he would take his own folder with him. In the course of presenting his argument, he would say, "This folder is full of testimonials to my effectiveness and my value to the bank." At that point, he would drop the folder, from a height of about three feet, on to the boss's desk. The thickness of the folder determined the "thwunk" sound it made as it fell. The louder the "thwunk," the more impressive the message.

To rephrase that annoying Capital One television commercial, "What's in your thwunk file?"

Are you willing to take the spotlight, to deliver your Big Bang, SUV idea? Detractors of MBA students and faculty accuse them of "paralysis by analysis"—of talking an idea to death, or missing an opportunity because they are afraid they never have enough information on which to base a decision. In my experience, information professionals too often use the excuse that they don't have time to think about marketing—and, besides, if they market their services too well, they will be overwhelmed by extra requests for service that they won't be able to satisfy. Not paralyzed for lack of information but paralyzed by fear of success.

People talk about being extraordinary. They have meetings about it and write mission statements, but they don't do it, Calloway laments. During a program at an information professionals' conference, a woman stood up and complained that no matter how many memos she sent her boss, he never answered her, and he didn't understand that she was valuable to the organization. She was an example of a perfectly competent information professional who couldn't overcome her traditional thought process and try a new approach. She should have aspired to being a category of one leader, capable of creating and nurturing an idea that would put her and her services in the spotlight. Don't succumb to inertia or paralysis by analysis. Focus on the concise mission statement from Nike, and "Just Do It!"