Great ideas: platforms for value creation v. platforms for creative executions?
Via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jorgeq82/
One of the themes that occupied my mind in 2008 and continues to intrigue me is how things can have a number of different value streams associated with them. You may recall, I wrote that a simple penny coin can have four (or more) different dimensions of value, from its face value, the value of its materials, the cost of its production, and so on.
The point here is that value is not an absolute, it is entirely dependent upon context. Therefore by examining an object from a variety of different contexts you can discover very different scales of value.
I think the same is true for marketing ideas. The best marketing ideas have multiple dimensions of value. The best ideas create value for the company AND the customer. It’s entirely possible create value beyond even these two audiences. Great marketing ideas also create value for shareholders, communities and potentially, the planet.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the area of “Green” marketing. I’m not necessarily talking about big, hairy initiatives, but rather small steps companies can take to reduce their impact upon the environment.
Consider Apple’s (yes I know them again) move to replace printed receipts in its stores with emailed receipts. There are a large number of value streams associated with this one action.
Customers gain convenience and better archiving from having a digital (e.g. searchable) record of their purchase. They also gain an easily shareable (e.g. for expenses or for sending to friends) record of their actions. And then finally, they also get the (small) emotional reward of having helped to reduce litter and waste.
Apple gets your email address, which as many marketers know is a pretty reliable revenue stream. They gain from any sharing of your purchases that you might now be able to do. They gain from the reduction of cost of printing, ink, paper, waste management etc. And they gain by being seen as a company that’s doing its bit to help.
The planet gets…well lets just say every little bit helps.
If marketing is, as the AMA states, an “…an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders,” then emailed receipts qualifies as a brilliant marketing idea on all accounts.
It’s examples like this that have forced me to shift my thinking on what is great marketing and what is a great idea. Where we (me and my partners) used to judge an idea based upon its ability to create a large number of extensions to be a central jumping-off point or platform for a number of different coordinated or coherent activities. We now judge the quality of an idea by its ability to create a large number of value streams.
These two frameworks don’t necessarily have to be incompatible but they often are. In our eagerness to extend an idea into multiple channels or forms, I think it’s increasingly important to ask whether we are we actually creating more value or simply making everything we do less valuable?
As an industry, I also think we also ought to ask why ideas like Apple’s printed receipts aren’t awarded, yet extravagant uses of time, money and resources that (often) generate very little value for anyone but media company owners are?
