80 Years of Sliced Bread
Sliced bread is universally accepted as a good idea. It’s not the best idea – it doesn’t fulfil the ever complicated needs of those consumers who want to slice their own, or require that rye organic granary stoneground sprouted seed experience… but it works. Housewives and schoolkids love it.
And there is our industry’s challenge in a nutshell. Because it’s such a good idea, we think it can sell. What was, after all, the best thing before sliced bread? Otto Frederick Rohwedder (inset) is credited with having invented sliced bread in 1912. But it wasn’t until a Chillicothe baker, who was on the verge of bankruptcy, took a chance on his invention on July 7th 1928 by putting the first loaves of sliced bread ever made on the shelves that the idea translated into a realistic consumer offering. That’s 15 years in the making – why?
Because, without understanding consumer need and meeting that need with marketing, sliced bread would have become yet another idea confined to the scrap heap of invention.
It’s often hard for us to comprehend that we as an industry are merely a tiny speck on the radar of our consumers. Youth in particular do not understand nor care about concepts such as ARPU, churn, “killer apps” (whatever they are), Android or Web 2.0
Take a break from the telecoms industry for a minute and make yourself a cup of coffee. As author Jim Rohn says, however, “be careful of what your ‘friends’ put in your coffee”. And in the same context, in an industry awash with information, we need to be careful about the received wisdom we take for granted.
Here are just a few of those pearls that help keep sliced bread on the shelves
- “this product will take off… when the price comes down to $X”
- “this is the killer application youth have been waiting for”
- “and now for my next slide… a value chain“
- “it’s a Google widgetamething…. it’s Google, kids will love it”
- “it’s disruptive… the world is run by disruptive innovation… if it disrupts the market, people want it”
You see, the thing is…consumers don’t care about us. The really don’t. Nor do they care about our technology. Take the student market for example. No student ever woke up in the middle of the night worrying about Orange, Cingular, Android or Web 2.0.
All they care about is:
- is it cheap?
- do my friends use it?
- will it help me get laid?
If you can push these buttons, you can pretty much forget about Android, i-whatever, Web 2 and the like.
If you need proof, check out our on-the-street videos of what youth really think.
Time to Put The Ugly Value Chain to bed
Here’s an example of what our industry is up against – people pushing visualizations that have more semblance with the warehousing operations of a 19th Century industry model than an open value creation network we require in a consensual industry such as telecoms.
The “value chain” in its ugliest manifestation (courtesy of Ajit Jaokar). As the apocraphyl Zen tale recalls “If you see the Buddha on the road…kill him”. I think what the monk Lin Chi may have been eluding to was the need to pull the conference presentation trapdoor on experts who talk about “value chains” and “customer needs” in one breath.
Is it possible to refer to customer needsd and “end consumers” in the same context? Obviously not… one cannot meet the needs of demanding consumer when factoring them into the “end” of our equations. Time to start reformatting our mental models of how we operate and looking at the value network models proposed by Toyota and Tesco amongst others.
When you consider Toyota as a case study – consider how they have focused heavily on understanding the consumer rather than pushing technological innovation onto the market. Yes, consumers want hybrids and parktronic, but most want reliable and safe. Consider how they have neatly compartmentalized their brand message into Toyota, Lexus, Crown and Scion… some of which you may never have heard of before. This cradle-to-grave brand approach works… and delivers profitability despite a receding market, weak dollar and upward pressure on commodities. Why? Because fundamentally Toyota doesn’t get caught up in the sliced bread – and doesn’t see itself as sitting in a value chain shunting cars onto consumers. For years, GM tried this and failed miserably.
I’ve seen countless “value chains” roll out in presentations. No one has ever questioned the rationale. The “value chain” is based on industrial manufacturing processes where intermediary warehousing fulfills underpins the logistical infrastructure of a “build it and they will come” model. The factory makes the widget and shunts it onto the market. True, Porter’s advocacy of the value chain model was a key factor in its adoption, but he only proposed the value chain as processes within the company, not as an industry in general.
Technology again
As long as we wax lyrical over technology, we’ll never get it. When the US government tried to stop the production of sliced bread during WWII in order to ease the strain on steel supplies, the American Housewife wouldn’t let them – why? Because, the machines saved them time and created material social benefits for the consumer.
So whether card, mobile phones or sliced bread even… it’s easy to be persuaded by the voices out there that this technology is the answer. But if it’s the same voice that refers to the buyers as “end customers” or in the context of a “value chain”, then proceed with caution. Rohwedder’s invention would still be lying in a Michigan basement covered in dust if the idea alone was the only prerequisite of market adoption.
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