Untangling the big ball of confusion
1/19/2012 8:02:12 AM

There is a war that has been brewing between small towns for several years. The war is over a ball of string - namely, who has the largest ball of string in the world. In 1950, Francis Johnson from Darwin, Minnesota began making a ball out of twine. He spent time adding to his ball for twenty-nine years. When he died in 1979, he had constructed what was believed to be the world's largest string ball, weighing over 18,000 lbs and measuring 12 feet high. Darwin, MN has a festival in his honor every summer. When Frank Stoeber of Cawker City, Kansas heard of the giant ball, he set out to break the record. He constructed a twine ball that was nearing the record. In the midst of his pursuit, Stoeber died, one foot short of the record. The good people of Cawker City constructed a gazebo over the giant sphere beside the main highway and continued to encourage visitors and townspeople to make Mr. Stoeber's dream a reality by adding more twine to the ball. "Foul ball," cried the fair-minded people of Darwin, MN. Their ball was constructed by one man, not a group of people. The Darwinians wanted the Cawker Citians' ball eliminated from the record books. Enter J.C. Payne of Mountain Springs, Texas, who came up with a multi-colored plastic string ball that was 13 feet, 2-1/2 inches tall. He sold it to Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum in Branson, MO as the world's largest string ball. "Hold on," shouted the Cawker City faithful. This ball was constructed of plastic string, not twine, making it lighter by 5,000 lbs. "And he did not do it all on his own," the Darwinians once again protested. As the arguments went on, James Frank Kotera of Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin was building his own string ball from used bailing twine. He continues to add to the ball to this day. At last report, he had eclipsed the old record by using over one ton more twine and counting.

The question really begs being asked: Who cares? It sounds like someone has spent a lot of time making a big deal out of a pointless orb of string. That is exactly the same thing that can happen to your business if you are not careful. In many industries, there are nuances that resemble the big ball of string. They are complicated and many times, pointless, to your customers. Getting lost in the intricacies of an industry can be confusing and not worth the time it takes to figure it out for most people standing on the outside of your trade circle. This is where marketing has to step in and make the complicated understandable for the common person.

There are a couple of causes of big string complications in business. The first is trade rules and procedures. If a business model has been built that has worked for a long time and something new comes along to challenge that market, the old way of doing business can quickly get in the way. A good example of this would be the telephone industry. There was a time when everyone that had a phone had a landline. Along came the mobile phone market and the phone industry's big ball of twine got in the way. The phone industry is heavily regulated. Landline customers were assigned to one local company who serviced a geographic region. The consumer had no choice in the matter. A mobile phone had no geographic region. It was only limited by the strength of the radio signal sent out by its cell towers. Suddenly the market shifted. Consumer demand for mobile phones went up, as the demand for landlines went down. The early marketing response from the phone companies was to try to treat mobile phones like they were landlines, with limits on the number of minutes you could use the phone and overage charges for exceeding your limit - much like the old landline billing when you had limits on where you could call (local and long-distance.) There were switching charges, roaming costs, taxes and fees that made reading your phone bill like reading the bibliography of an advanced nuclear science textbook. To further mix up matters, phone companies were marketing a new plan nearly every month. The consumer was confused. Along the way, Sprint came up with a very simple marketing strategy. They were the first to offer unlimited minutes on their mobile phones for one price. It worked. Did Sprint somehow magically make the telecommunications trade any less complex? No, they just simplified the marketing message for the consumer. Any time you can remove the complexity of your trade and simplify your offerings for your customer, the better off you are. If you are in an industry that has dozens of different prices for essentially the same thing (or so the customer thinks), you are better off coming up with a single price and making your marketing message straight to the point.

Another big string complexity that confuses the marketplace is regulation by some outside source. If you are in an industry that has its tangle of compliance, regulations, rules and procedures, you may want to pay careful attention. High regulation has a way of choking off sales, especially when the focus of your marketing becomes what you cannot do for the customer instead of what you can do. What can you do to market your business when you have to run every advertising claim through a gauntlet of lawyers and compliance officers? If you are regulated to ensure that the consumer is protected from a bad product, tout your high quality. For instance, the USDA has regulations for the handling and processing of meat that is sold in the market. From the slaughterhouse to the meat counter at my grocery store, there are rules that must be followed to help eradicate spoilage and disease. Frankly, I'm glad the regulation is there. You could take advantage of this regulation by advertising your pristine record for selling meat in compliance with the Food Safety and Inspection Service. It becomes a quality assurance for the customer. Does the consumer need to see a compliance checklist? No, they simply need to know that you have taken the steps to get the approval of the oversight group. If you are in the financial services industry or the insurance trade, your customers don't need to know all of the ins and outs of compliance to regulations. They only need to know that their future (their investments or their risks) are safely covered. This is the marketing message: compliance is a safeguard to fraud, risky investments and ponzi schemes. If you have OSHA compliance, brag about your safety record. If you have EPA hoops to jump through, advertise your green practices. Does the consumer take time to read the fine print that your lawyers write at the bottom of your ads? No, it is part of the big ball of string. That is why it is at the bottom of the page and not at the top! If you are smart about the way you market around compliance issues, you can make a concise statement to the customer that completely sidesteps the big ball of regulatory confusion and makes them feel better about you as a company. Anytime you can focus your marketing message on quality instead of price, you should do it.

Your marketing message needs to be simple, not complex. Your customers will not give you the time of day if you try to unravel your big ball of string for them in your marketing efforts. Simplify, simplify, simplify… and if you have to mention the compliance ball, do what the people of Darwin, MN do. They put on a festival each August and call it Twine Ball Days.

__________________________

World's Largest Twine Ball, Roadside America.com http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2128

Sprint.com Company info http://www.sprint.com/companyinfo/history

Photo by Cihan Taskin
 

Comments

You mentioned using compliance as a marketing message of your quality record. What would you do if you are found to be out of compliance with an oversight group?
Posted by: Maria Lopez | 1/23/2012 12:49:07 PM
 
Maria, That really raises another issue, which is how do you correct a shortcoming and what do you do with that from a marketing perspective. The first thing I would say is you need a plan to make things right. You then need to communicate that to your customers... here is the problem, here are the steps we have taken to resolve the problem, here is why we will be a better company because we have resolved the problem. This sort of thing has been happening around board rooms for years and most of these types of solutions have been closely held corporate secrets. In today's transparent society, there is a level of expectation from the marketplace that dictates that corporations let the consumer inside the board room. At the same time, consumers do not have the patience to hear lengthy compliance arguments, they want a simple solution to what can be complicated issues. So wading through a response to a compliance shortcoming needs to be communicated in a concise and easy to understand manner that puts the consumers' at ease. Here are a couple of examples. One was a compliance (and PR) issue and the other was dictated by customer feedback. Example #1: the BP Gulf of Mexico oil rig fire. In the wake of the explosion that killed several workers and leaked crude oil onto the beaches of Alabama and Florida, BP came up with a clean up plan. Their marketing message outlined their response to cleaning up the mess. You may remember that they put out a series of TV ads that showed their employees on the beaches. These employees spoke of their commitment to cleaning up the beaches and not stopping until the work was done. Example #2: Domino's Pizza new menu items. Domino's has turned customer complaints into a successful marketing campaign. They are currently promoting their new cheesy bread by telling customers how bad their old cheesy bread was and explaining that they have made changes that are in line with the complaints they received: namely, there needed to be more cheese on the bread. They don't talk about the additional costs of adding more cheese to the bread. They don't talk about retraining their workers to make the cheesy bread in a new way. Their message is simple. We listened to our customers and we made changes for the better.
Posted by: Kevin Yaney | 1/24/2012 8:00:19 AM
 
 
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