(Time to read this Blog is about 4 minutes)
Before we get to the main topic, here are a few things to get you thinking or smiling:
- My Biz Quote of the week:
“I’m a strong believer that blood is NOT thicker than water! The connection of ‘randomly associated DNA’ is tenuous at best.
What IS thicker than water is shared values, shared interests, shared experiences, shared intellect and shared commitments. People with whom we share these powerful commonalities are the ones that we should welcome into, and cherish within, the ‘circle of our life’!”
…Donald Cooper.
- Quick Biz Tip:
Are you innovating…or falling behind?
A UK startup, Tera Mira, has developed an alternative to conventional stretchy fabrics like Lycra and Spandex, both of which are produced from petrochemicals.
Tera Mira’s new bio-based stretchy fabric, made from seaweed, is designed for both performance and environmental circularity. It is compostable and compatible with existing manufacturing processes.
Whatever you sell, what are you doing to innovate and create the next great product, service or customer experience, to improve performance, to create world-class operational efficiency, or to be more environmentally responsible?
If you don’t ‘create the next’, somebody else will…and you’ll spend the rest of your life complaining about ‘unfair competition’.
- Fun Fact: ‘Vertebrates’, creatures with spines (humans, dogs, cows, birds, fish, etc), are only 5% of all animal life on Earth. The other 95% are invertebrates, like earth worms, bees, butterflies, snails, spiders, sponges, corals, bivalves, crabs and microscopic creatures.
There are at least 1.3 million invertebrate species. While a few of them, like mosquitoes, tsetse flies and box jellyfish, still wreak havoc on humans, most invertebrates are the pollinators, soil-makers, water-cleaners and plague-controllers in our world.
- The high cost of hosting the World Cup. Canada spent just over $1 billion to co-host the World Cup (around $82 million per game), according to the Parliamentary Budget Office.
Debit and credit card spending at restaurants and bars rose by just 3% in Toronto during the first two weeks of the World Cup compared to the same period last year. To put that in perspective, bar and restaurant spending rose by 12% in Toronto during Taylor Swift’s 2024 Eras Tour performances.
Toronto Hotel bookings during the World Cup were down 14% from last year. In Vancouver, the other Canadian FIFA host city, hotel occupancy was down 25% from last year.
- I’d like your opinion…again. ‘Thanks’ to all our Blog readers who responded to last week’s opinion poll about Pet Smart’s slogan, ‘Anything for Pets!’ I thought it should be ‘Everything for Pets’, but many of you wise folks explained that ‘anything’ makes more of an emotional connection…as in, “I’d do anything for my pet!” Great insight. I missed it completely.
Getting your business name, marketing slogan and advertising message ‘just right’ is important. So, here’s this week’s opinion poll: For over 40 years Canada’s leading Cough syrup maker, Buckley’s, has used the slogan, “It tastes awful, and it works!” I think it should be, “It tastes awful…but it works!”
If you have a preference, please email me at donald@donaldcooper.com.
- The Canadian Province of Alberta has become a Data Centre hot spot. A recent Report shows that the 33 Data Centre proposals currently seeking government approval would consume all of the Province’s entire electricity grid.
Now, to this week’s important topic:
Cooper’s ‘Back-assward’ approach to creating extraordinary new products, services or experiences in your business:
Most businesses create a new product, service or customer experience and then try to write some sort of advertising to promote and sell it. Just for once, try my ‘back-assward’ approach to creating amazing, customer-owning products, services or experiences.
First, sit down and write an ad for a product, a service, or a customer experience that would be absolutely compelling to your target customers. What would really ‘grab’ them? What would clearly differentiate you and make you the compelling ‘wise choice’ for your target customers? What would be so amazing that it would literally make you ‘famous’? What would put you so far ahead of your competitors that they’d cry, “Unfair competition”?
Sit down with a few of the best minds and hearts in your business and get creative. Think and feel like a customer. Write the ad. No whining! The ad doesn’t have to look fancy. You don’t need beautiful graphics…it’s about the idea!
Step two is to figure out how you’re going to create and consistently deliver whatever it is that you came up with…and how you’re going to do that profitably. This might mean rethinking how you do business or changing your business model. Once again, no whining.
The good news is that you won’t be a commodity anymore, so price won’t be the biggest issue for your customers…unless ‘price’ is your big idea, in which case you’re going to figure out how to be the lowest cost, most efficient producer or seller.
The world’s best example of ‘back-assward’ thinking is Henry Ford and his Model T car. In the early 1900’s hundreds of small shops painstaking built automobiles, one-at-a-time, by hand. As a result, none of them could sell a car for less than $2,500 ($98,000 in today’s money). That was a huge sum in those days, so cars sold in small numbers to the very wealthy.
Seeing the potential for the automobile to fundamentally transform society and the economy, in 1908 Henry Ford used ‘back-assward’ thinking to ask the question, “What price would I have to be able to sell a car for if I wanted to sell a LOT of cars?” He came up with a price of $849. Then, he set out to design and engineer a car and a revolutionary new production method (the assembly line) to produce that car profitably, for $849. Even better, he paid his employees a high enough wage that they could afford to buy one of the cars they built.
Did Henry’s ‘back-assward’ thinking work? It appears so. By 1920, one of every two cars sold in the world was a Ford Model T!
How can the ‘back-assward’ approach to product, service or experience development work for your business…and when will you get started?
That’s it for this week…
Live brilliantly and be kind to each other!
Donald Cooper
Donald Cooper speaks and coaches internationally on management, marketing, and profitability. He can be reached by email at donald@donaldcooper.com in Toronto, Canada.
