Here is an excerpt from my diary of a global traveler
Despite my business travels to more than 40 countries, I have lived half of my life in the US and Germany and have frequently found myself buying breakfast cereals in each of those countries. A comparison of the breakfast cereal aisles produces some very interesting results that we can apply in global business.
Let's visit an American supermarket first. The breakfast cereal aisle is long and filled with an immense variety of products. Each of these stands proudly on the shelf in a large box with a colorful design. But pick up one of those boxes and you will find that more than half of its contents is air. The packages are nowhere near full. What is going on here? Why do Kellogg's and the other cereal manufacturers waste so much of the valuable shelf space of the supermarkets with the inflated-sized boxes?
Let's think about how shoppers buy such products. What they don't do is to carry a bowl of milk and a spoon down the aisle, randomly opening packages to taste-test them. But the choices are enormous. So what they do is "buy with their eye". In other words, they respond to a large eye-catching package which serves as an advertising billboard for the product. As you walk down the aisle you can almost hear the packages pleading "Buy me, buy me." This effect works on every customer but is especially relevant where it comes to children's cereals.
Now let's go to a German supermarket. The aisle is much shorter. The choices are far fewer. The boxes are smaller but fully packed. And in most cases there is an emphasis on yellow and brown package colors which are reminiscent of the grains inside. The images on the packages are not those of cartoon characters with names like "Snap, Crackle and Pop". In fact, in Germany the most popular brand of cereal bears the name of a person who has a doctor title. Any breakfast cereal made by a doctor must be good!
So through this little example we see that in an environment of high competition, products are sold not only on the strength of their content but also their packaging and presentation. Effective marketing goes far beyond what's inside the package. We must look for every possible means to differentiate core product from its many competitors.
Let's leave the supermarkets and look at two more examples of how we need to differentiate ourselves from the competition through image. One case comes to us from the mobile phone industry. The European mobile phone industry developed with the use of SIM cards, those small chips which can be inserted into a telephone that defined the carrier and phone number that will be used. In US phones that information was hardwired into the mobile units and is referred to as CDMA. I won't go into the technical differences between the two since they are not relevant to our discussion. But the important point is that the phones can only talk to their corresponding networks and not to the other. CDMA was an exclusive use in the US for quite some time. That hindered European phone manufacturers from developing the US market. Then one major US carrier developed a GSM network across the US. A major European manufacturer of GSM phones decided to do a markets test in Austin, Texas to determine the viability of acceptance of their products in the US.
The test identified two major annoyances about the European manufactured phones. One thing was that they were too small! Texans reported that the number buttons were too close together and the phone felt flimsy. The other complaint was that the phones looked boring. The manufacturer produced its phones in two colors: teal green which is a muted mixture of green and blue and anthracite gray which is essentially the color of a lump of coal.
When the results came back to the engineers in Europe, they refused to take either suggestion seriously observing that smaller phones are universally better and that people don't care about what the phone looks like so long as it performs well. This latter point played a major role in the failure of this company to ever be successful with a mobile phone product in the US market. Ironically, Nokia released at about the same time 21 plastic slip-on covers for their phones in a variety of colors and styles. Reminiscent of the Swatch, this enhancement was particularly attractive to younger cell phone users who could make a fashion statement with their phones. Once again, packaging matters.
My final example comes closest to home. The product we most need to present well in business is ourselves. When I train people about effective presentation skills were coach them about how to behave the meeting, I often sense an unstated reluctance caused by that fear of failure that manifests itself as stage fright. If we are to be successful we must subdue this monster. And the earlier in our careers the better. There are many books and seminars out there that will help you with this task. The point I want to make is merely that quiet people don't get promoted. You must speak up in meetings, volunteer to lead project teams and give high-profile presentations. That is where your light shines. So if you are struggling to keep the demons of fear under control, make it a priority right away.
Herb