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One of my favorite weekly newsletters is written by Roy Williams of Wizard of Ads fame. If you are in sales and marketing and don’t subscribe to the MondayMorningMemo, I highly recommend it. But this week’s edition has life application beyond any advertising campaign you might be developing.
I think Mr. Williams’ message has insight on how we interpret and present ourselves to the world as individuals – not just for businesses. His question of whether to “differentiate” or “conform” can be used to to evaluate how we see and relate to others. In other words – how we get along with those around us. The person who insists on always being different and “special” might take heed that there is a cost of not fitting in. The person who always conforms to his or her surroundings might be reminded that each of us have a uniqueness accompanied by gifts that are meant to season the world around us.
But I’ll let the true Wizard speak from his observations as an advertiser.
Differentiate or Conform?Chronic problems in business are usually the result of binary thinking. “It’s either this way or that way. It can’t be both.”
Strangely, the answer is almost always “both.”
“Should I try to attract the price-driven (transactional) customer, or should I go for the (relational) customer who cares about something other than price?”
Both. Create and schedule ads that speak convincingly to the question of price. Create and schedule other ads that speak of important matters beyond price. Just don’t try to do both in the same ad.
“Should I manage with strict policies, procedures, methods and systems, or should I empower my employees to make decisions on their own?”
Both. Systematize the 90 percent of your company’s activities that are recurrent so that your employees have the freedom to humanize and customize the 10 percent of your activities that are ever-changing and unusual. A company without freedoms is a sweatshop. A company without policies, procedures, methods and systems is a country club for unproductive employees.
“Should I promote an exclusive brand and risk the manufacturer betraying me by allowing my competitor to sell that brand for which I’ve created all the demand, or should I create my own in-house brand so that I can remain in control of it?”
Both. You need the credibility of established brands to lend strength to the new brand you will introduce. Advertise both, but never in the same ad.
“Won’t this make me seem unfocused?”
No. You must get on board with proven procedures. You must also do your own thing and go your own direction. It’s not only possible that you do both, it is essential.
Mechanics across Europe began building cars in 1886 and each time they built a car it was different. More than 2,000 different garages built and sold cars one-at-a-time before Henry Ford’s 1913 introduction of the first moving assembly line employing conveyor belts. Henry popularized the concept of interchangeable parts. It was efficient. It also made him the richest man in the world. By 1923 Henry Ford was personally earning $264,000 a day. He was declared a billionaire by the Associated Press.
More than 17,000,000 Model T’s rolled off Henry’s assembly line and you could have any color you wanted as long as it was black. The inefficiency of building cars one-at-a-time forced the other 2,000 garages to sell their cars at about $2,500 apiece while the price of a reliable, new Model T was only $849.
Soon the other carmakers got on board and America became an automotive Wonderland.
But we always take a good thing too far. Fifty years later, General Motors decided to take this idea to the next level. “Instead of designing 5 different brands each year and retooling our machinery to build Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, Buicks and Cadillacs, why not just put a different interior package and grille and taillights in the same, basic car and sell that car under 5 different names?”
A Chevy Cavalier is a Pontiac Sunbird is an Oldsmobile Firenza is a Buick Skyhawk is a Cadillac Cimarron.
A Chevy Nova is a Pontiac Ventura is an Oldsmobile Omega is a Buick Apollo is a Cadillac Seville.
A Chevy Caprice is a Pontiac Catalina is an Olds 98 is a Buick Electra is a Cadillac DeVille.
On the surface, this looks like exactly the same idea that made Henry Ford rich. The problem with the “platform engineering” introduced by GM in the late 1970s is that it eroded the distinctiveness of their brands. Two decades later GM was forced to close Oldsmobile and a few years after that, Pontiac fell as well. Analysts speculate whether Buick or Cadillac will be next.
Conformity is essential or you will not be efficient. Differentiation is essential or you will not be special.
On June 4, 2010, John Wooden died a the age of 99 in Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. He was named by his peers as the greatest team sport coach in American sporting history. Humble, selfless, caring, he won 10 NCAA national championships – something he never talked about – as coach at UCLA.
He was a three-time All American at Purdue and won a national championship there as a player. He then coached high school and taught English for 11 years before entering the college ranks. During his tenure at UCLA, which began in 1948, he had four perfect seasons, had an 88-game winning streak, won 7 straight national championships, won 38 straight games in the NCAA tournament, was elected into the College Basketball Hall of Fame as both a coach and a player, and many other accomplishments.
But Wooden, a small-town country boy from Indiana never wavered in his values on the road to the bright lights of Tinseltown.
As a teacher, he began every basketball season by showing his players how to put their socks on the right way. He never talked to them about winning or losing; just living their lives with character. He designed a pyramid of success that he felt would make players victors not only on the court but in all of life. It included values like industriousness, loyalty, enthusiasm, initiative, alertness, poise, honesty, confidence, and other traits that were as much about being a good person as a good basketball player. As a coach, he didn’t bully, he didn’t cuss, he didn’t run the most sophisticated systems. “He was really more like a parent than a coach,” said Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
The theme he spoke of most is love and the great love his life was Nellie, his wife of 53 years. She was his first love and the only girl he ever kissed. After her death, he would sit down on the 21st of each month and write her a love letter that he would then leave on her pillow. Sports columnist Rick Reilly often asked him if he could use the letters as the basis of a book they could write together on making love last. Even decades after her death Wooden, with tears running down his cheeks, would say it was too recent and he needed more time
The Wizard of Westwood was an icon for coaches who are themselves icons. His players speak of him reverentially. Bill Walton said that some of Coach Wooden’s quotes and sayings – Woodenisms – that he snickered at as a player are the words he has on his walls and has taught his own children.
Just a sample of Woodenisms that will endure beyond his death are:
Ability is a poor man’s wealth.
Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.
Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.
Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.
Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. Courage is what counts.
If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?
If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes.
It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.
It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.
Material possessions, winning scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord, because He knows what we really are and that is all that matters.
Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.
John Wooden. RIP.