the Eureka! Ranch, our focus is on the new and novel. As a result, we have a bi-polar research history. With most of our corporate clients, we’ve set records for both the best concept scores in their corporate histories and the worst.
You might suppose it would be easy to distinguish good from bad. The fact is, when you leave the world of the “known” and fully understood, it’s quite difficult.
Even now, I chase lots of wild geese. Let me tell you about two of my most embarrassing failures.
The first is Stinky the Pig. I believed in Stinky. I could have sworn Stinky was destined to become the Barbie of kiddie games. Stinky was a plastic pig that “swallowed” numerous foul items. Using a pair of electronic tweezers, players removed plastic rotten eggs, sweat socks and overripe bananas from Stinky’s innards before the timer ran out.
“But beware,” so said the hype that accompanied Stinky. “If you’re not careful, Stinky will let go a terrific ‘bart.’”
A “bart” was the powerful aroma that would emerge from Stinky’s backside. It’s what made Stinky new and different. Inside every Stinky was a can of aerosol methane that would be triggered when the timer ran out or a player touched Stinky’s sides when removing items from his digestive system. I spent thousands of dollars building models of Stinky and formulating various “bart” bouquets.
Stinky looked like this
But as an idea, Stinky stunk. I pitched Stinky to one toy company after another. No one would touch him. Indeed, Stinky and I were shown the door at Parker Brothers within seconds after the initial test blast from my prototype’s porcine hindquarters.
Toy companies were concerned parents might be reluctant to embrace Stinky and bring him into their homes. The toy companies had a point. Parents often will look the other way at a toy that’s gross or of questionable taste, but they draw the line at toys that smell up the house.
In an effort to soften the parental barrier, I tried a rosebud aroma. My hope was that parents would see Stinky as a new form of air freshener and that nine-year-old boys would consider a perfume smell equally distasteful and, ergo, appealing. My hope was dashed. In a research study, parents’ ratings improved, but kids ratings took a sudden steep dive.
I still believe in Stinky. I do. But Stinky will never earn his keep. Still, I keep thinking of ways he might become a reality. That’s how it is sometimes with newborn ideas. Your love blinds you to the realities of their market potential.
Then there was the time I aspired to revolutionize the hot dog business with an item I called the Sea Dog.
My premise was simple—consumers believe hot dogs are bad for them. They think fish is good for them. So they should love a fish tube steak. What a concept!
The ad copy put it this way: “New Sea Dogs are the ultimate in healthy hotdog-shaped products. They’re made from fresh fish blended with low-fat tartar sauce for an absolutely delicious, absolutely different, absolutely healthy hotdog-shaped taste sensation.”
New and different, all the way. Sea Dogs contained no rat hairs or beef lips. But while the idea may have been good for a grin, it was bad on a bun. My dogs were revolting to consumers; the idea of a hot dog skin stuffed with fish held little public appeal.
The lesson I learned here was less costly than the one I learned from Stinky. This time, consumers tested the concept. And while Sea Dogs were being tested on the client’s behalf, 24 other ideas were also being run past consumers. Of those, five ideas were identified as having serious market potential. The Sea Dog wasn’t one of them.
WHAT SEPARATES NEW AND DIFFERENT GOOD FROM NEW AND DIFFERENT BAD?
So what went wrong with Stinky the Pig? What made the Sea Dog dead meat? Didn’t both qualify as new and different? Didn’t they satisfy the Eureka! rule calling for great ideas to contradict history?
Indeed, they did. Both ideas stretched boundaries of one sort or another. But the factors that made them stand out weren’t meaningful to consumers. A wicked good idea needs to be meaningfully new and different!
“Hear reason, or she’ll make you feel her.”
– Ben Franklin
But how can you tell the difference? I continue to this day to search for an easy way. The best answer I have so far is the Merwyn Research system (named in honor of my dad—Merwyn Bradford Hall).
Merwyn is an idea-evaluation system created by the Eureka! Ranch team that evaluates how obvious and self-evident your idea is to potential customers. It accomplishes this by benchmarking the idea against some 50 success factors that were identified from an analysis of 4,000 ideas. The success factors were identified by reverse engineering what separated ideas that were successful in the marketplace from those that weren’t.
Merwyn is a tough, disciplined tool. It doesn’t take into account assumptions, implied understandings, or previous experiences in its assessment of the idea you’re trying to sell.
The 50 success factors cluster into three overall “laws” that I’ve branded as the Three Laws of Marketing Physics. These are the three most important factors when evaluating the potential for success of your new idea.
Law No. 1: OVERT Benefit
Or as customers might put it, “What’s in it for me?”
A benefit is what you promise that customers will receive, experience and enjoy in exchange for their commitment to your proposal, product or service. The customer in this case can be your boss when asking for a raise. It can be the father of your sweetheart you’re seeking to marry.
Law No. 2: REAL Reason to Believe
Or as customers might put it, “Why should I believe you?”
What evidence is there to convince customers that the overt benefit you’re promising will actually be delivered?
Law No. 3: DRAMATIC Difference
Or as customers might put it, “Why should I care?”
Is the combination of benefit and reason to believe something the customer cannot realize in any other way?
Each of these laws has a huge impact on success. Research indicates that all other factors being equal:
• Having a clear Overt Benefit triples your odds of success.
• Having a real Reason to Believe doubles your odds of success.
• Having a Dramatic Difference triples your odds of success.
Note: For an in-depth discussion of theses three laws—how to identify them, how to articulate them, and how to create them—read Jump Start Your Business Brain.
MERWYN IS TOUGH—VERY TOUGH—BECAUSE IT’S A TOUGH WORLD.
Because most ideas fail in the real world, most ideas fail in Merwyn
