First there was the ice cream man, then there was the book mobile, then came the popular food truck craze, and now the other day I came across a humorous new business on wheels – Who’s Your Daddy?
What service do they provide?
Well, the main service they provide is 24/7 on-site DNA testing and drug testing. This can be quite convenient for companies or courts that require the services and the employees or clients that they need to send to such a service (many of whom might be dependent on public transportation to get around), and on their web site you can check to see where you’ll find their RV’s (in much the same way you can check on food trucks).
I have a feeling the bulk of the revenue comes from the drug testing side of the business, but the catchy ‘Who’s Your Daddy?’ slogan on the RV obviously get the bulk of the attention.
It is an interesting business model choice for this DNA testing portion of this business and puts it in an interesting competition with the low-cost self-service take home DNA testing kits that you’ve been able for five years now to purchase from companies like Identigene at your local drug store, ironically in most cases, right next to the condoms and other birth control options.
Obviously the two business models can easily co-exist and the RV business model that Health Street is using will take a lot of effort to scale up, but it highlights that you can take a relatively small part of your business, do something interesting with it and use that creative endeavor to boost the more boring part of your business that drives most of your sales.
It also highlights that just because someone is already selling something, doesn’t mean that you can’t also enter the market and be successful, as long as you have something that they don’t – better location, different business model, better service, or whatever your competitive differentiation might be. So don’t give up just because someone is already doing something, just find a differentiated approach and execute with excellence.
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Now you might be asking yourself…
What does resonance mean to you?
Achieving innovation resonance is about going from 1+1=2 to a state where 1+1+1+1=7, where the sum of the valuable parts in some new potential innovation suddenly becomes greater than the individual components and value may be created that you might not have even anticipated. When you reach this state of innovation nirvana, the power of resonance pushes your invention over the line from invention to innovation, and adoption becomes widespread. People start talking about, spreading it like a virus, and ultimately supplementing your marketing efforts in much more effective ways.
One of those most fun, visually appealing vehicles on the road has to be BMW’s re-release of the Mini. I don’t have one, have only ridden in one once, but whenever I see one driving around, it makes me smile. And if you have any question about whether or not the Mini has achieved a level of resonance (at least in the USA and probably elsewhere), then how would you explain the photo of the Mini on the left that shows you can buy a Mini to drive Ken and Barbie around in? Can you buy a convertible Chrysler LeBaron for Barbie to drive around in? No, but you can buy a Fiat 500, another car achieving resonance here in the USA.
The iPod Nano is a great example of the rise and fall of innovation resonance. The iPod took three years to take off (right about the time the iPod Nano was released). The trigger for innovation resonance was the Windows version of iTunes (Value Creation), combined with the launch of Apple Retail Stores (Value Access), combined with the iconic advertising campaigns (Value Translation). The iPod became a phenomenon with sales peaking in 2008 right after the iPhone release. Sales have been falling since then, but during this decline came the September 2010 release of the 6th Generation iPod Nano – which resonates to this day – so much so that Apple replaced the design six months ago to protect the market for their upcoming iWatch.
Old School vs. Old School
All of this inventory has been tagged for individual sale and is there every day, just in case the person who wants that size, color, style, whatever, walks into the store ready to take it home today.
Apple Stores are a hybrid between the two. Accessories are out on the floor boxed for individual sale, while iMac and iBook computers, iPad tablets, and iPod mp3 players are all out of the box and display in droves for customers to try out and hopefully purchase. Then if they do, the box appears from the warehouse in the back.
This has led to the rise of what physical retailers rail against, the concept of showrooming. If you’re not familiar with what showrooming is, it is the pattern of behavior where potential customers come into a physical retail store, explore the product, try it on if necessary, and then leave the store and buy the product online from a competitor like Amazon.
Describing push marketing is easy (or at least it should be). Push marketing is the traditional marketing and advertising seen everywhere. Push marketing starts with the product or service, identifies the features or benefits that potential customers will find most compelling, and then utilizes targeting and segmentation to “push” carefully crafted marketing messages out via a variety of advertising, sales, and social media channels to the most likely potential customers.
It feels like you can’t go a day without hearing someone or some publication mention Facebook, Twitter or some other component of the social media universe. The fact is that social media has invaded the public consciousness and people are now more suspicious of someone who doesn’t have a social media presence than someone who does. People are starting to judge others based on their Facebook or LinkedIn profile they ever meet them, and expecting companies to answer the tweet they’ve sent them or the question they’ve posted on their Facebook wall within the day, the hour, the minute (believe me the expected pace of response is accelerating).
In addition to facilitating and optimizing the group dynamics and interactions inside the organization, a Social Business Architect specializes in identifying the different parts of an organization that need to interact with groups of people outside the organization, how those parts of the organization should work together to communicate with people outside the organization, and helps to identify and implement communications solutions that connect the organization with the target groups so that a meaningful connection and conversation can be built, and then helps to manage the conversations and the information and learnings from their outcomes for the benefit of the organization.
3. Fun – And don’t forget the power of fun. One of the ways of connecting people to your community is to have something fun for people to do. Recognize people for their participation in your community in fun and different ways to keep them interested and engaged, and have some fun reinforcing the ethos of the community.
This is where 