“Look at the world around you. It may seem like
an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push – in just
the right place – it can be tipped,” writes Malcolm Gladwell at the end of his
breakthrough book, The Tipping Point. It is a great read for retailers who
puzzle why their shoppers do one thing and politicians do another. Or why some
marketing sticks and some sure fire products stall.
Gladwell is a journalist who tells great
stories. In this book he talks about the success of Airwalk when the west coast
US footwear maker rose from sales of $16 m in 1993 to $175m in 1997. And then
bombed…
What went wrong? Gladwell interviewed former
president Lee Smith. Airwalk made a critical mistake, he said. “We had a
segmentation strategy where the small core skate shops – the 300 boutiques
around the country who really created us – had a certain product line that was
exclusive to them...” And then they stopped doing that…
Smith was asked by his category manager what
happened and he told him did you ever see Forrest Gump? “Stupid is as stupid
does. Well cool is as cool does. Cool brands treat people well and we didn’t. I
had personally promised some of those little shops that we would give them
special product, then we changed our minds. That was the beginning. In that
world, it all works on word of mouth. When we became bigger that’s when we
should have paid more attention to the details and kept a good buzz going so
when people said you guys are selling out…we could have said we don’t. We had
this little jewel of a brand and little by little we sold that off into the
mainstream and once we had sold it all so what? You buy a pair of our shoes,
why would you ever buy another?”
This is the kind of journalism that reflects a
thousand stories that independent retailers have told me over the last 20
years. It reflects the daily frustrations of products and services that let
them down. But it is also a warning to themselves about paying attention to
what really works in their businesses.
People are “actually powerfully influenced by
[their] surroundings, [the] immediate context, and the personalities of those
around us,” says Gladwell. One of his first stories is about Paul Revere and
his famous horse ride to start the American Revolution. What makes it
interesting is that at exactly the same time another Bostonian rode out to warn
the colonists. William Dawes took the same message through just as many towns
and over just as many miles as Revere but failed to get the local militia to
turn out. It is not the news that matters, Gladwell argues, but the person who
tells it to us and how they tell us.
His book will give you plenty of ideas on how to
strengthen your business and your sales pitch.
It
also offers an interesting insight into the war on tobacco. It is Gladwell’s
view that: “Smoking was never cool. Smokers are cool.” Teenagers smoke not as a
result of tobacco companies marketing but because cool teenagers like to be
rebellious and impulsive and risk-taking and indifferent to the opinion of
others. His views may not change the mind of your MP – but you could
still give it a go – but they will help you to see that the simple answer may
not be true. “The world does not accord with our intuition.”For more go to www.betterretailing.com.
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