Newness is a problem!
Taking entirely new products to market has always been a risky business. Indeed history has shown that many new products fail. However, the efforts and promotions in trying to introduce such new things often paves the way for fast followers to ride on the back of a failed new offering and ultimately succeed.
Use “Coupling” to remove newness
Coupling is a technique that can be used to connect a new idea or product to one the markets is already comfortable with and in so doing mitigates the risk of being a novel first.
A good example of this can be found with the compact disc.
When introduced this was of course a technology first, a marvel of its day, but as well a completely new concept that may have left consumers wondering just what this was and how it could be best understood.
In fact, the CD is touted as one of the most successful technology products ever introduced. So how did this happen?
The secret is in the way it was marketed. The CD was not so much marketed as a fancy newfangled device, which nobody could understand, but instead it was sold as a better vinyl record. An improvement, or innovation to what people already well understood.
Another great example
Some years ago I was involved with the development of a new technology product to be used by telephone line fault repairers.
This product, which is today used in almost every country provides huge efficiency gains in repairing line faults, but its introduction was what really stole the market.
In marketing this product there were two options. The first was to try and sell to repairers a completely new device, with an astonishing value proposition, but none the less yet another instrument. Of course, providing another instrument was always going to be a problem, apart from the cost was the need to carry yet more tools.
The alternative approach that was used was to “couple” this product to one that repairers already used.
To achieve this we looked at the typical tool kit of a repairer and discovered a simple instrument that literally every repairman in the world carried. Our marketing approach was to “innovate” this common instrument to now include our new development into the one they all carried. In other words, we “coupled” our new development into something they were all carrying and well understood. We innovated – “changed to add value“ – a common instrument everybody carried.
The product was an immediate success and fifteen years later that success has not been surpassed.
You can do this too
There are many other examples of how this approach can be taken but unfortunately few actually understand its use. Surprisingly this concept is not even taught in marketing studies or texts, but you can be sure, coupling is a powerful way to reduce market risk.
Roger La Salle, www.innovationtraining.com.au
