Printed
with permission from TCI
Management Consultants. A group of senior-level management
consultants, offering strategic planning and marketing services
to a wide range of public and private sector clients.
Ice
to the Eskimos - How to Sell a Product Nobody Wants
by Jon
Spolestra
HarperBusiness, New York, 1997
ISBN 0-88730-851-1
This is an interesting book, containing some useful insights
into marketing products that have little or no market appeal.
Jon
Spolestra was a marketing consultant to, and later the President
and Chief Operating Officer of, the New Jersey Nets, generally
acknowledged at the time (the late eighties/early nineties)
to be the worst team in the National Basketball League (NBA).
By any measure, the New Jersey Nets were bad: they had the
worst performance of any of the 27 teams in the league,
the lowest gate receipts, and a terrible reputation for
having uninspiring, less-than-mediocre, drug-addled players.
By NBA standards, as well as any other reasonable business
measures, the Nets were a bad product.
Spolestra's
story is about how he helped the Nets turn this situation
around to become a business success. Because the owners
were unwilling to spend extra money on good players, he
was unable to make the Nets a financial success by improving
the quality of the team. Stuck with a bad product (i.e.
the team itself) he had to think of other ways to market
the Nets games.
He did
this by essentially repositioning the product and focusing
on the game experience rather than the team itself. Reasoning
that when opposition teams came to town, the fans had an
opportunity to see the stars on those opposing teams shine,
he started marketing the quality of the competition. He
also combined other elements into the overall experience,
such as motivational speakers like Tom Peters giving a talk
to the fans before the game (packages which sold like hotcakes
to corporate clients) and barbecue dinners included in a
slightly enhanced ticket price. These strategies to augment
and reposition the product paid off: the Nets started selling
out games, developing loyal fans who would re-subscribe
year after year, and became financially successful. The
team was still lousy, but the franchise became a successful
business.
Based
on this experience, Spolestra developed an approach to marketing
a 'product that nobody wants'. He calls this approach "jump-start
marketing" (an appropriate term I suppose for somebody
with a basketball background). The basic principle of jump-start
marketing is:
"People
don't buy certain products for a reason. It doesn't happen
by accident. Jump-start marketing isn't taking a product
nobody wants and cramming it down their throats. It's taking
a product nobody wants and repositioning, reshaping or reconfiguring
it to make it something that a buyer can't refuse."
(p. 212)
Spolestra
articulates 19 principles or ground rules of jump-start
marketing, which are:
1. You've
got to want to clip on the wires and turn up the juice.
In other words you and your team must be highly motivated
to try new things to reposition your product.
2. Don't
fool yourself into thinking you're somebody else - accept
the realistic limitations of your core product or service,
and build from there.
3. Increase
the frequency of purchases by your customers. No matter
how poor your current product or service, you must have
some customers or clients. One key strategic dimension that
you should be thinking about is how to augment and reposition
your product in order to sell more to this group.
4. Get
the name and address of the end user of your product. This
is fundamental. If you sell through a distributor, you may
lose the chance to get direct feedback from customers (as
well as the opportunity to directly sell to them) unless
you have ways and means of finding out who they are (such
as names and addresses from warranty cards).
5. The
janitor isn't going to lead the charge for new customers.
A focus on jump-start marketing must come from the top.
6. Create
big change with little experiments. Spolestra advocates
trying little experiments to augment the basic product -
initiatives that don't cost much time or money but that
may pay off big dividends in terms of customer reaction.
He suggests that what he terms 'terrorist groups for innovation'
(a group within the company that wants to pursue new innovative
marketing ideas) be formed within the organization to pursue
these ideas.
7. Don't
wait for a new product to bail you out - use innovative
marketing now.
8. To
get your ideas approved by the boss, prepare as if you were
defending yourself in front of the Supreme Court. When you
and your team have innovative jump-start marketing ideas,
make sure you do your homework in order to get them approved.
Even these little innovations have to be justified in terms
of the potential return-on-investment.
9. Only
sell a product that the customer wants to buy. See point
#15.
10.
Get the feel for jump-start marketing outside the ivory
tower. In order to really get a feel for what the customer
wants, and develop ideas as to how the product or service
could be repositioned, senior management must get on the
front lines with the customer. This requires them manning
the ticket desk occasionally, getting behind the counter,
going along on sales calls, etc.
11.
Only target people who are interested in your product. Don't
waste resources trying to spread your (repositioned) message
to all people - identify your key accounts and most likely
customers, and go after them.
12.
Don't let research make the decision for you. Spolestra
is frankly suspicious of market research:
"Research can fool you all the time.
It can particularly fool you when major decisions are to
be made. With major decisions - where somebody has to be
sold on something - big professional research firms are
brought in for credibility. A ton of money is spent. It's
understandable that more credibility is given to these huge
research reports than to the free research.
When
all the big research dollars have been spent, however, it's
time for some free research before the final decision is
made. Free research is going to your customers and talking
to them one-on-one. If you talk to enough of them, you'll
get that very clear mosaic of what your customers are feeling.
That type of research will not fool you." (p.161)
13. Make your client a bona fide, real-life hero. The emphasis
in this point is to ensure that your largest immediate customers
(in Spolestra's example, it was the people responsible for
purchasing season's tickets for large corporations) look
like a hero in the eyes of their superiors (which of course
makes it all the more likely that they will be customers
again - and probably larger customers -next year). In support
of this, he would produce an annual report for the corporate
customer showing the value of the season's tickets, the
number of exposures that the company would have realized,
etc. Copies were then given to the immediate customer who
could then pass one along to his or her boss.
14. Run interference for your budding superstars. People
who share a passion and a talent for jump-start marketing
are invaluable, and should be nurtured and encouraged within
your organization.
15.
Make it too good of a deal on purpose. This is a fundamental
point. Spolestra maintains that you must find some way of
repositioning or reformulating your product or service to
make it something that your potential customers simply cannot
refuse. With the New Jersey Nets, one of the ways they did
this was to package a barbecue family dinner and drinks
with the game. They managed their costs so that the dinner
alone was a bargain for the ticket price, to say nothing
of the game being thrown in as part of the deal. Tickets
were sold by the thousands, the games were standing room
only, and the franchise made lots of money. Again, we see
this approach of de-emphasizing the core product (the quality
of the team), and augmenting and repositioning an enhanced
product in its place.
16.
Feel free to butt into other departments. Jump-start marketing
cannot be confined to the marketing or sales department
alone. Because it involves (sometimes drastically) reformulating
the product or service, it must cut across the various departments
in the organization. The people who do this may run into
problems, and this is where rule # 14 comes into play.
17.
Differentiate between big and little customers. Spolestra
maintains that you cannot afford to treat your customers
like a democracy. You largest accounts deserve more time
and attention than your smallest accounts (and probably
should be somehow rewarded for being your largest accounts).
18.
When the going gets rough, increase expenses that are not
fixed, like salespeople. Spolestra views salespeople on
commission or contract (assuming they can do their job)
as almost a guaranteed investment - they will return more
to the organization than they will cost. Accordingly, the
more the merrier, and especially in times of financial difficulty,
this non-fixed expense should be increased.
19.
Jumping higher than you think you can is possible with jump-start
marketing. In his final point he emphasizes that jump-start
marketing is fun, and that an organization will likely be
surprised at how much can be achieved through the application
of these principles. So, he suggests, set the bar high and
go for it!
While
sports is the industry from which most of the examples in
the book are drawn from, this is most definitely not a sports
marketing book. There are many good observations and insights
through Ice to the Eskimos, and it makes for a very entertaining
and enjoyable read besides.
The
above summary has been provided to you compliments of TCI
Management Consultants
