I lately wrote a blogpost in German on the poor chaps in advertising. I argued that advertisers are always coming too late with their creative ideas. If the business model they are going to advertise is bad they can’t do much anymore. They are just too late to fix the problems in the business model.

I made the provocative statement that you either have to be extremely creative to make good advertising for bad products or you must be schizophrenic.

Manifesto for good advertising (and good business models)

The blogpost spured an interesting discussion. One advertiser sent me an ad from Bob Levenson, a guy from an agency called DDB. The ad is from the late 1960s. It is a manifesto for good products and against tricking people with advertising for bad products.

I want to share this ad with you since it is so true also for bad business models. If you have a bad or dated business model you have to change or die as department store Karstadt did. And it is not the fault of a bad economy or because of your competitors.To use the words from the ad. You die from your own skilled hands. It is the fault of your strategy skills.

Here comes the original text of the ad. Thanks to Serge Deville for the text.

DO THIS OR DIE

Is this ad some kind of trick?

No. But it could have been.

And at exactly that point rests a do or die decision for American business.

We in advertising, together with our clients, have all the power and skill to trick people.

Or so we think. But we’re wrong.

We can’t fool any of the people any of the time.

There is indeed a twelve-year-old mentality in this country; every six-year-old has one.

We are a nation of smart people.

And most smart people ignore most advertising because most advertising ignores smart people.

Instead we talk to each other.

We debate endlessly about the medium and the message.

Nonsense. In advertising, the message itself is the message.

A blank page and a blank television screen are one and the same.

And above all, the messages we put on those pages and on those television screens must be the truth.

For if we play tricks with the truth, we die.

Now. The other side of the coin.

Telling the truth about a product demands a product that’s worth telling the truth about.

Sadly, so many products aren’t.

So many products don’t do anything better.

Or anything different.

So many don’t work quite right.

Or don’t last. Or simply don’t matter.

If we also play this trick, we also die.

Because advertising only helps a bad product fail faster.

No donkey chases the carrot forever.

He catches on. And quits.

That’s the lesson to remember.

Unless we do, we die.

Unless we change, the tidal wave of consumer indifference will wallop into the mountain of advertising and manufacturing drivel.

That day we die.

We’ll die in our marketplace.

On our shelves. In our gleaming packages of empty promises.

Not with a bang. Not with a whimper.

But by our own skilled hands.

Werner Näf had a very simple idea. If your water pipes at home need to be replaced why not renovate them from within? So he invented the LSE-System. It can clean the pipes from the inside using special equipment, dry and then recoat them and by the way save up to 75% in costs and hassle.

I got lately fascinated by firms that invented new solutions to solve a problem that we all know and where the traditional way was quite cumbersome. I introduced Mr. Krinner in a last post to you. He invented the first stable Christmas tree stand and the ground screw. He just solved an obvious problem.

So did Mr. Werner Näf. If you ever lived in an old house you know the problem of rust in your water pipes and of loss of pressure and water quantity due to congestion by deposits of rust and limescale. If you are the owner of an

old house you know the problem of leakage and high costs associated with replacing the pipes.

The traditional way is to replace the pipes. That means heavy construction work with tearing out the pipes from the wall, lot’s of chiselling, no water for weeks and if the heating system is affected no heating. The traditional way is to solve a big problem with a slightly smaller problem. Usually, you postpone the replacement up to the last minute due to the big hassle involved.

The young Näf had just founded his own engineering office when a bank approached him to find a new solution to the replacement of water pipes. The bank had several properties with old, clogged pipes that needed to be replaced. The bank looked for alternatives but there were not any. So Mr. Näf looked into other industries how they solved the problem of corrosions. The way was simple: Sandblast the surface and then apply an epoxy resin as a coating. Unfortunately, that worked only on large structures and the resin was toxic so it could not be used in water pipes. After two years he found the right, non toxic epoxy resin and developed the machines to sandblast the pipes, remove the debris and coat the inner pipes. He called it the LSE-System.

So the next step was to convince a customer. Mr. Näf found a municipality that needed fixing of their pipe problems at a public swimming pool. The alternative for the municipality was to rip the old pipes out of the walls so they choose the less bad alternative of using an unproved new method, the LSE-System how Mr. Näf labeled his product. That was in the late 1980s and the pipes still work today.

Due to its excellent value proposition of saving time, money and lot’s of hassle, the installed base passed already in 2006 the 500.000 mark. Although the company has only 40 employees together with its franchisees it employs 700 people in Europe alone.

And in 2000 Mr. Näf extended his idea of pipe renovation from water pipes to floor heating systems. And again, it is a great success since the alternative of replacing the floor heating pipes is not a pleasure at all!

The lesson learned in this case is again, that a good innovation starts with a clear value proposition for customers. It is all about getting a job done for the customer. It is the utility of the service that matters not the product itself.

(inspired by an article in the NZZ in German)

Often one hears that everything is already invented and that only incremental improvements are possible. Well, tell this to Mr. Krinner. He has invented two products that just changed the way how jobs are getting done. He invented the Krinner Christmas tree stand and the ground screw.

Probably, you never heard of Mr. Krinner and his company. But if you have no problem to put up your Christmas tree straight and safely, than you probably use his tree stand. His tree stand is not high tech, it just solves the problem to erect a Christmas tree easily and with high stability.

The second innovation by Mr. Krinner is as simple as the tree stand: The ground screw. What the heck is this? You probably have never heard of this product category before and right, Mr. Krinner invented this product category. But you know the problem Mr. Krinner solved: Fixing something in the ground.

Once he wanted to secure a garden umbrella and a windy dryer in his garden. To do so, he needed a spate to dig the hole, he had to get cement, mix concrete, cast the footing and fix the fastener in the concrete and then wait……. until the concrete is hard.

The Krinner Ground Screw: Just getting its job done

He found the traditional procedure too exhausting and wondered how he could get the job done easier. After some thoughts, trial and error he came up with the ground screw. A very simple idea. Instead of digging a hole and then fixing the footing with concrete, you just drill a big screw into the ground. It is easy to install and easy to remove. So it is also environmental friendly.

What once started with a simple, easy and economical solution of fixing a garden umbrella, is now being used for countless applications: “from securing garden umbrellas, windy dryers and fences; to carports, flag poles and traffic signs. Solar panel systems, advertising boards and even outdoor buildings for events and expositions are quickly and easily erected and removed.”

The credo of Mr. Krinner is “to find solutions for the Consumers daily chores” and not invent products for the sake of it. He does not do classical market research. He believes that when you demonstrate your new product to a potential customer and the customer says: “Wow, unbelievable”. Well, than you have hit the right point.

Lessons-learned: Job to get done

The lesson learned from Mr. Krinner is very simple.

• Do not ask your customers what new products they want but look which job you can solve for them in a better and more economical way.
• Segment your market according to the jobs that people are trying to get done. Understand that job not the product category. The market for ground screws was previously a market for spates, concrete and construction workers. If you think in along these market categories you could not have found the job of fixing something in the ground.
• And then help them to get that job done as efficient and economic as possible. Don’t create with the problem solving new problems.

(article inspired by Brand Eins “Das geht: Einfach schrauben“)