Simply Better: Winning and Keeping Customers by Delivering What Matters Most by
Patrick Barwise, Sean Meehan
"By the early 1990s, 6 percent of the U.K. population owned a cell phone..." (more) SIPs:
generic category benefits, brand consideration set, nonstandard drivers, market sensing, disciplined creativity (more)
Financial Times, September 16 2004 "...this is a welcome book that sheds light on a glaring deficiency in contemporary business culture."
Book Description In this “radically conservative” book, the authors advocate a “back-to-basics” approach to marketing that replaces the relentless quest for differentiation with a relentless focus on these types of basic customer needs
The authors’ research shows that most companies have been ignoring the basics for too long.
At the heart of the authors’ approach is a view of why customers buy what they do. Barwise and Meehan argue that marketers must understand what customers want from the entire product or service category. So rather than focus on new luxury attributes for a specific car —marketers need to understand what basic needs customers have for automobiles in general (ie: safety, handling, etc). Once they figure that out—they need to deliver on those basic needs better than everyone else.
First Sentence:
By the early 1990s, 6 percent of the U.K. population owned a cell phone. Read the first pageStatistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
generic category benefits, brand consideration set, nonstandard drivers, market sensing, disciplined creativity, formal market research, direct customer contact, customer insight, customer responsiveness, direct learning
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Crucial messages need not be complex. The simple message of Simply Better is that in single-mindedly pursuing differentiation, many companies have failed miserably in their stated goal to be "customer-focused". Except for relatively rare instances, customers care little for the addition of unique features and clever innovations. What they really want is the reliable delivery of "generic category benefits" - products that *work* and reliable services that take place on time. Although companies often dismiss this as "table stakes", the data show that businesses fail to deliver these basics far too often.
If time is of the essence, it is my editorial duty to let you know that you will find most of the important ideas of this book in the authors' MIT Sloan Management Review article, "Don't Be Unique, Be Better." Barwise and Meehan do not entirely dismiss the conventional wisdom that competitive positioning and differentiation require companies to offer customers something they cannot find elsewhere, but they do insist that this has distracted companies from maintaining a true customer focus and from delivering the essential category benefits valued by customers. The only area in which differentiation is clearly the right way to go, they argue, is in your advertising and marketing messages. Elsewhere, they urge companies to think "inside the box" by refining, perfecting, and delivering on the essentials that customers badly want. The failure of companies to do this has created deep customer dissatisfaction.
The good news in this is that organizations that adopt a true customer-centric perspective can generate a low-risk, high return opportunity. To help your business reach this state of genuine customer-centricity, the authors first explain how customers see your brand and make purchase decisions. They then explain how to convert that understanding into a clear view of what customers really value. These are the actual (and potential) generic category benefits. The book also examines the management challenges to creating these benefits.
The last chapter sums up by providing six rules to becoming "simply better": Think category benefits, not unique brand benefits; think simplicity, not sophistication; think inside, not outside, the box; think opportunities, not threats; for creative advertising, forget rule 3; think immersion, not submersion. This last principle refers to the authors' discussion of important arguments in favor of managers getting out of their offices and directly interacting with customers. This kind of immersion works because it avoids distorted images of customer reality, it helps filter indirect data such as market research, it acts as a source of storytelling and anecdote, and it spreads the results of both learning and the act of learning.
If you decide to read this book, rather than the excellent article-length distillation, you'll find some other fine points that often go well beyond the article. Contrary to the usual concentration on measuring customer satisfaction, Barwise and Meehan make a strong case for measuring and monitoring the drivers of *dissatisfaction*. They add to what seems to be a recent trend by emphasizing the risks and drawbacks of flanking strategies that require strategic innovations, arguing that it is usually better to be an excellent imitator. Chapter 6, "Customer-Focused Mind-Set", sets out a refreshing (though not truly original) view of "fast and right processes and a pure air culture". These honor the practices of "hard work decision making", "accountable experimentation", and a culture in which challenge and debate are seen as forces for good throughout the organization, and where no one expects an easy yes to proposals.
Simply Better: Winning And Keeping Customers By DeliveringWhat Matters Most is the collaboration of Patrick Barwise (Professor of Management, London Business School) and Sean Meehan (Martin Hilti Professor of Marketing and Change Management at IMD, Lausanne, Switzerland). A straightforward guide to what customers really want, and how to attract and keep them - not with silly bells and whistles, or trivial differences between brands, but rather by offering the solid benefits of good service, on-time delivery, and quality products. Chapters address the challenges of striving for innovation, warn against the impracticality of "inside-the-box" advertisement, the importance of distinctive advertising (far more so than having a distinctive product!), and much more. A solid treatise, recommended especially for business managers and owners striving to improve the bottom line through higher quality and better customer reputation.
I do not agree at all with all the five star ratings that the book was given on this page. This book is a mediocre book at best with no sound theoretical or practical advice to anyone practicing marketing. What the authors basically say is this: differentiation is a fancy thing; you should first be aiming at providing the basics for the customer. Those who can provide all those basics, which they call something like 'overall category benefits' will arguably conquer the customers' hearts (and arguably wallets).
On the practical side, I am sure the writers did not see a lot of customers in their lives as suppliers of any merchandise. Provide the customers with all the category benefits, you will en up with the question: how much the price? Give it free to the customer with all the customer benefits, you will face the quetion: do you provide free delivery? This is not a way to approach marketing. This is advocating commoditization.
In reality, you should design your offering in such a way that your target segment will have nearly no choice but purchasing from you. And this is differentiation. The rest is an obvious British academic drive: publish something novel or perish. But the idea of providing TOTAL basic category benefits is not only an old idea but in today's market place a very dangerous one too. If you want to go bust, provide the customer with all they need and ask for and forget about profits and capital accumulation. God will love you.
I did not like the book at all. For those who may like to pursue this subject further, I reccommend the great work by Fred Crawford and Ryan Mathewsy called "The Myth of Excellence". What they say in this wonderful book is that you do NOT need to be very good in all aspects of so-called "category benefits". The authors base their work not on circumstantial evidence as in Simply Better, but some sound research and provide "conclusive evidence of the futility of trying to be excellent in all aspects of a commercial transaction-price, product, access, experience, and service. Instead, the strategy for your products and services should be to dominate on one element, differentiate on a second, and be at industry par (i.e., average) on the rest". And they go on saying that so long as you are number one on one particular 'category benefit', then it is perfectly okay to be average on others as long as your customers know specifically where and how you are superior and world-class.
So, good luck to you if you decide to pursue the advice given in Simply Better and simply prepare yourself for not so good financial outcomes for your company. Because trying to be the best on all category benefits means to be mediocre in your category.
There have been a lot of marketing books that tell you you need to have unique products, somekind of gimmick or whatever. This one is different. The theme of the two authors is that the old standby rules still work, and work better than the new gimmicks.
The authors talk of a study done by Shell Oil. What people want is to refuel at a reasonable cost; be sheltered from sun, wind, and rain; and pay and exit quickly. They expect the pumps, and the bathrooms to be clean and working. The customers are not looking for a great cappuccino. No body believes that the super additives being advertised as brand differentiation does anything that the additives that every one has in their gasoline.
I'm reminded of the Warren Buffett investment strategy, invest in companies you can understand, whose revenue and earnings are growing, and don't change too often.
I then like the way the authors say that for advertising, forget these rules. To be heard in today's market you need distinctive, out-of-the-box communications; inside-the-box standard advertising won't be heard.
In the course of my work I am required to read many Marketing books during any given year. Since I often have to recommend Marketing books to practicing managers I tend to divide the world of Marketing books into three simple categories. There are books that are:
1. Useful basic text books and reference books that cover the entire gamut of Marketing and are useful for those about to embark on their marketing careers. In Marketing the classic examples would be Kotler's series in Marketing Management in all its many editions and variations, or for European audiences the late Peter Doyle's Strategic Marketing Management.
2. Useful reference guides for those familiar with Marketing but who feel uncertain in certain aspects of the profession, such as pricing or event marketing.
3. And finally there are books that argue a definite point of view about the profession. These are the books I am most likely to recommend to seasoned marketers since they invite reflection on current behaviors and challenge existing mental models. Simply Better falls into this last category of books.
In truth I rarely manage to read an entire book in this last category. Too often the point of view would have been better expressed (if less lucratively for the authors) in a business journal article. I have already grasped the major thrust by the end of the second chapter and the rest is just padding. Simply Better I read cover to cover.
That is not to say that you need to read to the end to understand the main tenet of the authors' argument. You can grasp that easily within the first few pages. It is cogently summed up on page X of the Preface:
"You need not offer something unique to attract business. Customers rarely buy a product or service because it offers something unique. Usually, they buy the brand that they expect to meet their basic needs from the product category - gasoline or strategy consulting or mortgages - a bit better or more conveniently than the competition. What customers want is simply better - not more differentiated - products and services."
And if this paragraph seems to you in any way to defy conventional wisdom - then you will understand why this is the book that I am now recommending to seasoned marketing professionals.
Simply Better is worth reading cover to cover because it deals in depth with the vexing but essential paradox of Marketing: If Marketing is so conceptually easy to understand, how come it's so difficult to do properly?
That so many companies find it difficult to deliver something better to customers is powerfully demonstrated by the authors' inclusion of data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which depressingly show that in the last 10 years - a decade during which customer satisfaction has been more has been written about, talked about, and even measured than in any previous time - customer satisfaction is now lower than it was in 1994 - and has been lower than the 1994 figure for the entire decade. If Simply Better can spur marketing executive thought and preferably action to do something about this - then its publication is indeed timely.
Barwise and Meehan carefully dissect the problems and the myths that have plagued good Marketing practice and have deflected attention away from the fundamental task of delivering what the customer wants. They recommend that it is time to refocus thinking "inside the box" instead of on fanciful flights of fantasy "outside the box". They point out that customer contact means more than taking the odd one of two out to sporting events. To learn what customers really really want, requires purposeful, and sometimes uncomfortable and even embarrassing visits by executives (including non-marketing executives) to see their products and services in action.
The authors have been careful to back up their thesis with data from research and many anecdotes. The engineering company Hilti perhaps suffers from a little bit of over-exposure here (although the anecdotes from Hilti are particularly memorable) - and Hilti's inclusion is understandable given that Sean Meehan is the Martin Hilti Professor of Marketing and Change Management at IMD. At least Hilti provides a much needed offset to perhaps an over preponderance of examples from the world of business-to-consumer marketing as opposed to business-to-business marketing - but that is hardly a fault peculiar to this book alone.
If there were one issue I really wish they had given a lot more space to, it is the difficulty in making the delivery of total customer satisfaction "happen" in very complex large global organizations. Here the issue is one of alignment - aligning large numbers of marketing professionals who are not only scattered around the world but additionally charged with executing a very wide variety of tasks that real Marketing demands including strategy and planning, executing and enabling the marketing and sales organization to communicate the promise. These professionals in turn are required to get alignment from the rest of the organization such that the entire organization delivers on this promise. Barwise and Meehan are aware that the "grind and vision" that they quote from Jim Collins and Jerry Porras' Built to Last is part of the requirement to get such alignment, but in the Chapter they devote to this important topic they place too much faith in corporate values as the solution to this problem. Perhaps it is because they have acknowledged tha this issue is a "so-called soft" issue (p26) that they have dismissed it too easily. Most marketing professionals in large global organizations (and especially those in business-to-business and high tech companies) certainly do not experience the difficulty and need for organizational alignment around the delivery of a better customer value proposition as in any way "soft." Rather, it becomes the sole focus of their "daily grind." But perhaps this is a topic for a book all on its own - and one I hope tha Barwise and Meehan write about - if only because they write so eloquently.
In the meantime, I can only applaud Barwise and Meehan for confronting us Marketing professionals with the uncomfortable truth - if we ever thought we were customer oriented, we need to think again. Barwise and Meehan highlight the areas that require immediate re-thinking. I am sure that all customers everywhere hope that the resulting re-actions will result in positive benefit ... at last.
'Common sense' and 'obvious' are great compliments for a book like this. These charges are often made when powerful ideas that no-one else has come forward with are well argued and clearly presented - and that is the case here. This book cuts through so much of the overly complex nonsense that is written about marketing and presents down to earth, pragmatic ideas that can be acted upon immediately. The case examples are terrific and the style is very reader friendly. All in all a great and useful read. This should be on every marketer's bookshelf.
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The simple truth, September 14, 2004
A straightforward guide to what customers really want, October 6, 2004
A less than average book on marketing, November 16, 2004