Gabor George Burt

300 million infatuated consumers, and counting

Besides a business sparking infatuation, can an infatuation give birth to a substantial business?

You bet! Twenty years ago European football was largely a seasonal sport. There were fall and spring seasons with well-defined breaks in the summer and winter months. Today, it is played virtually year round, and the sport enjoys immense popularity worldwide. A key driver of this development was the English club Manchester United, which rightfully calls itself “the world’s most popular football team.” What ManU realized was that they were sitting on a gold mine. They had a captive audience that was fanatical about their football club. They needed to turn the fan base of a seasonal pastime into a year-round entertainment and lifestyle platform. And that is exactly what they did. In its annual list of the world’s most valuable sports teams, Forbes ranked ManU not only as the richest football club in the world but the most valuable team in any sport—pegged at a cool $1.8 billion market value, with yearly revenues of $500 million. In 2010 the club earned the top spot for the second year running, followed by the likes of the Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees, both valued at $1.6 billion. According to David Gill, ManU’s chief executive, the club boasts more than 300 million fans worldwide, of which more than 130 million are active members: 80 million in Asia and 10 million in North America, indicating that they have created a truly worldwide appeal. And the club’s television channel is shown in over 190 million homes.

These are simply amazing figures! How many companies can you think of with this sort of fan base? It is an immense global community whose members’ self-perception and world outlook revolves in large part around their devotion to ManU.

Interested to learn more? Check out my book, Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life and companion Slingshot website.

In company of visionary friends: Scott Belsky

This series brings to you the most thought-provoking excerpts from my chat sessions with visionary personalities, as recorded for the Slingshot Living radio show. The conversations reveal valuable wisdom, playful anecdotes and useful advice on how to continuously overstep perceived boundaries for success in your business and your personal life.

This segment features an excerpt from my inspirational chat with Scott Belsky, author of the national bestselling book Making Ideas Happen and CEO of Behance.

Gabor: My whole premise with Slingshot is to get people to think about what they can re-imagine. In other words, what perceptions or limitations can they challenge or overstep. What do you like to re-imagine?

Scott: I think I like to re-imagine the assumption that creative people and teams are disorganized and that’s sort of a badge of honor. I think organization is the competitive advantage in the creative world and I really think that the creative industry should be reorganized to better empower the actual people that make our lives interesting—the people that come up with the ideas and the incredible design and art and music and photography and all the other stuff that permeates advertising and media and entertainment. I just think that it’s an incredible opportunity to really help organize and empower creative people and teams. So that’s my challenge and goal.

I invite you to listen to the entire chat with Scott Belsky here.

Jay Leno and his lovable Nano

Ever wonder about the role that your offering’s price plays in causing infatuation? It's actually a strategic component at your disposal. As part of the right combination of attributes, both pricing extremes can help to induce infatuation. At one end, a low strategic price point can be an infatuation enabler to a mass of new consumers who consider access to your offering as a life-enriching experience. This is the case with the Nano, the world’s most affordable car.

In fact, the Nano’s low price point has stoked an entirely new fan base. Here are two entertaining examples as evidence:  

Via RushLane:

Tata Nano has a fan following of 1 million strong on its Facebook page and has combined forces with MTV to launch India's first Social Road Trip called Nano Drive with MTV.

And via autoblog:

Jay Leno recently released the Tata Nano episode of Jay Leno's Garage. The famous American TV show host purchased the tiny transport machine for himself, and the humorous clip documents the car’s journey all the way down the production line in India to the Big Dog Garage in Los Angeles. Leno rolled out a whole passel of Bollywood dancers to mark the occasion and even abandoned his traditional denim uniform for an elegant Indian suit. Watch the clip above!

You can read more about Tata’s Nano, including a case study, in my book Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life.

Capturing the imagination of your customers

So how do you mold infatuated consumers? What do you need to provide in order to capture their attention, their imagination, and their affection at the same time?

As a way of exploring the answers to these questions, consider your current offering. If your consumers were asked to name their ten favorite purchases across all products and services, in your estimation how many of them would include your offering on their list? If you don’t think that your consumers cherish you enough to be in their top ten, how can you expect to infatuate them? After all, consumers have a capacity to bond closely or identify themselves tightly with just a handful of offerings. So if you want to infatuate them, your competition is all the other offerings that are blocking you from being in their top ten. And if you are in their top ten, why not aim to be number one—the offering that your consumers consider their most favorite, the most indispensable? Because once you are at the top of the list, your strategic possibilities open up immensely. You now possess the full attention and hearts of your consumers, and they will follow you across market spaces and industries. The connection becomes so strong that they will link themselves not just to your offering but to your brand behind the offering, and therefore, they will be receptive to consuming anything you offer that is consistent with their brand expectations. Moreover, they will be your brand ambassadors toward nonconsumers.

More on this very theme awaits you at the Slingshot website and in my book, Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life.

In company of visionary friends: Sheryl Connelly

This series brings to you the most thought-provoking excerpts from my chat sessions with visionary personalities, as recorded for the Slingshot Living radio show. The conversations reveal valuable wisdom, playful anecdotes and useful advice on how to continuously overstep perceived boundaries for success in your business and your personal life.

This segment features an excerpt from my inspirational chat with Sheryl Connelly, in-house Futurist at Ford. 

Gabor: What direct importance and relevance do you see in understanding external trends—when traditionally people might say we [Ford] are in the business of making cars so let’s just try to understand the car market?

Sheryl: The last thing Ford Motor Company needs is another car aficionado. I mean everyone that works there loves cars. And so subject matter expertise in anything related to auto is well covered. What I help them to do is that they focus their passion on whatever discipline in which they operate. I like to bring in things that may change their point of view. In Slingshot you talk about how important it is to look for spaces that are adjacent to what you do or cross-disciplinary approach, to make sure you have a diverse point of view—and that’s what I try to do with the trend work—is to kind of say here are some things going on in the political arena or here’s what’s happening on the economic environmental or front. I’m not exactly sure what that means for your department, but let’s sit down and talk about it. Let’s collaborate and see if we can change the way we do things. It becomes kind of a springboard for discussion.

I invite you to listen to the entire chat with Sheryl Connelly here.

Don’t let clothes spoil your fun: Nakations

How can you create legitimate lifestyle or workstyle enrichment in a fast-changing, continuously evolving environment in order to achieve ongoing relevance? You have to be bold enough to be market driving rather than market driven. Being market driven is no longer enough. You need to create your own market space that offers compellingly new enrichment to consumers rather than trying to react to your unpredictable and elusive environment.

In my book Slingshot, I share an example from the travel industry of a company clearly looking to be a  market-driving enabler of a lifestyle trend that may very well become too irresistible to ignore: nude travel. The example cites a news article about German holidaymakers being able to indulge their love of nudism by taking to the skies nude on special flights.

Related, here is the latest interesting development in this bulging marketspace, via Reuters:

Nude tourism appears to be growing in popularity. A survey of U.S. households with income of $50,000 or more last year showed that 17 percent of respondents saw a visit to a nude or clothing-optional resort as extremely or very desirable.

Those figures were up from 12 percent a year earlier, according to the Portrait of the American Travelers Survey of 2,539 households by the Ypartnership/Harrison group.

Nudists also appear to be seeking out a higher-end experience far removed from the more affordable rustic tent camping and family-oriented sing-alongs by the campfire of previous generations, experts say.

More on the theme of lifestyle and workstyle enrichment awaits you at the Slingshot website and in my book, Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life.

[Image via Wikipedia.]

In company of visionary friends: Evan Farmer

This series brings to you the most thought-provoking excerpts from my chat sessions with visionary personalities, as recorded for the Slingshot Living radio show. The conversations reveal valuable wisdom, playful anecdotes and useful advice on how to continuously overstep perceived boundaries for success in your business and your personal life.

This segment features an excerpt from my inspirational chat with Evan Farmer, visionary artist and television personality.

Gabor: You are what I consider a consummate multi-platform entertainer. You do a lot of things and you do them well. What do you like to re-imagine the most? What are you most passionate about when you pick your projects—or when you look to do things in a new way to connect with people?

Evan: When I’m picking projects I go to the most primitive form of myself. And I consider myself to be very fortunate—either for guidance or to have been born that way—where I have always been very in touch with my meaning in the moment....I can almost tell you at any given moment where my creativity is headed. Right now as we speak it’s in writing....I never did very well in English class growing up and it was never something that was of interest to me, but that’s where my passion is. I think it comes out very organically. I wish I could put my finger on it and guide it sometimes, but I almost have to just go with what’s sitting right there in front of me. It’s almost like being tethered to something I have no control over.

I invite you to listen to the entire inspiring chat with Evan Farmer and my co-host, Jesse Dylan,  here.

Your pricing as an infatuation lever

What role can your offering’s price play in causing infatuation? It’s actually one of the strategic components at your disposal. As part of the right combination of attributes, both pricing extremes can help to induce infatuation. A low strategic price point can be an infatuation enabler to a mass of new consumers who consider access to your offering as a life-enriching experience. A high strategic price point, on the other hand, can act as an aphrodisiac to those who can afford it. After all, a high price is linked to a perception of status and quality.

A good illustration of this perceived link between high price and infatuation can be found in a recent experiment by the California Institute of Technology. They orchestrated a wine tasting among inexperienced wine drinkers in which $90 bottles were labeled alternatively at their real price and at $10, while $5 wines were marked at their real price and at $45. During the tasting, the brain activity of participants was measured to see the level of pleasure they felt. According to Yahoo News, the results showed: “The part of the brain that reacts to a pleasant experience responded more strongly to pricey wines than cheap ones—even when tasters were given the same vintage in disguise. Apparently, raising the price really does make the wine taste better.”

Your pricing options don’t stop here. What about removing it altogether? In 2007 the Irish rock band Radiohead sold its newest album over the Internet without a fixed price, for whatever consumers were willing to pay. This gimmick had an infatuating effect not only because of its novelty but also because it was empowering for consumers: it put them in complete control of exactly how much they thought something was worth, how much they were willing to spend on it. The move was subsequently copied by restaurants, hotels, and cinemas with the effect of raising consumer traffic and publicity. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the average price consumers ended up paying of their own volition turned out to be just slightly less than the provider’s target price for the offerings.

More on this very theme awaits you at the Slingshot website and in my book, Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life.

Do you still “like” Facebook?

While there is no such thing as a perfectly and continuously satisfied consumer, there is such a thing as an infatuated consumer. As with personal relationships, infatuation occurs when consumers first come in contact with a product or a service that deeply resonates with them. Consequently they become temporarily blinded by any shortcomings or possible defects, and are in a trance of positive affiliation.

But no matter how much you are able to infatuate your customers at first, it will eventually wear off. Which gives you the golden platform to continue to innovate, to try to delight all over again, and to stay relevant to consumers.

Take, for example, a recent report on Facebook via Yahoo! News:

Are you just not as drawn to the social network comings and goings of your friends and family as you once were? If so, you're not alone: According to a new poll by Reuters and research firm Ipsos, roughly one-third of Facebook users are feeling pretty "meh" about the social network these days, and the sentiment seems to be growing.

The survey focused more on the potential monetization of Facebook than current user habits, but the data was telling in several ways. According to the poll of over 1,000 Americans, 80% of Facebook users have never purchased a product or service because of what they saw on the site, meaning that whatever advertising techniques companies are currently employing to grab your cash simply isn't working.

More on this very theme awaits you at the Slingshot website and in my book, Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life.

[Image via BirgerKing.]

Consumer infatuation vs. entitlement

Any well-received offering first finds itself in an Infatuation Interval™ at which consumers just can’t get enough of it. However, this interval is by nature fleeting, and with few exceptions, it gives way to the Entitlement Period™, in which consumers feel entitled to all of the offering’s perceived benefits and demand more.

Notice I said above that Infatuation Intervals turn into Entitlement Periods—with a few exceptions. What are these exceptions? There are certain offerings that may hold an almost permanent infatuation for consumers. Many of these derive from a strong childhood association that may stay with consumers for life. For example, always eating Heinz ketchup with your favorite meals as a child could spark a lifelong attachment to it, which would explain why someone as an adult would be reluctant to travel to any country where it is not available. That is a pretty strong and potentially permanent infatuation.

A lasting infatuation could form during adulthood as well. A certain offering grabs you just the right way at the right time to keep you continuously infatuated. The interesting thing with such lasting infatuations is that consumers actually become very territorial about the offering, but with the opposite connotations of fleeting infatuations. With the latter, infatuation transitions to entitlement, when the consumers start to demand improvement. With the former, consumers feel entitled to the permanence of their infatuation, and hence they demand that the offering stay unchanged. So any company must understand the risk of upsetting its permanently infatuated consumers when looking to alter its offering. Just ask Coke about this, when it tried to tinker with its one-hundred-year-old formula in 1985, causing a backlash from outraged consumers and forcing the company to leave it just the way it was, under the evocative label Coca-Cola Classic.

More on this very theme awaits you at the Slingshot website and in my book, Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life.