I just read about a company called KidsRx that is taking Mary Poppin's admonition to add magic to medicine a step further. It is a pharmacy that allows kids, primarily, to customize their medicine. They can tailor the color, flavor (think cherry, vanilla, bubble gum, etc) and form (liquid, gummy bears, lollipops, etc) of their prescriptions. "Candy drugs" some call it. People are predicting that it might start a larger trend and that folks like Walgreen's or Target may start allowing this personalization. In the meantime, KidsRx is accepting insurance and shipping worldwide.

I love how personalization and "mass customization" can be used in an existing infrastructure (the corner pharmacy is centuries old) to solve a real problem: getting kids to like to take their medicine.

Just when I was convinced that my growing addiction to Twitter (www.twitter.com/jenniferdavis) was going to kill my desire to blog forever, I think of some things I want to talk about in more than 140 characters. So, I am once again returning to familiar territory here on the blog.

I have been doing some consulting work for a non-profit group called Westside Praise, in which I am a part. We just released a CD of original a ccapella praise and worship music, including a song I wrote, and I have been working on some guerilla marketing techniques. It has proven to be a great project in which I can experiment some some new marketing tools that I haven't yet had a chance to use professionally.

First off, I created a website using Google Apps. Although not being as flexible or powerful, as a ground-up development, it was easy and fast and accomplished our goals. I then expanded this with our own mini-site widget, created at Sprout. I can definitely see me using this tool again. These little widgets are super flexible, easy to create, and really encourage viral marketing among fans. With a click of a "share" button, viewers can add it to their profiles at Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, and a host of other sites. Very slick!

For the CD duplication and distribution I am using CreateSpace, an Amazon company. Their website and customer support was a little clunky, but the end result has been good and the whole process certainly went smoother than if I had done it all myself. In addition, because of their relationship with Amazon.com, the CD (and eventually the corresponding songbook of sheet music) will be available for sale on their main site, as well as the AmazonMP3.com site without additional submissions. Have I mentioned that I love print on demand!

There are more things in the works, but I can tell you that starting to market this CD has reminded me how much I enjoy marketing and how exciting it is to see measurable results come from the use of new technologies. The CD has been for sale for less than 24 hours and although I won't disclose how many have been sold so far, let's just say the word of mouth that we are enabling with these tools is working!

I plan to feature more case study information about this project on this site in the future, which I hope to be a help to others wishing to kick-start a marketing program on a budget.

I read Seth Godin's new book Tribes. In it, he makes some very provocative points about the fallacy of quality.

"Quality is not only not necessary, for amny items it's undesirable. If we
define quality as regularly meeting the measured specifications for an item,
then quality matters a lot for something like a pacemaker. It doesn't
matter at all for a $3,000 haute couture dress.

More fashion = less need for quality."

I found this statement very interesting. If something is more fashionable, it doesn't have to be "six sigma." More art. Less science.

I wonder if there isn't a graph that would show that people's expectation of quality rises as commoditization takes over a product. It becomes less unique. Less differentiated. And as a result, the marketplace raises the standards of "sameness." Predictability is favored over excellence. The restaurant franchise wins out over the brilliant chef. The factory pumping out millions of widgets wins out over the inventor.

Seth's point, and one that he doesn't advocate alone, is that quality is something the "factories" used to value, but that in many ways we have evolved beyond it. With the use of technology. With a growing discontent for sameness. We are demanding leadership and sometimes (or ALL the time) leadership is messy.

Makes me wonder how much we as leaders of companies, organizations, families, and product lines should emphasize quality, in its traditional definition. Maybe more effort needs to be put into true differentiation and a value that extends beyond predictable mediocrity.

An innovative company in Brazil is offering a subscription service targeted to male gift-givers (surprise, surprise) giving them an easy way to send gifts of chocolate, flowers, etc for a low monthly fee. Check out the link above if your Portguese is pretty good or see the Springwise article. I am wondering what other things could be done on a subscription service.

Keeping up with holidy, birthday and anniversary correspondence is a natural. Jack Cards makes the chore (I mean priviledge) of sending personalized cards easier by sending you the cards in advanced, pre-stamped and addressed, so that you can zip off a personal note and everyone will wonder "how does she do it?". What if this was combined with a tiered service that sent along gift certificates in the cards or better yet, allowed you to categorize your address book into close family and friends, colleagues, and casual friends allowing you to tailor the gifts to each (keeping track of what you got them in previous years). Combine it with a 24x7 concierge service and you text a message or call them with immediate needs (flowers for a friend who just lost a grandparent, for instance) and it starts feeling like having a personal assistant.

What if you took it even further. What if there was anniversary plan that combined a time share with this gift subscription, to create custom luxury get-aways for a couples' wedding anniversary? You could tie this into the "themes" of each anniversary. You know the ones that say you give paper or clocks on the 1st anniversary and the 50th is gold? They could tier the offerings based on location and budget. I'd love the 3rd anniversary luxury trip to Italy to celebrate leather and glass which are traditional gifts for this anniversary or the trip to Japan on the 12th anniversary for silk and pearls.

Sometimes you see products or ideas and immediately think "Brilliant! Why didn't I think of that?" Here are a few that I think are great.






The final submission is not a product, but rather a crowd-sourced service of sorts. When we were choosing names for our children I found a very useful site where strangers had gone to the trouble to rate and comment on names, ranking them according to perceived attractiveness, intelligence, athleticism, and other criteria that might come back to haunt the kids later. I found it very insightful and I really valued getting the feedback early before we made a mistake. Now, you can get strangers to provide your image consulting in much the same way. Your very own focus group. Sadly, the site and service are only in German, but what an opportunity for someone in the States to do something similar (or to utilize their high school German). Check it out at checkyourimage.com.

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."
- Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

"I could never start or run a company. I don't have the killer instinct. I'd rather observe and criticize those who do."
- said jokingly by a friend (a business strategy professor) at a recent dinner party

Perhaps I am letting this entrepreneurial bug bloom into a full-blown infection, but I have a growing concern about business professionals. That as a group, we don't know much about business.

I think there are some great marketeers out there (I consider myself one of them) that fail to realize the importance of sales channels, innovation, and who have never talked to a customer to find out why they bought and what would make them recommend the product or service to a friend.

There are great product designers, who are still designing products. Widgets who do some function or the other (usually designed by using the rear-view mirror of pre-established categories which can be analyzed by third-party researchers and are supported by big name consultants), but not solutions that fundamentally change industries or have a real meaningful impact on the people who use the products.

There are fantastic accounts, quality managers, documentation control professionals, IT managers, and "do-ers" all over the company that define what "doing the right thing" is for their respective functions, but may miss the mark entirely in terms of understanding how their role fits in to the value chain that customers are willing to pay for.

However, having these guys read a book or attend a presentation where the executives try to define the business levers of the business doesn't quite solve the problem. What people need is real experiential learning. In order to know how to run a business (and most everyone in an organization does to some extent as they influence the outcome of the whole), people should run a business.

I think every academic environment should have an entrepreneurship class where people have to develop a real product and sell it to real customers by the end of the course. Not talk about it. Not read about others (although this can be useful), but really do it.

Google and 3M both have well publicized programs where they let their engineers spent some portion of their time on undirected research and development aimed at bringing new innovations to the company. I am wondering if the same thing couldn't exist in other functions. What if a company's marketing team had to spent 10% of their time marketing a non-profit to learn guerilla techniques and how to write more passionate copy? Perhaps everyone in roles which naturally add more structure and process to the company should spent time in sales roles trying to navigate through those layers of progress once they are entrenched, and likewise, someone in sales had to spend some time helping to design the new product introduction process to ensure quality products at the end of the line.

Entrepreneurism teaches a pragmatism, a sense of urgency (impatience), and prioritization that would be quite a culture shock to many professional business people. Is it "killer instinct," or is it just business?

Seth Godin wrote a post about price pressure. In it he proposes, that if people are asking for a lower price, you are not providing value and providing that value is your choice. Choosing the path of lower prices and commoditization is your alternative choice. I found this thought provoking.

This could be perceived in contrast to a previous post I did some time back about embracing the challenge of commoditization. That said, I think there is a big difference between internally looking for improvements and new ways to provide value in an increasingly competitive market and marketing yourself externally as the Arco of your segment. You can look for efficiencies, while delivering value for the money you are charging. Stay ahead of that curve (on both fronts) and you have a great business.

Springwise wrote about a clothing rental business called Transitional Sizes. For a monthly fee they rent clothes to women who are changing sizes (due to pregnancy or weight loss) anywhere from size 4 to size 26. You can have clothes that fit each month, and when they don't you turn them back in for new ones. The website looks a little too eBay (come on guys, you can take some better photos of the clothes), but is a good concept.

I'd love it if this were combined with a MyShape.com style clothing store, so that they could pick out a wardrobe for you that would match your styles and measurements, and the season and weather in your part of the country. At the end of the season, you return the package in exchange for some new pieces.

I love the subscription model as it builds loyalty and referrals with every compliment, plus it takes the guesswork out of shopping. Trust me there are a lot of women with disposable income that don't like or want to take the time to shop!

My mom, like many others I suppose, was a home economics major in college. She taught consumer education in schools. I just learned about a Beverly Hills store that should prompt a "why didn't I think of that" response from her. It is called Fashionology LA and just like Build-a-Bear, this store focusing on having tweens make their own clothes, designing them on kiosks in the store. I get the impression that this is more embellishment than hard-core tailoring, but still...it is home economics at the mall.

I could see this extending beyond t-shirt embellishment to simple sewing projects where kids could practice designing something truly unique. I loved that kind of thing when I was a kid and I had the advantage of a home economics teacher in my house. Most kids today don't (including mine), yet would love the creative outlet that this could be.

The folks there at Fashionology LA have built in some great viral marketing tools to extend their reach (they take pictures of the girls in their new creations and email them to them so that they can share them with their friends - brilliant!). Something to think about for your own business, how to let the customers do the talking!

We love movies and books that are based on reality. No matter how fantastic or unbelievable the events in the tale may be, it instantly has credibility if it begins with "this story is based on a true story." We are immediately drawn in. Real truth, even if sensationalized or dramatized a bit, is so irresistable.

In contrast, I give you the financial forecast. For those of you not involved in these types of things, financial forecasts are models that people build, usually in Microsoft Excel, that show projected revenue, profit, costs, and the like in an effort to track the progress of a business, to make decisions regarding strategy or tactics, and to communicate to others about the business (whether they be management, shareholders, partners, etc).

The thing about a financial forecast is that the future is unknown. A fact that we sometimes like to ignore. We can not predict the future. And as they say in Princess Bride, "Anyone that tells you different, Princess, is selling something."

So, because the future is unknown, you need to make assumptions. More like "make up" assumptions would be more accurate, as all forecasts are works of fiction. Those assumptions about customer acceptance, revenue growth, cost reductions, or the like have a huge impact on your perception of the business opportunity. They can have a huge impact on the short-term decisions that might be made. Assume a healthy economy and low product return rates and you can convince yourself to spend more in marketing, only to find out later that these assumptions were horribly wrong and the money was wasted. Assume that 20% of your products will be sold with a unique feature and if it turns out being 50%, you could find yourself with product shortages and unhappy customers. You could be off by a little or a lot. Assumptions are a killer indeed.

The best assumptions are ones that have a high probability of occurance. That high probability based on some past perforamance. If you always have a slow first quarter of the year, it safe to assume that next year will be no different. If you have a trend line extending back into time that says that revenue is growing, you have a reason to believe it will continue. Distrust step functions. There has to be reasons to believe.

It is just like the movies and books. We are drawn into the story if we believe it is based on truth. Same with financial forecasts. This is true in business, but also in non-profit organizations, churches, and even personal finance.

So, how do you create good assumptions:

1. As I have said before, trends trump step functions. In other words slow and steady trend lines are more probable than things that immediately get better overnight, like someone flipped a switch. If you are assuming a step function improvement, you better know exactly what switch is getting flipped and be confident in the outcome.

2. Understand and measure the key levers of the business for real-time feedback. If your business is dependent upon selling service contracts along with product sales, you should know what your attach rate should be and what it has been. You should be able to see the actual attach rate trends as frequently as is reasonable and should share them with the teams involved. You should know where your costs are and the boundary boxes in which things should stay for the business to be profitable. As the good folks at GE taught us, "what you measure, you improve."

3. Everyone is in the business. This means giving your employers and partners visibility to the key metrics of your business will make you more successful, as choices are made at every level of the organization that greatly impact the success of the business and the factors you are measuring. Now, I am not talking about disclosing financial information inappropriately or giving away company secrets. I mean teaching all the players in the game how the score is kept, how to read the scoreboard, and their role in putting points on the score board. Remain open for anyone on the team to suggest a better play to call to reach the goal, once they understand the rules of the game. These kinds of conversations are the basis of true teamwork.

"We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys." - Eric Hoffer

What are you playing around with today and might actually be the next big thing for your business?

Years ago I worked for a software company and while we were developing software, one of the programmers came up with an innovative prototyping tool. We showed this tool to some other folks who loved it and over time, that tool became the best selling product of the company. Something that wasn't on the roadmap at all when the company began.

I wonder how many businesses start like this. GetSatisfaction.com, an innovative service that brokers companies and their customers, started as a way to handle support requests for the sale of excess and obsolete marketing items from defunct internet start-ups in the early 2000's. Twitter started as a side project and has become huge.

What are your side projects, again that you are playing around with, that should be moved to the core of your effort?

I recently read about a Swedish company called Coming Through, which retrofits Honda Goldwing motorcycles to be "tow trucks." After all, they can get through traffic and are beefly enough to haul most passenger cars. Rather than starting with a tow truck (of the more traditional style) and engineering it down, I am sure they started from the need and build a solution from there. The design is cool and I could see cities having whole fleets of these to deal real-time with stalled cars on freeways that gunk up morning commutes.

Following the recommendation of a colleage and an unability to get an appointment with our normal primary care physician, we went to ZoomCare this weekend. If you are in Portland I highly recommend you check out their services. In any case, their approach illustrated 10 ways that innovators can change industries. I really hope my dentist, my hairdresser, and other service businesses I frequent are reading this.

1. Let your customers buy/schedule online
Go to http://www.zoomcare.com/ and pick your appointment time. So simple. Again, why can't I schedule a hair appointment like this? We scheduled my husband's appointment after hours and it was confirmed via email (our choice) by the next morning. The doctor had read the comments that we had put on our appointment request prior to the appointment.

2. Let customers be spontaneous
Their website includes a real-time graphic indicator of the wait time in their two offices. This is handy for estimating how an impromptu appointment will affect your day. There is no wait if you have an appointment, but if you don't, you can see how busy the place is without leaving your house.

3. Seize a niche
ZoomCare is in the gap between urgent care centers and traditional doctor's offices. You don't get to pick your doctor. They don't treat heart attacks, strokes, offer kidney dialysis, or deliver babies. They are a healthcare solution for folks that are generally healthy, but need periodic treatment.

4. Publish a price list
It is crazy to think that ZoomCare's website might be the first fee schedule I have ever seen in healthcare. Normally, insured patients don't even know what their healthcare is costing them (besides their co-pay and then the statement that they receive showing what the insurance has paid). This doesn't lead to good consumer behavior. It is fee schedules like ZoomCare that make me think that I could accept one of those catastrophy-only healthcare plans, where I'd pay out of pocket (but before tax) for office visits, etc. The fees didn't seem too bad and even if all of us came into the office each month, the fees would be less than I am paying in insurance today (and my employer pays most of it, so I am only seeing a portion of the actual cost).

5. Don't underhire your front-line staff
ZoomCare hires front-desk staff that have college degrees and diverse backgrounds. Where other doctors offices have clerks, these guys are more like cruise directors. I suspect the hiring managers would love their office associates had experience in a circus, speaking multiple languages, and had degrees in diverse fields. After all, they are the face of the company and should be a reason people come back. The doctor was great, too!

6. Treat your customers like intelligent, rational human beings
My husband was shown in his diagnosis by the doctor (with the use of a video screen). Then the front desk person walked him through the treatment handout at the desk and had a bag of information ready for him when he left.

7. Partner seamlessly
Zoomcare accepted our insurance (it was listed on their website as one of the plans they accepted). They emailed (or appeared to email) the prescription to the pharmacy of our choice. My doctor's office by contrast, made me call into their separate prescription line and I had to provide the phone number and address of the Costco pharmacy that I wanted them to use, something they could have Googled as well as I could.

8. Don't partner when you can provide
The office itself had a whole little store front set up where they sold over the counter treatments and other items that their customers might need. It reminded me of the little stores set up in hotel lobbies for those who forgot their toothpaste. If the patient needed aspirin and some cough drops, they could get them right there and avoid yet another stop along the way.

9. Don't underestimate the power of a happy customer
We were told at Zoomcare by someone (who was impressed by the follow-up phone call he received to ensure he was feeling better). We have gone on to tell no fewer than 12 people (and that was before this blog post) about the service.

10. Make your customers beg for more
We already wish they had an office closer to us (it was worth the drive, but could be more convenient). The ZoomCare brand could certainly expand to a whole range of health services. I wish they had dentists/hygenists on staff (although my dentist's office practices would make them a great candidate for running a ZoomCare Dental office). They could expand to vision care. They could expand to an online over-the-counter medication store with home delivery. They could expand to home health care of other types. The positive brand they have built can expand out to new endeavors. Perhaps ZoomCare will expand to a neighborhood near you!

A former colleague of mine and I were chatting today and I was prompted to pen these two laws that in our mutual experience apply to businesses or projects of any size or scope.

• The Law of Customer Service: Friendliness and customer empathy play crucial roles, but in the end it is all about setting expectations. Making and keeping promises, is the key.

• The Law of Analysis: Anyone can make an Excel forecast look good. In the end, it is all about the accuracy of your assumptions. There must be robust and defensible reasons to believe.

I'd be interested in your experience with these laws (or related concepts). In my experience, there is no use fighting these laws...the laws will win.

This might be the first of a whole constitution of laws that I might compile. I would love your contributions.

"The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky." - Solomon Short.

At Intel and other large companies a lot of effort is spent on creating and fostering the right ecosystem of "fellow travelers" who have complementary technology offerings that together create markets, foster solutions, and refer each other to their customer bases. This is the network effect in application, but is also a lesson for each of us about the power of network effects, tangential legacies, and unintended consequences.

There is a group of companies and ideas that get pulled along in the wake of a business success. How many companies today make their living from selling iPod accessories? Case in point. Some are more obvious than others, but if there is a business success, you can point to dozens of related industries or companies that benefited. The invention of the car lead to fundamental changes in our national character, but also created huge fuel distribution networks, after market services and products, and a whole set of media outlets dedicated to the product category. Even something a simple as the invention of wall-to-wall carpet, meant the creation of carpet laying jobs, carpet cleaning services, and a host of home applicance innovations. No one would buy a Roomba today if there wasn't modern floor covering options. It is always a wise business strategy planning tool to think about who else would succeed if your business succeeded, and look for active ways to partner.

As the quote I started with illustrates there are even connections made to unsuccessful intiatives. No one remembers who battled in the War of 1812 (the US and the UK), but there isn't a Fourth of July celebration that doesn't include the playing of the epic anthem. This is an important lesson when facing disappointing results or an outright "train wreck" of failure. Who would benefit from this failure? Who would be best served by the education gained by this experience (however painful)? In the case of the composer, the war itself was an asset. Your failure can be your greatest asset as well, depending on your ability to learn from it.

Usually, people complain when their rooms are too cold, but not visitors to Sweden's ICEHOTEL. Here they take temperature to an extreme and make it a dominant feature of the hotel.

The hotel is built entirely out of a ice, down to the plates and glasses. I have friends who have been. I have friends who want to go and have brainstormed how to make an ice glass for their Pepsi just to mimic the experience.

I, for one, hate being cold. It would be incredible to see, but I don't think I would even think about staying there. Brrr....

I wonder if there is any other feature of a hotel (rather than the dirty bedspread and the broken ice machine in the hall) upon which hoteliers might differentiate a destination hotel. What if every room had a walk-in mini-bar appropriate for entertaining? What if the room service menu included take-out from 30 area restaurants? What if the bathrooms were larger than the sleeping rooms and included Japanese soaking tubs, a steam shower, and an extensive collection of aromatherapy lotions and bubble bath? Hmmm...

I ran across an interesting post today about charging overweight people who smoke more for their health insurance. A provocative concept, to be sure.

This is what car companies have done for years. Why not other types of insurance or other industries.

There is risk inherent in any business that might be mitigated through pricing strategies. The total cost of goods sold for most companies includes not only the cost of the physical item they are selling, but also the warranty expenses (which can make or break the profitability of the business in certain categories). What if customers who showed a lower risk for needing technical support in the future (by either their historic return rates, technical proficiency as measured in some test, or some other measure), would get a deal on their purchases of products? I bet the test alone would encourage people to try to fit it themselves a little more aggressively.

Taking it a step further and bundling services with products based on this model. What if car insurance was bundled in the price of the car? The safer the car, the less the insurance.

The next natural step is to turn risk-profile based pricing into use pricing. You pay for the car and the insurance by the mile that you drive, for instance.

But this is a new twist...original art subscriptions. For $150, The Present Group will send you an original art piece (could be a painting, could be a sculpture). If you are still in the gift-giving spirit, they do have gift subscriptions.

They are quite upfront that the art might not suit your taste, but they remind you that it is "cheaper than what one might pay in a gallery." I think this might be another way to say that if you like one piece a year, you are probably getting your money's worth.

Makes me wonder why more things are not sold in subscriptions, if something as personal as art can be distributed in this way. I'd subscribe to a shoes-of-the-month club if the price were right and I had a little control over the style. I bet I am not the only one.

Why doesn't a jewelry company charge a single young woman for the year and then send them gift on the dates they specify (their birthday, etc)? Technically it would be a gift to herself, but the element of surprise might just add enough delight to make the idea work!