All projects: Gel, Good Todo, Games, Uncle Mark, Bit Literacy
Customer experience case study: Infinite Flavors Ice Cream
Let's say you run an ice cream shop. It's called Infinite Flavors Ice Cream, and it's fantastic. The day you open your doors, word spreads around town that this is a new, different, and great experience. Customers come to the window, ask for any flavor they can think of, and behind the scenes your highly advanced ice cream flavor-mixing machine brings out the exact match. No one has ever seen anything like it: ask for banana-blueberry, ask for triple-chocolate-strawberry, ask for vanilla bean with a hint of mango and lychee undertones. The machine serves it up perfectly, every time.
You're proud of your success. Whenever anyone asks how you did it, you tell them about your goal to perfect the customer experience of ice cream. The entire business revolves around that one idea: giving customers the perfect ice cream, no matter what they ask for.
No one can compete with you. Infinite Flavors Ice Cream simply offers the best experience - and, of course, the most flavors. Because of this, word continues to spread and the business grows. You open shops across town, then across the region, then across the country, and then you start researching foreign markets.
As you grow, you naturally collect a lot of data about buying habits - flavors, order size, timing - correlated to factors like geography and demographics. This is valuable information for a host of companies who are willing to pay for business intelligence. Sensing an opportunity, you begin a new business line: ID, for Infinite Data, and begin selling subscriptions to the aggregated data. Money flows, then floods, in.
Soon enough you wonder how you might grow the ID unit by tweaking the ice cream business - just by a bit, a tiny bit - to suit your purposes. Now whenever a customer orders a flavor with a certain ingredient that your corporate partners are interested in, you instruct your staff to ask a question back. "Blueberry ice cream? OK, but would you like a blueberry fortune cookie instead?" Inside the fortune cookie is a slip of paper with a very special message written by the corporate partner - a marketing message, or perhaps a limited-time discount.
News of this innovation quickly spreads over the corporate news wire: Infinite Flavors now allows advertising! To customers, you proudly announce the delights of crunchy, crispy fortune cookies - for just a few special flavors.
And if anyone raises any question about whether this is core to the mission of "giving customers the perfect ice cream," you wave it off. No one's forcing them to choose the fortune cookie, you say. We're just making an offer of extra value. On with the expansion plans.
Meanwhile, quietly, across town, a new ice cream shop has just opened: JG Ice Cream. It promises "just good ice cream" - solely, it says, for the benefit of its customers.
- - -
Questions for discussion:
• What does it mean for an organization to stay true to its core commitment? Can it change? What if that commitment produced the success in the first place?
• If you were offered the fortune cookie, would you take it? If you were a marketer at a company, would you consider buying some messaging in the fortune cookies?
• Which ice cream store would you go to? (And which flavor would you order?)
Hi Mark
What a great story. In answer to your questions: yes core commitment can change and needs to because customers's needs and desires change over time.
For the fortune cookie to work it would need to be inextricably linked with ice cream in ice cream lovers' minds - and I'm not sure it is. What's more it looks like customers are contacting Infinity Flavours to buy one product and being offered another produced by someone else.
But if I was a food & drink marketer I certainly would buy fortune cookie messaging as it allows me to reach food lovers. Surely a good portion of ice cream lovers will also love my products.
As a consumer I would go to the new store, not just to try it out, but also because I might be wondering if Infinite Flavours had got too big and was no longer interested in little old me.
Regards, Jo Ann
What idiot would accept a fortune cookie in place of ice cream? Now if you offered it /alongside/ the ice cream...
I think it's a different "game" now days, things change with the blink of an eye, the consequences of this will be felt even more dramatically with the onset of a billion new people coming on line in the next 5-10 years.Shifts in collective consciousness of the masses is felt very quickly- and can spread thoughts/ideas and a "Sheep like" mentality to tipping points with greater regularity, and the need for quick reactions will be crucial for survival, and I am sure there will be a lot more boom and busts to come with it.
I think the important thing is if the new offering are a break of the original commitment or a creative new expression of that commitment. I agree with Katie that a fortune cookie as a topping is an easier leap than expanding to offering a broader selection of confections than ice cream. Also are the messages in the cookies related (a chance at a free ice cream, or a bit of the brand story, or an offer from a related brand like a local cookie maker) rather than an unrelated offer like a discounted car rental.
In the situation you describe I am less worried about the competition. The first business is built on a magical amount a variety (that happens to taste good), variety is their definition of "good". In fact the second business needs to better define what is there "good" (perhaps a selection of only 3 essential flavors made with local ingredients) if they want my business.
I would want the vegan strawberry made with coconut milk.
Waffle or sugar cone may be a better example of where the change/benefit could come from.
Pick an industry there are numerous examples of the next best thing. Brand extension is very difficult to accomplish.
Off to the new store for just ice cream...
Hi Mark,
The topic of ice cream stores requires me to chime in as I've used it as an example in many a discussion regarding choice. I much prefer a store that curates its selection. The idea of infinite selection is more alarming to me than appealing. That being said I would need JG Ice Cream to be refined in its taste. To me their 'Good' label is more a signal that they are a simpler establishment than Infinite Flavors Store. That has its own appeal.
I do quite like the idea of fortune cookies on my ice cream.
Thanks!
1. A core commitment could refer to a value (such as the promise of a great customer experience) or a service or product (any ice cream flavour you want). If it’s a value, particularly one that’s struck a powerful chord with customers, an organisation would be foolish to do anything that undermines that value. Indeed customers are quick to react adversely to anything that they perceive is a brand promise failure or a breach of brand trust. On the other hand, if the commitment is a service or a product then it is open to continuous review and possible change if business strategy dictates so. Obviously if the product is flourishing it’s hard to imagine why a business would make changes that may jeopardise that success (but then there are case studies of clueless companies that have done just that and paid the price).
2. I’d take the fortune cookie if it were a freebie (or even at a discounted price) but only along with the ice cream (which is what I came to the store for) and not in lieu of the ice cream. And if I’m a marketer I’d exploit the fortune cookie channel if I thought there was merit in advertising my product to the ice cream customer base.
3. If I get the impression that Infinite Flavors is going to let me down consistently then I’d switch loyalties. In this context I’d perhaps apply the three strikes rule.
And nothing beats a great vanilla or pistachio...no complicated flavours for me.
Cheers,
Sridhar
I would go to the ice cream store that I like the most. If I was a marketer, I would never consider putting ads in a fortune cooking, it's intrusive (but that's just me). But what does it mean for an organization to stay true?...
It took me a while to get this and I'm not sure that I still do, so please feel free to critique my comment. The analogy that comes to mind is music. I had worked for a music start-up a decade ago and all we did was contextualize information around the music we knew users were already listening to. We did personalization around people's music likes and dislikes, and people loved it. Now, people have services like Pandora, LastFM, and Spotify - these are the "infinite variety" music services. I *should* be in heaven, right? Wrong, my preferred internet music source is BBC Radio 1 with a few select DJs. It's all curated for me. In this instance less is soooooo much more.
I also see an analogy around "news" on the internet. We're in the infinite variety phase of online news. Kindof.
So what are you getting at here Mark? If you're criticizing companies for diverging from their focus then who is it? Apple? Facebook? All of them? Or are you just poking fun at marketers?
I'm going to experiment with one-sentence responses.
1) Staying true to a core commitment is keeping the initial promise it made to its customers; it can expand outward from those services, but it should not abandon its initial offering.
2) Who wouldn't?
3) If Infinite Flavors still provides infinite flavors without bias, then I stick with Infinite Flavors.
Mac meet iPod. I want my fortune cookie to contain the fortune flavor of my dreams. Has the commitment changed?
Sounds like Netflix story, can’t believe how they keep taking away everything I love about the service, to serve where they think the market is going (probably correctly) , but is not there yet!! Latest frustration, they have made their custom 'star rating'- 'Our best guess for Duff' one level deep from the home page, expecting me to initially explore my viewing options with only the movie poster as criteria. Yes a mouse over shows it one at a time, no help, and worst of all why is the horizontal scroll arrow been removed, my desktop is not an iPhone!
As Marketing Director for a Purveyor of Fine Blueberry Pancakes, yes I jump at the opportunity to target consumers who've shown they are willing try out new blueberry flavoured products by advertising in the blueberry fortune cookie.
Has Infinite Flavours compromised on its promise of the perfect ice cream? I agree with the other commenters that it depends where they go with the new fortune cookie product.
How might it go wrong? Let's say that, thanks to advertising income, the margins on fortune cookies are better than the margins on ice cream. Under pressure from shareholders to increase profits, the company decides to focus on increasing sales of limited flavour fortune cookies.
A few weeks later I pop into Infinite Flavours for my favourite blueberry and ketchup ice cream. "Sorry," says the server, "we're out of blueberry ice cream flavour. Would you like a blueberry fortune cookie instead?" But I don't want a fortune cookie, I want ice cream. I head off to try that new ice cream parlour that's just opened.
Turns out JG Ice Cream make great ice cream. Word gets out: Infinite Flavours is no longer a reliable source of blueberry-flavour ice cream. Blueberry lovers flock to JG Ice Cream instead. Soon Infinite Flavours fortune cookies are no longer a great way to reach blueberry-loving consumers. The Purveyor of Fine Blueberry Pancakes switches its advertising spend to JG, who have added a simple ad panel to their ice cream tubs.
Infinite Flavours executives finally wake up and put blueberry flavour back on the menu, but the damage is done. I'm now a confirmed JG ice cream fan. With limited flavour fortune cookies failing to capture consumer's imaginations, and ad income falling, shareholders push for greater margins from the still strong ice cream division. Perhaps they can reduce costs by switching to cheaper ingredients?
Now they have fatally compromised on their perfect ice cream commitment.