Fast forward to today. A couple of weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article about whether or not peanut butter Pop Tarts® classify as an innovation. This article harbors zero intent on plunging into that overly opinionated area; however, when one looks at both Denis Leary’s comments and the Pop Tart® article, it raises an interesting question. Did Denis Leary provide a business lesson clearly no one has heard?
For those that did not watch the video, excerpts of the important pieces are provided. "What happened with coffee? Did I miss a f!@#$%^ meeting with the coffee, huh? You can get every other flavor except coffee-flavored coffee! They got Mochachino, Chocachino, Frappachino, Rappachino, Al Pacino, what the f@#$?" He continues about beer. Specifically, he talks about Pete's Wicked Brew, Pete's Wicked Summer Brew, and then asks "Who the f@#$ is Pete, f#$% Pete?"
Profanity aside, he raises a couple of interesting points, especially when you consider peanut butter Pop Tarts®, the 10,000 different toothpastes, and the most recent iterations of the iPhone. Are we as marketers and product developers trying too hard to keep up with consumer trends – real or perceived - that we miss the most obvious, age-old tenet - why mess with a good thing? Let us look at Google's recent YouTube comment system change as one example. Again, this article is not wading into that beaten to death argument. Instead, let us examine it in Denis Leary's context. We have thousands of social media options. We have Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, Myspace, LinkedIn and the list goes on. Would anyone be surprised if there was a social network solely for people's goldfish? Most people use one or a couple of these.
So, YouTube comments worked just fine before, right? Why then did Google decide it necessary to cram Google+ down our throats, much the way Leary alludes non-coffee flavored coffee was crammed down his? How about Gmail? What happened to the email, email systems? With Gmail you can send emails, update your Google Circles, and wire people money now, just to name a few. Before we know it, Gmail will take food orders and control your television. In spite of numerous complaints about these changes, companies still forge ahead making it impossible for people to get the simple product and/or service that they prefer, instead being force-fed a bunch of junk they could care less about.
As seen both in Leary's rants sixteen years ago and in the Pop Tart® and Google examples, this is neither a new trend nor a past problem that has since been resolved. When are the marketers and product/service developers going to take a serious, perhaps quantitative, look at the choice to fundamentally change staples into the newest and flashiest thing around? Do the novelty sales really mitigate the lifetime customer expenditures that are lost from the unnecessary modification? One final thought, how many customers do companies actually lose when they decide to change something solely for the sake of changing it in their attempts to be edgy and innovative? Innovation provides little value when you cannibalize solid products and services and alienate those customers that preferred the simplicity.
Sorry, Mr. Leary, it appears that after sixteen years, nobody's listening.
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This article is part of a new series of basic business lessons hidden in pop-culture
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