Archive for May 31st, 2011

Last week I found myself in an interesting discussion with a Marketing guru.   This lady suggested to me that to sell more of my services, I needed to remember CP30 and R2D2 from Star Wars.   Yeah, I know…. its an odd comparison.  But stick with me.

The question she posed to me (and you should answer now) was as follows:

George Lucas phones you tonight to tell you that the star wars droids are real, and that you can have one for your home free of charge.   He will arrange for one to be delivered to your house tomorrow – which do you want – R2D2 or C3PO?

This marketing guru said that when asked, over 90% of people would pick R2D2.  There are many reasons for this – he is friendly (not sure how beeps and fart sounds can be friendly), he is cuter, he is more of a hero that C3PO, he is a lot less grumpy/stuck-up and he is a lot cooler than C3PO.

Great!   So R2D2 gets delivered, and he trundles around the house for a while.   But then what?   Yeah, he may be cool, but can you communicate with him?   Can he do the dishes?  Can he wash your car, make your bed, make you a cup of tea or pop some toast in the toaster for you?  No!

What you really NEED is C3PO.   He can do all the things that R2D2 can do (which is effectively talk to wall interface ports to open blast shield doors), plus make you tea, toast, etc.  He can even climb the stairs.

The point she (and now I) was making is that given a choice, peoples first choice is the cool, the trendy, the one that will get nods of approval from other people.  But what people really NEED is the thing that can do the job.

The secret is of course, is to make you service or product offering as cute and cool as R2D2, but once the wow factor has passed, to be able to get on and do the job.