Selling 'Cool'.

Apples, Blackberries and Cups, Oh my!

 

 

I stumbled across something new this week. I was talking with my husband about how Quizno’s has filed for Bankruptcy protection, right after we drove across a Second Cup at a plaza. Raj mentioned that Second Cup was supposedly going through this big re-structure to change their image and try to become somewhat profitable. This conversation made me come to the conclusion after time and time of seeing examples surface that it’s more important to have a simple idea that can be executed with perfection rather than a fantastic idea with poor execution… If you want to be successful.

Look at Apple vs. Blackberry. Not the fruit (ha ha). If you really dissect Blackberry, the company’s ideas in and of themselves are very sophisticated and really put together by smart minds. A lot of their intel and technological advancements are top of the line. I’m not a tech person and I won’t pretend to be one but I’ve spoken to quite a few of them who all agree that Blackberry is far superior to any of its competitors. The problem is their execution. They weren’t able to translate their greatness to the masses and they were cocky about having to do this.

The brilliance of Apple however is that it took similar technology which is not as good as Blackberry’s (I’m sure all the tech giants will argue that they came up with all the ideas first…it’s irrelevant for this purpose) and it just dumbed it down so the masses could enjoy it. The execution of their products (even though the machines are supposedly not as ‘intelligent’ as others) made it so intuitive that anybody including my 15 month old son can use it!

Even I was loyal to my Blackberry for many years. I even got the Playbook and bought stocks in RIM. I tethered my phone to my Playbook and thought I was set. Then the silly Playbook would act up and not respond properly to the touch screen among other problems. I just got annoyed with it and gave it away. Then I got the IPad 4 Christmases ago. It was simple and easy to carry around. It hasn’t broken down even once. It does what you want it to do. We have taken it to over 5 countries in 3 different continents and it is still rock solid.

At the end of the day, Starbucks and Apple are cool. Second Cup and Blackberry are not. Making your idea or product cool is all about execution.

So let’s take this little tidbit of info and apply it to ourselves. Let’s not worry about coming up with the next big grandiose idea/fad/diet/trend.

Let’s focus on simple ideas and execute them flawlessly.