This is a pretty smart group of photographers, I must admit.
When I asked you what you thought the business strategy behind The Big W’s pink “Tropickle” pickle, the answers floored me.
Really, really good stuff here. (If you missed it the last email, check it out here.)
And, honestly, it’s fun to read “pink pickle” in my email inbox 🙂
Maybe we should change the rhyme to “Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pink Pickles.”
NAW.
That would be ludicrous…
Speaking of ludicrous…remember that guy and his music from back in The Day?
OK, let’s get back on track.
Many of you got one of the BIG Pink Pickle Strategy’s correct.
Well, honestly, there really weren’t any WRONG answers.
But it goes much, much deeper than you think…the “Strategy BEHIND the Strategy” is where the real golden nugget lies.
Have you heard of the 5 Why’s of Toyota?
When you get the first reason “why,” ask why again, and again, and again, until you hit “5 Why’s.”
BEWARE the example below – I know NOTHING about cars, so car buff’s or anybody who knows anything about cars, don’t correct me please 🙂 :
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This car’s leaking oil. WHY?
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The oil pan is cracked. WHY?
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It overheated. WHY?
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There’s no coolant. WHY?
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The coolant cap is missing and spills out while driving.
If you didn’t figure out the problem BEHIND the problem, the new oil pan would just keep cracking again and you’d be replacing it every 6 months…instead, you replace the oil pan AND coolant cap and you have now SOLVED the problem.
So you all had great, pretty creative answers, and they are ALL one reason “why.”
(Starbucks card winners you will get an email from me this afternoon, after my oldest son’s Christmas play!)
Candy says:
YES!
Not only are you creating something new and creating a buzz, but you “offer something unusual that people didn’t even know they needed.”
Even better? You aren’t competing with yourself.
You aren’t just coming out with a pickle that will compete with your Great Value brand…people aren’t choosing one over the other.
They are choosing BOTH.
They want to try the new pickle, give their kids some entertainment during mealtime,
AND they are going to buy another jar of pickles for Saturday sandwich days.
You aren’t competing with yourself, or with ANY of the other 13 supermarkets in town. It’s all new money being earned.
This is called making the competition irrelevant, and I’m a HUGE fan of this concept.
So what’s the DEEPER why?
So why does Wal-Mart want to BE the “Purple Cow?”
Besides just being innovative and making the competition irrelevant, they want to solve their problem.
What’s the “Big W’s” big problem?
The “Amazing A.” You know, that store that started by only selling books.
And this isn’t just my guess.
This background info is my summary of Planet Money’s episode on the Pink Pickle.
So, why is The Amazing A a problem?
Because since they purchased Whole Foods and dropped the pricing substantially, Big W customers are switching over to The Amazing A.
Why is this a problem?
Because, Wal-Mart can’t compete on pricing any longer and doesn’t want to be in the race to the ALREADY low “bottom.”
***INSERT GASPS***
You know it’s truly a remarkable time in our lives when even the big box stores who have the production volume to drop prices and succeed, don’t want to compete on price any longer.
Is it just me, or is this stuff fascinating?
And in fact, the pink Tropickle isn’t the ONLY new innovation they’ve come up with. Can’t have all your pickles in one jar, right 😉
They have a lab called the Culinary and Innovation Center dedicated to this stuff.
When you think about it, the battle between The W & The A isn’t so different than what we’re facing, is it.
Cutting prices to try and “steal” customers away isn’t anything new, and crosses pretty much every industry.
And so we must create our own Pink Pickle.
And…I’ll share how to do that coming up in the next email 🙂
Cheers!
Lisa Edwards
P.S. I’m opening up Tween Booking Blueprint for a limited amount of time, which is the exact steps of how I created my own Pink Pickle (and you can too) that gets me on average 12-15 bookings in the slow season of Jan-March. Heck I’d be happy with just 5 🙂
So if you’re REALLY intrigued by all of this, you can signup to watch the upcoming webinar here (3 times over 3 days).