SiliconGlades' Magazine

Essays from our journey, designing and delivering innovative problem-solving programs for B2B and B2C brands, creating positive social impact along the way.

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Google Duplex’s ally — Grandpa? ... Our article in TheStartup

How modern products are leaving senior citizens behind, and what we can do about it. 

Read the article at https://medium.com/swlh/google-duplexs-ally-grandpa-5907f0d133b3

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The Identity Crisis of Social Entrepreneurship - our article in TheStartup.

People confuse them for charitable organizations, and that’s more than a branding challenge.

Read the story at https://medium.com/swlh/the-identity-crisis-of-social-entrepreneurship-cfc0f161b254

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Is Your Accelerator Becoming The Cirque du Soleil of the Startup World - The Lost Art of Deep Conversations in Startup Investing.

This essay is a cautionary one about the new trend in the investor world for coaching angel investors. Coaching involves creating a culture, a lot of learning, and some unlearning. If we do not get the culture right, we will be doing a disservice not only to the startups, but also to the investors.

For this, I have modified an earlier blog post of mine titled 'Ditch The Indignity Of The Startup Pitch' (from a time when I was attempting a community-service initiative to peel away all the unnecessary posturing that goes with raising capital, from a startup founders' perspective), in which I had urged that one must not attempt to distill the (entrepreneur’s) dream down to a deck. One must teach investors to seek conversations instead.

To set the right context, in writing this, what I had in mind were the startup founders who have been focused on building a product or a prototype but are not well versed in the art of persuasive conversation or sales presentations. Granted, sales presentation skills are critical for any business owner, and the argument "if they can't sell their dream to me as an angel investor then how can they sell their product in the marketplace", does hold water. My point is that the initial sales pitch to an angel investor can also be done through a personal conversation, failing which, investors risk missing out on some great investments.

We often see tips on how to pitch at a pitch fest. There are articles such as ‘13 Tips on How to Deliver A Pitch Investors Simply Can’t Turn Down’. Yesterday, there was an interesting one titled 'Don't Waste Your First Slide', which I thought made for interesting reading because the suggestion could apply really well to sales presentations by an established company. Sadly, the culture of startup pitches has even permeated youth entrepreneurship programs.

The art of deep conversations may be completely lost in the world of early-stage startup investing, if this culture spreads unchecked.

We have seen angel investors take delight in making startup founders squirm and sweat it out in borrowed suits, in front of an indifferent audience. We have heard startup founders try to find the perfect formula, the slick gimmick to enthrall a drowsy audience. It is time to change that culture. One personal meeting at a time.

 Pitches are important for reality TV. It should not become the reality.

This is partially inspired by a true story of an unkempt man fast asleep at a window seat, dressed in factory overalls in the first class compartment of a commuter train in Mumbai, back when it was known as Bombay. The ticket collector who typically walks around and checks for tickets did a quick profiling, and decided to yell at the man to wake him up and remind him that this was a first-class carriage. The man half asleep, showed his first-class pass, and explained that he had been working all night at the factory he owns. In short, we conveniently forget the adage 'Do not judge a book by its cover' especially when the balance of power is perceived to be uneven between two parties.

 Pitches are important for reality TV. They should not become the reality.

We all have met brilliant entrepreneurs who dress in factory overalls, but who fare poorly in pitches. Pitches are important for reality TV. They should not become the reality.

Instead of making an industry out of teaching startups how to pitch to investors, it may serve the investors better to be taught how to run a story through a sieve to look for authentic signs of a bright future life for a startup.

It is worth a try for us as a community to facilitate conversations between startup founders and investors in very informal and relaxed settings, perhaps over coffee, so that it does not look or feel like a test in grade school. The goal of the investor has to be to tease out the complete vision of the future journey of the entrepreneur through an authentic conversation, versus seeking to be entertained by 5-minute performances before their attention drifts.

 The 'entertain me' mindset seems to have permeated popular culture.

Fast-paced pitch sessions should be positioned clearly as theatrics and performances, not as the basis on which a (startup founder’s) life-changing decision gets made. That is not merely unrealistic, it is downright demeaning to the entrepreneur. The golden rule always applies – i.e., the ones with the gold, rule – but with that mentality we think investors will not get the entrepreneur pitching at his or her authentic best, especially since the outcome has been an entire layer of service providers who are busy figuring out how to prop up a process that is trying in vain to distill an entrepreneur’s dreams down to bullet points on a deck, before the next performer takes the stage.

Incubators and angel investor groups who are busy educating investors about angel investing would do well by not positioning their brand as the Cirque du Soleil for startups.

That 'entertain me' mindset seems to have permeated popular culture. It is never too late to correct one's course, one coffee at a time.

This essay is a modified version of a previous blog post by the same author. An active community leader in the world of startup entrepreneurs, the author Ramesh Sambasivan is a principal at SiliconGlades, a business innovation and design firm helping mid-sized organizations with achieving marketing and operational excellence through programs viewed through a branding and social-impact lens.

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Boardroom and Bathroom Decisions - The Role of Empathy in Customer Success.

This essay is about empathy as a driver of customer success. It uses a few examples of poorly designed facilities and policies vis-à-vis restrooms or bathrooms that undermine a commercial establishment's brand.

Consideration is a part of every commercial contract. But what about a commercial establishment being considerate? Are your team members considerate to your clients and prospective customers?

Every experience in a business must be designed with kindness in mind. Every process and policy in a business must be designed with the goal that all interpretations and manifestations of such processes and policies allow team members to be kind.

In kindness there is cash.

In kindness, there is cash. You reward your customers and employees in kindness, and they reciprocate in cash through increased productivity, sales, and word-of-mouth promotion that can be priceless.

Let us look at a few examples.

There’s the major grocery store with 9 cash registers but only 1 women’s restroom, resulting in a long line at the restroom for the women shoppers but no line at the cash register even on a busy Sunday afternoon. The joy of zero wait-times at the cash register was probably not on the minds of the women shoppers of all ages waiting in a long line outside the only women’s restroom in that store. [Suggestion: Invest in more women’s bathrooms even if it means one less corner office for your managers – and yes, that applies even to the major museums in Paris.]

There’s the family seafood restaurant in a famous beach resort town whose staff sniggered when a squirming patron knocked on its doors to request the use of their restroom because his chemotherapy required him to drink a lot of water during his recovery period – only to have the restaurant’s staffers refuse to let him in through the unlocked doors because they do not ‘officially open’ until 15 minutes later. [Suggestion: Send all your staffers to volunteer at a children’s hospital or in an oncology care unit as part of their corporate training.]

Then there are the major national bank’s tellers who were seen laughing behind the counter after turning away a poorly dressed customer who was squirming and begging for access to the restroom while waiting to cash his paycheck? “Security reasons,” they explained smugly, when questioned. [Suggestion: Just as you design ramps for your bank storefront to give wheelchair access, invest in a clean bathroom for customers to use, no matter how poorly they may be dressed.]

Kindness is not weakness. It is the opposite.

Kindness is not weakness. Kindness is born of a deep sense of security and faith that in the long run, a first-time customer will return and stay with your business through good and the not-so-good-times.

Kindness keeps a brand trendy even as it ages over time. Kindness is the foundation on which customers' success can be built to extend their lifetime value.

Designing bathrooms right is as important to the bottom line of a business as designing great boardrooms.

The author Ramesh Sambasivan, is the principal at SiliconGlades, a business innovation firm helping mid-sized organizations with marketing and operational excellence through a branding and social-impact lens.

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On Mayors, the Media and Mothers

This is an essay on city-branding, the role of the media, managing perceptions and realities in aspiring startup hubs.

It has been an interesting month as the mayors of several suitor cities realized that their courtship of Amazon wasn’t successful. One of the questions I had asked the brilliant data scientist Prof. Balaji Padmanabhan, during his recent presentation on the future of Tampa Bay from an entrepreneur’s perspective, was whether his research had factored in the effect of any place-branding or city-branding efforts of Tampa Bay (It hadn’t).

Serendipitously, shortly thereafter, Wharton released an article about city-branding, titled Nation Branding: Perception Can Be Reality — So Manage It. Perception being the reality “is an old adage”, said one of my mentors with whom I had shared the article. That led to a discussion wondering what a city like Tampa can do better with managing its brand.

The adage on perception is often forgotten.                                              

A city like Tampa, with its Gasparilla parade, or a city like New Orleans, branded strongly for its Mardi Gras can easily drown any news of innovation in the area. A city-wide party is important and should not be saved for only when a city’s team wins the Super Bowl or the Stanley Cup. However, the stories should not be limited to the parties.

When I hear of Tampa Bay, it also brings to mind product innovations such as Molekule, marketing innovations such as Valpak, inventions such as Vaptur and In10did, or the brilliance of Jabil’s work that was covered in a Fast Company story.  

If Estonia could hitch its brand on the rocket ship that was Skype (the messaging app eventually acquired by Microsoft for $8.5 billion), every city can find ways to leverage freely available story-opportunities for attracting economic catalysts.  

Austin worked on it using the Dell story and SXSW festival, and is now a contender for Amazon’s new headquarters.

The initiative to brand or rebrand a city must start with buy-in from the top and must be funded by the city as an economic development investment, because grassroots campaigns and programs can go only so far.

There are several grassroots community-building programs that we have introduced over the last half-a decade with the help of volunteers and the public libraries in Tampa Bay – programs such as CoderDojo Tampa Bay Area, Product Hunt Meetup Tampa Bay Area, and Bootstrappers Breakfast® Tampa Bay Area. There are other community-building programs such as WorkInTheFLOW and StartupStrides we have tested with limited success in Tampa Bay and 10 other cities in the world. Community building programs such as AlligatorZone® in which we have been investing for a while has toured 19 communities in 13 cities, including some in Silicon Valley, across three states in the nation. These grassroots efforts tend to remain inside-secrets that the city’s residents enjoy, to the envy of their cousins and siblings in other cities and states. These are free story-opportunities for a city like Tampa Bay to leverage.

Paris is busy changing its positioning from a mere tourist destination for the romantic to one that is also an innovation hub (see StationF.co). Such re-positioning is easier for a city like Tampa or New Orleans to do right here in the United States than for the Parisians. Our cities do not even need to build infrastructure like Paris is having to do to incubate an ecosystem. Several cities in the United States already have large Universities it can partner with to build out its startup hubs. Our cities just need to focus on robust story-telling. For a city like Tampa and nearby cities, there's even ample technology in the state (SpaceX launches happen in Cape Canaveral) but that is not what it's being made most known for.

Then where does one begin to change the narrative?

How does one change mainstream media’s focus from sensational stories to consistent story-telling that helps a city build its brand to attract economic activity?

Changing perceptions ought to start with the media.

The media plays a critical role in the development of a startup hub, with its story-telling prowess. That is an imperative for any city to realize its economic aspirations.

For a city like Tampa Bay, a good place to start may be through engaging an influential teaching organization such as The Poynter Institute, which happens to be right in its backyard, in St. Petersburg, Florida.  That may take care of the perception over a period of time.

However, changing the reality to keep up with the newly minted perception takes something beyond the media’s capabilities. That starts with changing the culture.

Changing culture, however, is a harder and bigger undertaking, but it’s not impossible.  

Changing culture of a city ought to start by distilling it down to that demographic which would have the most dominant self-interest motive in seeing a city improve economically, and the capacity to do something about it before it’s too late – viz., the mothers, and the parents of youngsters.

The catalyst for changing the culture of a city starts with a 10 to 15-year horizon, by appealing to the robust common sense of mothers, and the higher aspirations of parents for their next generation. That is probably the path of least resistance to cultural change.

Tactically, it will manifest as investments in wholesome family-friendly programs geared towards entrepreneurial celebrations. By that I mean, a problem-solving mindset, or a problem-prevention mindset permeating the culture of a population.

Last July, in Miami, we ran the AlligatorZone program, the one where kids meet cool startups. This was held in what appeared to be a very under-served neighborhood, at the invitation of the Miami-Dade County, funded by a STEM education grant from Dollar Tree. At the end of the session, I had an opportunity to chat with some of the grown-ups in the audience. One grandmother in the audience lamented the absence of men and fathers from the community among the elders accompanying their children – there were only mothers, grandmothers and aunts in the audience, accompanying the kids. However, those women who were in the in the room to accompany the kids from their families cared deeply about those children’s future and wanted to know the entrepreneurs’ personal stories of overcoming hardship.

There is merit in such programs that create an experience for the entire family, with a focus on meeting their aspirations for a better life, while still entertaining them.

That's why we continue to bet so heavily on developing the various kids' programs about entrepreneurship and problem solving, that we have been doing in several cities across the nation. This approach of engaging entire families addresses important goals such as ensuring greater parental involvement, and steering gender parity, very early on. For example, in the computer coding camps that we ran with CoderDojo Tampa Bay Area, girls used to out-number the boys and there was not even a whiff of gender-gap in their tech world.

Parental desire to create a better world for their children is also probably why we see an interesting movement in Silicon Valley, where the same folks who invested in and designed Facebook and Google are now seeking ways to protect their children from the dangers of the very social media platforms that they created. There may be other reasons for these public campaigns, but the fact remains that nothing can beat the robust common sense of the mother who is out to protect her kids.

There seems to be no greater motivator to change a city's culture towards more productive pursuits than a mother's love for her children and the parents' aspiration for prosperity and a better life for their own children.

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On Ensuring Quality Speakers And Sessions In Planning A Conference.

This is in response to a couple of questions posed by Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight on LinkedIn. Here are some quick thoughts.

What attributes make for a compelling conference speaker?

For a keynote speaker to be compelling, establish quantifiable criteria, such as, must be the CEO of a public company with a certain market cap, must have started and grown a billion dollar enterprise, had a billion dollar exit.

More specifically, what processes do you put in place to ensure both speaker and session quality is high during the planning phase of a conference?

Speaker Quality

Call for Speakers can include topic submission, with final selection based on most up-votes by community, per track.

Panels can be a mix of a thought-leader, media/industry-analyst, startup founder, corporate leader, and an unknown star from, say, a university lab

Commit to diversity on all panels

Format must include time for taking questions from the audience

Invite community to post early requests to speakers to address specific topics of interest at showtime

Prep-calls with speakers and panelists to build rapport, highlight audience expectations, and emphasize story-telling, as well as ground-rules

Create separate channels for sponsors to get their messages out, but not as keynotes or on speaker panels.

Ask panelists to suggest moderators with the minimum criteria of domain expertise and a history of being mentors so they will be good listeners and not dominate the conversation.

Consider making available to all conference presenters, an hour with a speaking coach, as a courtesy, because it may be a worthwhile investment.

Session quality: 

Visualise a Table of Contents, and decide how you want to stretch the audience's minds.

Plan it like a DJ, alternating between process-oriented content and high-octane innovation-related content, interspersed with inspirational story-telling sessions, and humorous speakers

Include elements of surprise in the program

Encourage the presenters to have more pictures and graphs than text on slides

If text, then let it be big and bold so those in the last rows can see

Backdrop must show speakers' names, titles and their social media handles, in the same sequence in which that they are seated on the stage.

Questions from audience must be paraphrased or repeated by the moderator or speaker, for the convenience of the entire audience, and if being video-recorded

Sessions must be fast-paced, leaning towards sensory overload

Leave ample breaks in between sessions for networking

Never cut corners on hydration inside session halls.

Consider crafting a ‘Conference Mission’ as the North Star for your team.

In summing up, it helps to have a mission in simple words that steers the entire conference. It could be something as simple as - to bring to our community of conference attendees the greatest breaking news and knowledge through a joyful gathering of the greatest thinkers, tinkerers and trend-setters on the topic of Customer Success. Having such a filter of an action-oriented mission statement helps the entire conference team and volunteers, if any, strive to keep the bar high and meet the minimum standards expected by the conference's stakeholders.

The author Ramesh Sambasivan, is the principal at SiliconGlades, a business innovation firm helping mid-sized organizations in not merely building brands, but creating proud legacies, through innovative marketing programs with social-impact.

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Why Most Marketers Must Befriend Cost-Accountants.

Last week, I was talking to an entrepreneur about the hidden costs of looking for the next big customer while ignoring the growth potential of current customers.

As someone with years invested in cost and management accounting, it was therefore very interesting for me to coincidentally read about time-tested cost accounting concepts in a recent Stratechery blog post by Ben Thomson highlighting aspects of the economics of the tech industry.

For many marketers, accounting is a foreign language. However, accounting knowledge is like travel to foreign lands. Once you develop an appreciation for it, it changes your outlook of the world for the better.

How then does a cost accounting mindset impact marketing and branding?

Cost of customer acquisition is a very important metric that determines a startup’s success and growth trajectory. The lower the cost of acquiring a customer and the longer you can retain them, the more you can harvest on the seeds once sown. You do need the regular care and feed, and the seasonal showers (customer training, seasonal user-conferences, and showering gifts within the limits of corporate ethics regulations for vendor relationships).

There are the measurable costs of finding a customer, and the immeasurable costs of finding that customer. Then there is the opportunity cost to be considered of focusing on one market versus the other. I have seen a scenario where a single ad click that cost 65 cents resulted in a $75,000. I have seen word of mouth referrals result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in recurring revenues. There is still an underlying cost, even with the referral. The cost of being at a certain tradeshow at the right moment and bumping into the Chief Procurement Officer of a Fortune 100 company, who already knew me and my company’s work through another happy customer she trusted, and the cost of keeping the referring customer delighted – these are still costs associated with such seemingly serendipitous occurrences.

It is important for a marketing head to keep in mind the sunk costs of getting a customer, and the relatively low maintenance costs of retaining that customer over a period. The longer the duration, the greater the opportunity to sell better and bigger products to the same customer.

Pursuing new sales opportunities that might take the attention away from a current customer is the classic dilemma faced by most ambitious startups. That is why Customer Success is a critical function.

Until the startup finds a way to bridge that gap and juggle both the needs – to retain and grow existing accounts, while scoring new customer accounts – the marketing chief must make decisions with a clear grasp of all the costs involved.

A very high cost of maintaining an existing customer, in relation to the revenues may even result in the company choosing to walk away from a customer. This happens instinctively for a plumber who is a sole-proprietor when he decides that a client has more nuisance value and that it may be better for everyone’s sanity to simply not show up for a repair. Still there is a cost involved for the plumber in obtaining that lead, that may have to be written off. He weighs it against the opportunity cost of other repairs he could have pursued and done with less ease and without a nagging customer robbing him of his peace of mind. For a startup or a sales organization that thought and behavior gets amplified.

To sum up, a product marketer, or any marketer with a good grip on costs will make for a better marketer. Whoever says accountants are boring hasn’t been following the investment and VC community. It might be worthwhile for startup mentors and coaches to get startups to develop keener cost-sensibilities, and not just the theatrics of pitch-practice.Or ask them to befriend a cost-accountant.

The author Ramesh Sambasivan, is the principal at SiliconGlades, a business innovation firm helping mid-sized organizations in not merely building brands, but creating proud legacies, through innovative marketing programs with social-impact.

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Self-Awareness Is Half The Battle Won, For Any Organization.

“I don’t think they know who they are”, surmised a designer on our team after a conference call with a client’s team as another meeting wrapped up with confusion about the messaging and visuals on their branding.

As in an individual’s case with life choices and success, self-awareness as a business and a corporate entity is key to a brand’s success in the marketplace.

In life, success is not measured merely by the material possessions in a snapshot of time. Success is measured by sustainable wealth acquired in many forms, while maintaining a delicate balance among each manifestation of success – whether it be an abundance of liquid assets, fixed assets, blooming personal relationships, meaningful life-long friendships, a sense of purpose, good health and peace of mind, among other things. Success in life is often measured over a lifetime by milestones cleared, stumbles recovered from, and lives impacted positively in one’s journey. Underlying the interplay of these choices is self-awareness. That applies to business organizations as well.

In the case of a business or other organization or a startup, the importance of knowing who they are as a team cannot be overstated. It helps an organization choose between several of the elements that make for a successful journey – whether it is pricing, packaging, product features, customer service, among others.

Organizational self-awareness brings clarity in every thought, every communication and every action of every team member in an organization.

Self-awareness drives product-design.

Self-awareness lets every team member of your company make promises that she or he can keep.

Self-awareness makes every communication and interaction coming out of the company into a beautiful symphonic chorus.

For startups, self-awareness makes sure that you pick the right logo design, the one that represents your company properly, and for the long haul.  Change of mind about one’s logo after a company has made some progress can be an expensive proposition and a distraction. The logo of your company should be so powerful and tied to a company’s brand and persona that an acquirer of your company or a post-merger management should feel grateful that they will not have to change your logo, or not change it for fear of a dire consequence to sales and future hiring.

Self-awareness gets you the right tag-line, and the right ad copy. One that says who you are, what the public can expect from you and how you will deliver on those expectations.

Self-awareness as an organization is achieved through something as simple as taking a careful note of conversations and paying attention to semantics about your brand.

Your organization’s authentic self is defined more during the quiet conversations in the mind of a sales-person than in the corporate retreat where your entire team is repeating a catchy slogan in a cacophonous chorus.

Just as kids learn how to behave more by watching their parents and elders, and less by listening to their orders, your team learns about your organization’s self-perception by observing the actions of the leaders.

Having stated the above, I also do not want you to think that organizational self-awareness is set in stone. Like humans, organizations also need to evolve as times change to stay relevant, healthy and enjoy longevity.

If you have been a popular brand, the only way to retain that popularity is to keep adapting as times change.  When you fail to do that, you risk missing huge opportunities.

Here’s what happened when an unsuspecting aunt gifted a science magazine’s subscription to her nieces and nephews for their birthdays. They are elementary school kids interested in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) subjects. The magazine happens to be a popular science magazine. However, a casual glance at the ads in the magazine makes one wonder if the company failed to adapt to the current wave of interest in STEM education among young school students. Are they missing out on a huge potential audience of kids and parents interested in STEM education?

Self-awareness for an organization means knowing your essential core.

If you are a ‘science’ magazine, keep your ears to the ground. You may hear the patter of tiny feet. Self-awareness also means staying current with popular perceptions of your domain and not missing out on new waves. It might mean adding a new product-line with different advertisers as brand extensions. It could manifest as the same content being re-packaged as Science Jr. (for elementary school STEM education followers) or Miss Science (for followers of STEM education among girls and women), with a different set of advertisers. Or it could manifest as a replacement of the advertisers. Or creating seasons’ specials or special editions aimed at families and Thanksgiving gatherings.

Imagine an engineer grandmother or engineer aunt being able to read every issue of your science magazine to all her grandchildren, grand-nieces and grand-nephews, and more importantly, being able to answer all their questions – without hesitation – as the kids pore over the pictures in the magazine out of curiosity.

What our elders advise us, with words of wisdom such as “Know yourself, and Be Yourself” also applies to an organization. Knowing oneself helps find one’s authentic voice. An authentic voice in all communication contributes towards a timeless and priceless brand.

The author Ramesh Sambasivan, is the principal at SiliconGlades, a design and innovation firm helping mid-sized organizations in not merely building brands, but creating proud legacies, through innovative marketing programs that aim to add positive social impact in one’s quest for business goals such as profitability and growth.

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Taking the higher road when hiring.

When I say that a company’s brand positioning must be internalized by every team member, in every process, that includes the hiring function as well.

Often, the job interview is the first interaction that an outsider has with the humans behind a company's brand – especially in enterprise markets. Just as every person who walks by the job candidate sitting in the reception area may be silently assessing the person, there are several verbal and non-verbal messages about your brand that is being communicated to this guest of your company.

Here are a few tips on how to manage branding through the hiring process.

Courtesy and kindness at the first point of contact. Inform the front-desk personnel which is used to fielding visits from annoying delivery guys, that they will see some new faces for rounds of interview, and ask them to be kind and courteous, no matter how busy or frazzled they may be.

Weave into the entire process, elements of trust, compassion and respect. Regardless of the position for which you are interviewing a candidate, make sure that basic human dignity is preserved throughout the hiring process – down to how your HR personnel talk to the candidate when handing over a cup for a drug test, if that is handled internally. Judging a candidate by his or her appearance and speaking rudely or in a condescending manner is short-sighted.

Free samples of work, if marketable, must be compensated at market rates, even if you use only a part of the job candidate’s sample work. If your job interview process involves asking the candidate to create a mock project or a challenge project, inform them that should their output be of the standards that you can use in your business, then you will compensate them by paying them a fair market rate for their time and effort. It accomplishes two things. Your candidates will produce market-grade work and not just take it as an academic exercise. In fact, no worthy candidate will produce shoddy work in a project, even if you label it as a mock project. Secondly, you set the right tone for your company’s culture as being fair, and not an exploitative one.

Taking the higher road in hiring always brings out the best in job candidates – both during the interview process, and after that – regardless of whether they get hired or not. As a bonus, if they do not get hired, they still sing your company’s praises to their network. That is worth a lot more in branding dollars saved than the small payment you have saved by using their work done during the hiring process and not paying them for it.

Can giving the candidate the job be the reward in itself? Certainly. However, setting a practice of paying for marketable work before someone is on your payroll will pay off through goodwill generated by word-of-mouth that your ad dollars can never buy.

The author Ramesh Sambasivan, is the principal at SiliconGlades, a design and innovation firm helping organizations build not just brands, but legacies, through marketing programs that keep an eye on adding positive social impact.

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On Branding the Boring

This is not about Mr. Musk’s The Boring Company. That’s very likely going to be an interesting one. This post is about mundane products and services, and how to make them memorable.

The 5-Hour Energy billionaire Manoj Bhargav said in his speech about how his investment group evaluates new products or ideas for their viability – they must be useful or entertaining, or both. https://youtu.be/IiZ2GZwTx8c?t=20m20s

How then does a company that makes mundane and boring, but useful products, become memorable?

The one way to market a useful product or service that is not entertaining, is to build stories around it that are entertaining.

Use those entertaining stories for promotion of the brand, measure results, modify, see what works, rinse and repeat. Because stories tend to stick.

Utilitarian products tend to get commoditized in the minds of consumers. So long as your product works, even if it is toiling day and night, out of plain sight, consumers will not care about your brand nor build any loyalty or gratitude towards your brand.

Knowing that a Michelin car tire withstood the rumble strips on the shoulder of the highway during hurricane evacuation longer than most other cars, is an important story to tell about a certain tire’s brand, if it is to be spared the indignity of getting lumped with all the other tire brands. Knowing which brand of screws and fasteners held your airplane together during the last mid-air turbulence is an important story to tell.

That is where it becomes important to give your product a personality and start making it memorable. No matter how boring or mundane it is. Regardless of whether it is directly sold to the consumer or only sold through a distributor, or a component sold to an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), it never hurts to make your boring product a household name.

Why bother? With such an approach, even as your end-users keep using your mundane and forgettable product day after day, your product will become resistant to brand-amnesia or to being taken for granted by the users.

Remember, the last thing you want is for your product’s brand to become known or visible only when there an equipment-failure or when a machinery has stopped working. All the hard work that your product has put in over the years to keep the machine running could be deemed irrelevant in an instant.

Give your boring product the glory it deserves during its working life, from the get-go, rather than hope for its posthumous recognition.

How do you make a mundane product memorable? How do you give a boring product some personality?

Use stories.

Even better if they are entertaining stories.

That is how you compensate for a boring product that has great utility but zero entertainment value. Create entertaining marketing around the boring product.

Entertaining and engaging story-telling is what made the mundane shaving blades interesting in the case of The Dollar Shave Club. (https://youtu.be/ZUG9qYTJMsI)

However, it is the rare CEO who comes to the job with 8 years of prior training in improv comedy. It is not easy for the usual CEO to conjure, in a vacuum, any entertaining and humorous stories around their products.

The simplest way for the average CEO to find such stories is by finding a way to connect with the end-users of their products; by connecting with those whose everyday lives are impacted by those products.

Get started by taking customer-support calls or attending to warranty claims personally by directly engaging with the consumer. Consumers don’t mince words, but you can be assured of authentic stories, maybe even light-hearted and memorable stories, or downright hilarious ones.

The author Ramesh Sambasivan, is the principal at SiliconGlades, a design and innovation firm that helps enterprises (B2B and B2C), non-profit organizations and government agencies achieve desired outcomes through innovative marketing programs permeating the organization down to its individual processes, with an eye on social impact.

[siliconglades]

First Principles of Customer Celebration

The title of this blog post is from my email conversation yesterday, with a growing software company CEO who has been trying to figure out several unknowns about their first user-conference, and their annual budget is a big driver of that decision. My recommendation was to think creatively beyond user-conferences, to give the company the flexibility of programs that help them stay on their customer engagement goals.

Once your company has paying customers, there is no better scenario than your biggest customer inviting you to the industry’s biggest tradeshow and asking you to walk the aisles with him/her. The closest feeling that I can describe from that tradeshow stride, is walking the red carpet at an entertainment awards ceremony. I have had the good fortune of enjoying both but that’s a story for a different blog.

Besides an outstanding product delivered flawlessly, it takes some investment of thought, time and energy on the part of a vendor, in nurturing a customer relationship before that vendor can expect to earn such red-carpet treatment from a premier customer.

First you must learn how to celebrate every customer as if they are your biggest and only customer.

There is no need to wait for the big budget to create a user-conference when you are a startup, or a new product line in a large corporation with a limited budget allocation.

Think of various forms of celebrating your customers, especially if they have no policies against appearing jointly under a banner of a vendor’s branding. Some Fortune 100 corporations have strict policies against the mere allusion of endorsement of their vendors, even if you are their favorite vendor.

When presenting a budget proposal to your CFO, think of creative ways to celebrate your customers.

Each form of such ‘Customer Celebration’ can be part of a continuum, so that you have an a la carte menu of celebratory programs to pick from, based on your CFO’s budget-appetite, without loss of effectiveness in the ultimate outcome for your business goals.

Here are three first principles of Customer Celebration:

The form does not matter. Programs such as user-conferences     and other forms of customer celebration that you pick must deliver on a     stand-alone basis, yet, work well as a continuum, if it gets bolted on to     become part of a bigger annual strategy.

Shared success stories beget new     success stories.

It’s all about the timing. Get the message right, getting     it out, and do it in a timely manner. Technology is merely an enabler of     customer celebration. You can even shout from your office roof-top if that     gets heard. But do it before it becomes old news.

Let your budget blues not bog you down. Customer celebration can begin with even the simple and human act of a pat on the back of a client staffer who has figured out how to use your software. Don’t wait for that big budget production to celebrate your customers. Sometimes even a hug goes a long way.

The author Ramesh Sambasivan, is also the principal at SiliconGlades, a design and innovation firm that helps enterprises (B2B and B2C), non-profit organizations and government agencies achieve desired outcomes through innovative marketing programs permeating the organization down to its individual processes, with an eye on social impact.

[siliconglades]

User Experience On A Small Cell Phone Is A Big Responsibility

My winter travels included a few days in India with a cell phone borrowed from a loved one, topped off with a plan costing ₹347 (about $5.50) and providing, as I recall, unlimited talk and text, along with a gig of data.

Little did I know that it also included unlimited text messages with silly ads that do not seem to solve what I consider real world problems.

As someone naturally tuned to observing user-experiences, it amazed me that each call was followed by a text message giving an update on the remaining talk-time – which was shows as UL, that I presume stood for ‘unlimited’ – along with several cryptic metrics.

Soon thereafter, the phone began sending me several Flash SMS messages.

Even a single inadvertent tap on the screen would have cost me an extra ₹30 each for extras such as a month-long daily dose of jokes, movie-star gossip, recipes for fillings and fortune telling, among others.

For someone used to the occasional startling Amber Alerts and Silver Alerts (seen more often when in Florida), this was an interesting phenomenon – Silly Alerts.

At what point does a constant barrage of advertising messages get tuned out by the recipient. Do they read the messages like I did, or do they mindlessly tap on the ‘Dismiss’ and ‘Cancel’ options on the screen, just like I started doing within a day of seeing the messages?

How do senior citizens with less dexterity manage to avoid accidentally ‘accepting’ the ₹30-wholesome-filling-recipe service? Is there an easy redressal option, should someone accidentally tap on ‘Accept’ to receiving a daily tip on recipes for fillings?

I do not believe India has an emergency alert service such as Amber Alerts, but here’s my concern with the practice of relentlessly bombarding a cellular phone user with advertising upsell opportunities. It builds a culture of tuning out annoyances and not paying any attention to them. When people get conditioned to such noise, it will become harder to implement a real emergency alert service and be taken seriously.

After all we are creatures of habit. While we are on the job of creating or influencing the culture of humans with a new medium of sending out advertising, why not strive to create good cell phone usage habits.

What can the phone company do to that effect?

How about creating another more expensive tier of service without any Flash SMS advertising, to compensate for the ad revenues thus generated?  

And as far as the regular base-level tier of service, send a weekly combined text message (not Flash SMS) once every Sunday morning with all the ads in once single message.  Just like the Sunday newspaper with its Classifieds Page.

Something to think about.

A life-long student of life in business, the author Ramesh Sambasivan, is also the principal at SiliconGlades, a design and innovation firm that helps enterprises (B2B and B2C), non-profit organizations and government agencies achieve desired outcomes through innovative marketing programs permeating the organization down to its individual processes, with an eye on social impact.

[siliconglades]

Design Tweaks To The Tiny-Home Village Initiative Using Retail Innovation, To Solve Chronic Homelessness.

This is a follow-on to my previous blog post titled ‘Before the Amazing Tech Giant Comes Knocking’, where I tested a story-telling technique to explain a concept. I think that didn’t work, so let’s get to the point.

I see the efforts going on in cities to tackle chronic homelessness and feel that they stop half-way without seeing it through to a complete solution. I am referring to the excitement about tiny homes and big villages of tiny homes  (a web search pulled these links: https://charterforcompassion.org/problem-solving/tiny-houses-for-the-homeless-an-affordable-solution-catches-on, http://www.businessinsider.com/gensler-tiny-homes-california-homeless-2017-12 and http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/12/10/marshman-tiny-houses-take-2-in-san-jose-and-yes-we-need-these-for-the-homeless/

The tiny homes village concept could modify itself a little to give its occupants a sense of purpose and self-worth and assimilate them back into society. Easier said than done, though. But let’s break the concept down into the simple and fulfilling act of humans making themselves useful and relevant to other humans – such as serving society to help people meet their everyday needs.

This concept of delivering the daily needs of the population is something that I toyed with, pondered, and researched in serious weekend spells during the past decade, but simply couldn't devote the focus required to see it funded and piloted. Besides, the technology changed really fast every couple of years. However, some things remained timeless – the sense of community and belonging that most humans crave seems to be a constant.

Drawing from observations across the globe, I believe there is a simple solution to chronic homelessness that communities can cobble together.

The answer to homelessness very likely lies in creating an adaptation of the kiraana shops that are common in India. Kiraana shops are akin to mom and pop shops that used to be common across our nation before Walmart came into the scene.

In India it is common for kiraana shops to have a cozy living quarters attached behind, to house a small family. Kiraana shop owners’ kids grow up to be brilliant in numbers (when they manage the cash register after school to help their parents) and from the little that I have observed, grow up determined to overcome all hardship and succeed.

The blueprint I have in mind places these kiraana shops in the last mile to the consumer, without trying to swim against the tide of the current turbulent changes in the retail industry that fail to look back and learn from its own mom-and-pop ancestry.

In the current context of cities in the United States, that would manifest not as villages of tiny homes, but as

a)      tiny store-fronts with a tiny home attached

b)      implanted in communities within a mile’s walk from residences.

That is what a kiraana shop does.

The kiraana shops themselves can be redesigned in a few ways so that brands do not feel commoditized and can withstand the flood when Amazon crests and enters their territory. Retail technology can continue to improve and be deployed in the kiraana shops, while consumers gather as a community to lift the homeless out of their situation and give them a chance to live and serve the community with dignity.  It may sound idealistic, but it is worth a try.

The concept can be developed and tested, but it needs the right partners involved -- because homelessness is a complex social and health issue. There are many aspects that will need to be considered before something like this can be tested in the developed world grappling with developing world problems in patches – including zoning, creating a culture of tolerance, reconfiguring communities and housing developments to include a kiraana shop, technical design of the shop, technology integration for logistics, payments, communication between consumers and the shop, communication between the shop and its supply chain, and the aspect of counseling and training the formerly homeless (homeful?) staffers of the kiraana shop.

This could be a passion project for University students, or retired executives who are bored of golfing, one that can be run over a series of weekends, to pilot it and hand it off to a non-profit or a social enterprise that is willing to scale it up. The social impact can be tremendously positive.

I think the current efforts with tiny houses are great, but they leave some unfinished business. Why not learn from a proven model, albeit in a different context – the kiraana shop owners in India are not homeless even though they likely left their homes in the villages to come to the city and set up their kiraana shop.

It is a working model that exists on a much bigger scale half-way around the world from which we can learn and adapt. In fact, analysts say that it is the kiraana shop economy, which if ignored, may trip up a giant like Amazon with its plans to dominate the India grocery market. (Read https://qz.com/970042/indias-e-commerce-firms-have-found-an-unlikely-ally-in-mom-and-pop-store/)

Last but not the least, there are several possible social-impact models that can be layered over the concept, including co-ops, community building models, environmental friendliness (bulk packaging), and getting people up and moving on their feet - which is healthy for the mind and body.

Our firm is open to seeing this initiative designed under Creative Commons, or as a private social enterprise in a consortium of for-profit, non-profit, academic and government organizations. A few well-intentioned polymath citizens and school professors is all it takes – folks with interests in mechanical engineering, civil engineering, city politics, architecture, software process, supply chain and psychology would be perfect. We have had the branding ready along with a nimble mental blueprint of how it will unfold to adapt to technology changes and new experiments being conducted by leading retail brands.

Sometimes social impact can be brought about through efforts fueled by volunteer passion in place of capital. We have seen it happen with the free coding clubs we helped launch for kids. It is time to repackage the solution for chronic homelessness by tapping into the collective power of the community.

A life-long student of life in business, the author Ramesh Sambasivan, is also the principal at SiliconGlades, a design and innovation firm that helps enterprises (B2B and B2C), non-profit organizations and government agencies achieve desired outcomes through innovative marketing programs permeating the organization down to its individual processes, with an eye on social impact.

[siliconglades]

Recruiting for Your Corporation?  Don’t Shy Away From Those In The Startup State Of Mind

When you look at the world through the eyes of a 7-year old, it brings you a different kind of clarity – one born of plain curiosity.  Let us therefore look at the world of corporate recruiting out of pure curiosity and understand how startup experience is perceived by outside recruiting agencies, corporate recruiters and hiring managers.  

First, let’s look at the popular perception of a startup entrepreneur as glorified in startup folklore through stories of Steve Jobs personally reading out the ad copy, “Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo...”

This commercial made for crucial and timely story-telling for Apple.  However, the powerful story-telling technique seems to have gotten stuck as a stigma in the minds of corporate recruiters who identify themselves with large powerful corporations. There’s nothing wrong with that self-image, but the stigma (or aura, depending on who looks at it) attached to those startup entrepreneurial qualities could use some cleaning up.

Now, let us revisit each of the characteristics of a startup entrepreneur that has been glorified in the ad and try to cast it in a different light to help the corporate recruiter understand it better.

The crazy ones: One concern I have heard from hiring managers is that startup entrepreneurs are uncontrollable. The only crazy thing about startups and entrepreneurial types is that they can’t stop obsessing over unsolved problems. It is a secret that only some corporations have figured out how to exploit. Bringing in someone with legacy startup experience into a large corporation, I would imagine, improves the efficiency of everyone around them, even if by just a notch.

The misfits: The biggest misconception of a hiring manager is the cultural demands would reject the startup gal or guy. Startups have no common culture. It varies depending on geographical location, the demographics of the team, age and ethnicity, understanding of pop culture, their alma mater, and their country or the city they hail from. The reality is that startup employees are extremely flexible, they adapt to any culture, and come in with very high emotional intelligence. There will be certainly a short learning curve, but it is the same if you bring someone fresh out of college. An employee with startup experience is more easily retrofitted into a corporate machinery. Remember, they have survived on ramen noodles. Throw them anywhere in your organizational waters and they will not just survive, but will swim ashore with a smile, having caught some fish along the way.

The rebels. The trouble-makers: Let’s face it. There is a rebel lurking in each one of us. It manifests when we speed up a notch to make it past the yellow light going to work. It manifests when we stand up for that elderly person who is being mistreated by an unpleasant salesperson. It even manifests when a fitness fanatic decides to gobble a piece of holiday-themed chocolate at the gym and waits to turn the corner before meeting the personal trainer. The mark of a successful manager is to use a combination of diplomacy and humor to channel that rebellious energy by giving that employee more authority and more responsibility. Treat them like a rebellious teenager, and watch them transform into dynamic leaders within the corporate framework.

The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently: This characteristic should no longer be a concern. Cognitive diversity and inclusion are being formalized in some of the most successful large organizations.

They’re not fond of rules:  I have personally heard startup entrepreneurs proclaim that they love to break all rules. I think that is posturing. Entrepreneurs are the ones who measure risk meticulously and avoid doing anything short-sighted that could result in losses for their venture. There is an interesting article on an entrepreneur’s perceived disregard for risks, captioned ‘The Sure Thing’ by Malcolm Gladwell. Then again, I have seen founders who are completely clueless about how communication is conducted in a corporate setting. Some are clueless about various departments that need to get involved in a meeting – is it the HR, the legal, the marketing person, the head of inclusion, and the warehouse manager? How different is that from hiring an MBA whose only experience is as Vice President of Communications at their school’s MBA Student Association, a highly diluted simulation of an organizational structure.

And they have no respect for the status quo: We know what happened to Nokia’s respect for the status quo. This is the same as dealing with hiring a recent college graduate, except one with a Navy Seal’s grit and focus.

Let’s face it. If corporate CEOs and boards can choose to buy out an entire startup just to bring its team members on-board, a hiring manager or a recruiter need not be paranoid about trying to hire their next great team-mate from a startup and being saddled with a Taz.

A life-long student of life in business, the author Ramesh Sambasivan, is also the principal at SiliconGlades, a design and innovation firm that helps enterprises (B2B and B2C), non-profit organizations and government agencies achieve desired outcomes through innovative marketing programs permeating the organization down to its individual processes, with an eye on social impact.

[siliconglades]

Before The Amazing Tech Giant Comes Knocking

This blog post extends thoughts shared in my previous blog post about a premier retail giant and its painfully convoluted process to get a piece of furniture repaired under a previously purchased warranty. It led me to think of the gaps in the consumer experience into which an amazing tech giant such as Amazon has so effectively, and seemingly inextricably, wedged itself.

There are a few things that the amazing retailing tech giant probably already knew going in, or learned along the way.

It is better to be remembered by a customer for every need in life than for a sporadic need they want fulfilled.

So long as the investors and capital markets allow a company to spoil the customer rotten like a grandfather spoils his grandkids without being accountable (for profits, in the retail context), every competing retailer becomes like the loving daughter who can only watch helplessly when her parents show up to spoil the grandkids rotten, handing them back to the mother once the sugar-high from all the candy kicks in, making grandpa their favorite person on earth.

Starting each day as if it is the first day of your business even though you are the strongest competitor forces you to keep fighting away the bureaucracy that tends to slow down processes in growing organizations.

What can a premier retailer do to insulate itself from the chills each time there’s a rumor that an amazing giant is going to enter their vertical?  

When I think through the convoluted experience with the warranty process it becomes clear that

with each extra step in a retailer’s sale as well as post-sale processes, the wider the distance between a customer and the customer’s satisfaction, and greater the number of gaps available for the amazing giant to wedge itself anywhere along that process to steal the customer’s heart

a customer’s satisfaction in relation to a product or a retail brand needs to be perceived as the needs of a growing child that must be fed and nurtured regularly, long after the sale of the product and the warranty

when a customer has purchased a product, and taken it to her or his home, your company and brand has now become part of their familial experience, whether it be a sofa, an appliance or a pair of shoes that everyone admires at the Thanksgiving gathering

Every retail business would need to come up with its own shield to protect itself from such an amazing competitor’s impact. Here are some early thoughts.

Capture customer rapture: It would require a thoughtful review of the entire sale and post-sale process. Consider the possible times and places of every thought and interaction that your consumers and customers might have about your product or brand, and work backwards from that point to understand the easiest and simplest way to capture the emotion experienced in that thought or interaction to be able to swiftly convert it into rapture. The technology for that is becoming commonplace, flexible and inexpensive.

Reach for higher highs: Collapse all the steps between your customers and your grievance redressal mechanism to a single and swift action, while keeping your auditors and accountants happy. That allows you to keep elevating the customer’s rapture before it dips, apply a tourniquet and stop the bleeding as soon as your brand gets cut when a product fails, and use the opportunity to sell them something better.

Innovate and make your old products obsolete. To sell something better, you need to have something better. The instant feedback loop from your customers will allow you to become prescient and innovate better. Keeping customers in rapture through newer versions of the product will also shock-proof your retail business.

Process bloat is not easy to undo, but sometimes becoming the biggest loser (of bloat) is the only way to survive the threat of an amazingly beautiful competitor who is permanently squatting on your customers’ kitchen counters, heeding their every command until their hearts get stolen.

A life-long student of life in business, the author Ramesh Sambasivan, is also the principal at SiliconGlades, a design and innovation firm that helps enterprises (B2B and B2C), non-profit organizations and government agencies achieve desired outcomes through innovative marketing programs permeating the organization, with an eye on social impact.

[siliconglades]

Too Many Parties Are Unhealthy For A Company.

This post has nothing to do with the current holiday season and office parties. 

This is about one of the nation’s premier retailer completely losing control of its brand among its very loyal customers of long standing, by dragging them through a convoluted routing of repair requests under warranty, through a reliance on not just a third party, but a third party’s third party, and yet another third party of that third party. One third-party too many.

This is the story of a warranty process gone awry, while the executive management stands tall, clueless yet confident that they are doing the customer a favor. This is how a major retailer’s brand gets derailed as it makes too many twists and turns changing engines at unknown junctions along the journey to customer satisfaction.

It’s a story that goes to show why a business owner or a departmental head must continuously revisit every mundane process through a branding and marketing lens.

This is about a reclining sofa from a premium retailer, which broke right before a visit by elderly relatives during the Thanksgiving holidays. One fine evening, the sofa reclined, and then, stubbornly refused to retract.

Earlier in the year, that same retailer’s twitter support had proven ineffective for a different manufacturing defect in their product – the messages and their assurances of help had stalled once it reached the executive offices. This time I decided to pick up the phone and call the store’s phone number the old-fashioned way, after a search online.

“Let me transfer you to our ‘No-Sweat Shop’, Sir”, said the operator. I have modified the name of their repairs/redressal department, of course.

“Are they a part of your store?”

“No sir, but they are wonderful”, she assured me.

Thus, began my journey on a runaway warranty train.

The ‘No Sweat’ department guys issued me a claim number and told me that someone would call me in “2 to 5 days’” to schedule a technician’s visit.

“Could it be done sooner, please? Our elderly aunt and uncle are coming over for a visit. The sofa sticking out is a hazard”, I pleaded.

“Sir, you will have to call a different number to expedite the scheduling”

I was next on the phone calling a different entity. Let’s call them ‘Furniture Fixing Network’ (FNN).

FNN now gives me a work order number.

My phone rings on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. “Someone needs to be home tomorrow between 2 and 7 pm” they tell me.

On Sunday, a very earnest technician stops by, only to find that the motor needs replacement. It would take a few days and will be shipped directly to us, he announces. Once the part reaches us, we would have to call them again “within 14 days of the part being delivered to reschedule the technician’s visit, failing which, the issue on the work order would be deemed resolved”, said their terse email. 

The part arrives after 10 days. I scramble to call the number as the 14-day count-down to a deemed resolution begins. It’s 8:30 a.m. on Monday but they do not open till 9 a.m. I set an alarm on my phone. At 9 a.m. I call Furniture Solution Network and give them my Claim number and Work Order Number.

“You will have to call the Warranty Company and they will have to issue you a new Work Order Number, Sir” said the bored voice on the phone. This must have been an accountant or an auditor’s revenge.

“Is that a different company?”

“Yes, Sir. They are called ‘The Infallibles’ Sir.” I made up that name for that third party.

I called the Warranty Company and got a new Work Order Number. “You will get a call within 5 to 7 days to schedule a visit, Sir.”

“Can it be done sooner, please? The year-end holidays are coming up” I pleaded.

“Sir, For that you will have to call Furniture Fixing Network to find out if they can come sooner. But call them only after 48 hours, otherwise they won’t have this work order on their system.”

I have set an alarm on my phone for 48 hours.

Here's the lesson in this story.

Every single person in your company should be trained not only on her or his particular role, but should also be trained to be constantly on sales mode; constantly promoting your brand. Even your third party provider who serves on your behalf should be trained to promote your brand - in every interaction. Otherwise, the erosion will not be noticed until it's too late.

In this journey, we have forgotten the brand which sold us the sofa. That premier retailer lost control of its brand, having delegated their messaging to third parties who do not flinch while giving customers the third degree. The last time I checked, the retailer was planning to close 100 stores and cutting a sizeable percentage of its workforce.

To wrap up with the metaphor of the railway train, our rail carriage with half a sofa in full recline mode had decoupled from this famous retailer's engine and left their station a long time ago.

A life-long student of life in business, the author Ramesh Sambasivan, is also the principal at SiliconGlades, a design and innovation firm that helps enterprises (B2B and B2C), non-profit organizations and government agencies achieve desired outcomes through innovative marketing programs permeating the organization, with an eye on social impact.

[siliconglades]

Wholesale Good Under the Retail Hood – a thought experiment

This concept has been brewing in my mind for more than a decade, when finding a grocery store that caters to every taste meant a 3-hour drive in cold weather. So bear with me as I connect the dots between what began as a personal need, memories of the neighborhood ‘everything store’ in Mumbai, reading about home delivery ventures that are yet to figure out how to get to a positive net operating cash flow, observation of retail trends in the United States, a vague understanding of the time-tested ‘dabbawalla’ system of lunch-delivery in Mumbai, retail self-check-out technology in the local supermarket, the concept store of Amazon Go, the recent bodega startup news, and the sadness of the homeless and the hungry man I bumped into outside the local grocery supermarket to whom I hesitantly offered a loaf of bread - which he accepted - leaving me with the guilt of taking away his dignity.

There has to be a simpler and better way. A self-sustaining way. Let us therefore, take a different look under the hood of the rapidly changing modern retail industry and see what components can be harnessed for social impact. In the passion projects that we design in-house, we seek positive social impact. We do the same for outside work without sacrificing a client’s goals or profitability, where social impact becomes the icing on the cake and makes a brand likeable.

The concept of retail re-imagined recently resurfaced in my mind when I heard a podcast interview of Tipping Point Community CEO Daniel Lurie whose non-profit is helping tackle chronic homelessness.

In this essay, I will try to connect the dots that I listed above and propose a business model that I believe will serve all interests, both commercial and social. This would make for a delightfully uplifting project for any organization or coalition that is interested in exploring how to do social good at scale, while serving private commercial interests, i.e., doing good in wholesale through retail activity. This would even make for a fascinating student project or a social impact movement that engages the student community and the senior citizens. Here I am reminded of the tweet by Benedict Evans.

In the interest of brevity, I will spare our readers the thought process that led to the design below. Further, instead of expounding the entire workflow in business jargon, allow me to use a simple story-telling technique to describe what we have envisioned in retail for wholesale social impact.

10-year-old Kyle just ran out of the last piece of pencil lead in his favorite mechanical pencil. The last time this happened, he had to wait for the weekend before his mom had the 2 hours needed to drive to the closest Staples to pick up a refill of pencil lead. This year was different. There was a kiraana shop literally a stone’s throw from every home in his development. Kyle hopped on his bicycle with a quarter in his pocket taken from his piggy bank. Kyle could have run to the store, but he loved to ride his bike and try some new tricks while riding it. Just as he was turning the corner near the store riding without his hands on the handle-bar, he hit a bump in the pavement and landed on the asphalt, scraping his knee. Unfazed, Kyle parked his bicycle and walked in the store. The store-keeper knew Kyle by his first name. Kyle asked him for a pencil lead. Mr. Miller, the store-keeper was a retired mechanic and a war veteran. With a smile, he asked Kyle, “Don’t you also want a band-aid for your knee?”. Just then the door opened, and a delivery guy came in with several boxes. Before turning his attention to the delivery guy, Mr. Miller asked Kyle to pick up what he needed from the Staples shelf, and pointed him to the J&J shelf for the band-aid. “Ah, that Instant Pot looks like the delivery the Butlers have been anxiously waiting for before Thanksgiving”, he muttered to himself as he waved the delivery guy towards the pigeon-hole wall on one side of his kiraana shop. The wall had house numbers marked on each pigeon-hole. Meanwhile little Kyle had picked out a single box of mechanical pencil leads, and a single band-aid that he slapped on his knee. On his way out, Kyle dropped the quarter in a tip-jar and dashed out thanking Mr. Miller. Waving bye to the young kid, Mr.Miller limped to the back of the kiraana shop to use the bathroom, before he settled down to rest his back on the cot, also in the back of the shop, from where he could see the delivery guy. He remembered how rough it was when he had to sleep on the bench along the Riverwalk before a good Samaritan came to his rescue and arranged to get him trained to run the kiraana shop. The delivery guy Tim was done and ready to leave, when he received a ping on his phone reminding him to pick up a gift for his little girl Leah who was turning 7 that weekend. Tim shuffled to the Mattel shelf juggling his delivery dolly, and picked up a box of GoldieBlox before he headed out the door shouting “have a wonderful Thanksgiving, Mr. Miller!”

As I concocted this scene, I have tried to bridge generational gaps by weaving in elements of nostalgia, one’s daily needs, modern technology, retail branding, electronic payment and the convenience of modern logistical advances, while retaining a sense of community and creating social impact. 

This thought-experiment includes a business model that can be replicated in almost every community, whether in the suburbs of Philadelphia, a rural community in Omaha, or a bustling city like Mumbai. It can even be operated on a hyper-local level through a co-op model. It can work with Amazon Go’s technology. It can work with Mukesh Ambani’s reported retail strategy to send coupons to consumer’s cell phone that are redeemable at local kiraana shops.

There are several perspectives that need to be factored in. For example, in the ultimate analysis, we do not believe that the demand for products will change from the perspective of a Staples whether Kyle picks up a single small set of lead pencils, or if his mom is forced to pick up only the large 24-pack that she must purchase at Staples and must willy-nilly carry Staples inventory for them in her home basement for the next 24 months. It reminds me of the story of T. Boone Pickens, whose grandmother used to frown upon buying more than one’s immediate needs because that means you are carrying a store’s inventory for them. The kiraana shop will carry that inventory instead. The model also helps brands get within the last mile of the consumer.

Hi-tech kiraana shops crafted in such a social enterprise model will help brands inch up the last mile to the customers while allowing the community to bond face to face.

If there are other believers of this model we would absolutely love to collaborate on a pilot. We even have the branding ready to go. It’s worth a serious try, but for it to succeed, it needs to be a community effort.

The author Ramesh Sambasivan, is a principal at SiliconGlades, the design and innovation firm that helps enterprises (B2B and B2C), non-profit organizations and government agencies achieve desired outcomes through innovative marketing programs that carry social impact.