Why is it Better?

Fascinated to read about the launch of a new mobile based publication this week. The company spokesperson, clearly herself sitting resolutely in the target market was taking enormous delight in telling people about how mobile was the new thing and how she used to read magazines in all sorts of places but how her world has now changed.

She may have just been a bit excited but this one quote stopped me in my tracks.

“No one sits in bed with a magazine any more”.

That’s “no one”. Not “there’s a really interesting trend we’ve identified towards people reading on their phones because it’s so portable and convenient”. Nope. ‘No one reads mags in bed anymore’.

So, where to start. Well, I may be the only one, but it just so happens I was reading Golf World in bed last night. (Hardly suprising what with the Open at Birkdale just around the corner)

I get the excitement of a new product. But it’s so unnecessary to over claim a trend. And more importantly the identification of a trend is never more important than the insight.

When we launched FHM, we knew that there were more single women in the UK than any time before, so magazines for single men made some sense. But the insight 
that made FHM the world wide success that it became was that this was also the most cashed-up generation of young men the world had ever seen. And many of them were still living at home with their mums…

I implore anyone working on any new business to finding the insight that makes their new product special. It’s not price and it’s probably not great advertising. It’s the thing that makes people curious, then interested and then a purchaser.

To achieve this nirvana state, you must have an unalloyed focus on the benefits and value that people will get from using the product. In short, what do you want people to see and recognise as being better? If it is indeed better rather than just different and assuming the stars of price, supply and build quality are all at least similar, then if the public at large agrees with your hypothesis, then suddenly it’s your iPod versus everyone else’s Walkman all over again. And the iPod always wins.

Why? Because on any level of assessment between a battery operated portable music player that you have to put cassettes into and a sleek little thing that stores every single piece of music you have ever owned, there’s only one winner.

Why? Because it’s Better. It’s like a magazine you can read anywhere.