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In my previous post, I talked about how the team settled on the current colour palette of our journal for our product and how it was important for us to connect through our choice of colours to the target market. The second aspect of the product which we looked at was content. Finalizing on what activities made the cut for our journal was also quite difficult as we had to come up with a list of tasks that served as prompters for the recall of happy memories. These activities had to be appealing to the following types of emotions – happiness – as they looked back on some of the best days of their lives, warmness – as they talked about a loved one, or excitement – when asked to describe their childhood crush.

In terms of our social media content, we used statistics about loneliness, mental health and depression to create a sense of urgency for potential customers who visit our page. We celebrated our win at the first trade fair event as we wanted our potential customers to feel they were part of the journey and that every win for us was also a win for them. It was important for them to see the diverse composition of the team which helped to communicate the fact that the problem we were solving was a universal one and not just one unique to one geography. Through our posts, we wanted our potential customers to feel like that they were part of the team, part of our journey and we let them know this through appreciation posts for visiting our stands.

During our trade fair at the Kingston town centre, we printed out little notes that either reminded everyone who visited our stand about “how unique they were” or assured them of “how much they were loved” or simply gave them a word of encouragement. The goal of this activity was not only to keep with the objective of the product but to also show our customers that we also “walked the talk” by ensuring our behavior reflected our mission.

We also understood that it was possible for people to come in contact with the product as a gift without coming into contact with any customer touch-points such as a store, website or social media channels. It was therefore, necessary to look at ways we could evoke emotion through the product as well. This we did in two ways; we used abstract images that matched the theme of the task for the week such as a candle to represent activities that revolved around holidays or a dice for activities that revolved around games. At the beginning of each page was also a pick-me-up quote or message that was specifically chosen to match the themes.

In summary, as a team we learnt that creating emotional connections was a continuous process and one that was an external as well as an internal activity and that the key to this was ensuring that every decision taken about the product had to have emotional connection as the backdrop.

This post was inspired by some feedback I got during Kingston University’s Bright Ideas Sprint Weekend and the final competition. When pitching our product to people, some people gave us some interesting and useful feedback, while some persons asked these questions; “after someone buys the book, what’s next?”, “and so what?” These sort of questions, came directly or indirectly in the form of a “hmmm” or “did you think about this or that?’’. I began to wonder if we were creating enough value for our target market.

The team had a good idea of what the expected outcome of the product was, we wanted to be able to connect to our customers emotionally so we could be able to create just the right value for them and ultimately convert them to life-long patrons. This is important for every business as the inability for the target market to connect with any product or service emotionally could mean either zero purchase or a one-time-only purchase. In simple terms, emotional connections translate to profitability for a business.  One Harvard Business Review article talks about the importance of businesses approaching emotional connections as a science or a strategy and even went further to state that the first step will be to identify “emotional motivators”.

We were targeting a very specific user segment of over 70  but we also needed to appeal to the target customer who would most likely be a generation apart and what these two groups identify as key values will vary. We came to understand that while the user could see our product as one that they could serve as a “prompter for the recall of happy memories” or a “storage book for memories” or “simply a fun way to pass the time”, the much younger customer could be looking for “ a perfect gift for grandma” or the carehome volunteers could be looking for “ a tool for engaging elderly residents meaningfully”.  At the end of the day, we still wanted to be able to solve the issue of loneliness amongst the elderly populace.

We started by looking at colours because we wanted to be able to evoke the right emotional response to our product from a visual point of view. We found out from some desktop research that the colour orange was identified with “good value” or according to another research “cheap”. Therefore, we included it in the pages of our journal but not on the front or back covers to prevent the cheap look but still communicate good value. We found further research that validated the first finding that blue was the most acceptable colour, and so that was used for the title on our cover page, as well as the alternating page inside the actual journal itself. The process of colour selection was a draining and painstaking one for the team because we wanted the product to be able to stand out, appeal to all genders and while making sure the line between a family oriented activity book and a child’s activity book was not crossed.

For more on creating emotional connections, look out for my next post.

On Thursday the 28^th of January my team participated in a trade fair competition at Kingston University’s Business School Atrium. This was a first for me because I had never sold anything at a trade fair before and was not exactly sure what to expect standing on the other side of the table. We had just come from the Bright Ideas Sprint Weekend some ideas on how to take our product forward and so this was going to be the first place to sort of test those ideas out. Also, we wanted to be able to leave with some valuable insights from the patrons who were going to visit our stand.

The caveat was we did not have a product yet, we had commissioned a graphics designer to help us out but due to poor health, the designer missed our deadline and what little was sent had a bunch of errors in them. This leads me to my first lesson;

1. Always have a plan B: In a New York Times interview with Ilene Gordon, C.E.O. of Ingredion, she highlighted the importance of having a plan B as a business person. She advises entrepreneurs to always have a backup plan that they can implement and even a plan C or D. She reasons that in the business world, our plans are subject to external factors such as government policies, and competitors’ activities just to mention a few. In our case a vendor had failed us and so we had to quickly come up with a new play – market research.
2.  Practice, practice, practice – So our team won the “best sales team award”. We had previously worked on a script for pitching our ideas and everyone had a part to memorize and digest. Sometimes you may have the answers to certain questions but in the heat of the moment, you could communicate your response wrongly to your audience. Therefore, it was for crucial for the team to practice the sales pitch because you never know who might be standing in the elevator next to you.
3. Learn to filter feedback – Without feedback from representatives of our target market, our lecturer, judges and coaches, we may not have been able to get our prototype to where it is today. However, I learned that different demographics will have a different opinion on what direction your product should go or with features your product should have. This is in tandem with an article from the Interaction Design Foundation that suggests testing prototypes on the right people as best practice. They reason that the demographic you test your ideas on could impact the usefulness and use-ability of your product. The article gave some clear insight as to why our audience during the trade fair which were predominantly younger people would want us to produce our journal of memoirs in digital format.
4. Sell Projects not Products – This has to do with with helping to meet a specific need. When a startup focuses on meeting needs as opposed to just selling products, they are able to maintain their revenue pipeline and create new streams. According to this HBR article , when businesses take the project approach to selling, they are more open to identifying and recognizing new business models that can be beneficial to the company. In applying this technique during our trade fair we found a niche in a younger demographic that could lead to a series of similar products but tailored for different age groups.

It was a good event overall, despite the many constraints we faced but then again, this was what real life is all about; your ability as an entrepreneur to scale various business challenges as they arise.

If there is one thing, I have learnt in the past few weeks, it’s the fact that there is a long way to go from having a great idea to pitching that great idea to people. The approach you would take, pitching that idea to an investor is quite different from the one you would take pitching that idea to potential users. These two demographics all require a different sort of information in order to buy into your vision and here’s why I think so.

In coming up with a prototype for our dragon’s den presentation, the team spent a lot of time talking to people in care homes, spending time with adults over the age of 75 who live alone as well as a few other people in order to understand if we;

1. Were targetting the right group of people
2. Properly understood how people would use the product
3. Could come up with the right content for it.

Within a few days, we felt we had an understanding of what the end product should look like; we proceeded to prepare our pitch. In preparing our pitch we wanted to show that we understood what the problems were from the customer point of view, we knew what channels to promote the product through. We also did an analysis of our direct and indirect competitors and highlighted our unfair advantage (thanks to our module director for constantly emphasizing this).

Our goal was to ensure that the judges first understood that there was a problem and that the problem was big enough to make a business out of. We spent time doing some research and coming up with the right numbers and in summary, we nailed our pitch! We sounded great and we were all happy and it was time to print the real product and come up with more content for the journal.

We once again sought the help of representatives of our target market and in sharing our idea with them, it dawned on me that the investor pitch angle was not working. They were not so interested in all the numbers we had been able to cram by now. They were asking questions like “how did you come about this idea?” “Did you have something similar growing up?” “My granddaughter likes to paint, is there something in it for her?” They were concerned about what could happen if a liquid spilled on it (we had not even taken that into consideration). These questions pointed to one thing, value!

They knew about the problem much more than we did, so figures were out of the conversation; there was more interest in the nitty gritty bits of the product simply because they wanted to be certain our product was addressing their need. So, what is the way forward, as entrepreneurs, do we refine our pitch to cater to both investors and customers? Like a one size fits all?  Michael Seibel who is the CEO and a Partner at YC proposes having two separate pitches because both groups want different things. The investors want to know if you can build a successful business out of your idea while the customer just wants to be certain that your product can solve their problems.

For the longest time I had seen business practioners and colleagues around me use the words “Lean Canvas” and “Business Model Canvas” interchangeably. I am was also guilty of it and may have even influenced other people into doing so erroneously. In this blog post I will attempt to redeem myself by differentiating between the two for the benefit of those who did not know the difference either. As an individual who skirted the edges of social entrepreneurship, I identified more with the concept of the business plan because I saw it as a more compact way to present your business plan at a glance; as opposed to flipping through a number of pages. I particularly found it helpful for coaching less-literate micro-retailers in Nigeria about; they found it more relatable and pictures could be drawn where they could not spell the right words to describe what they had in mind, but I digress.  

While the Business Model Canvas was created by Alexander Osterwalder of Strategyzer, the Lean Canvas was adapted from the Business Model Canvas by Ash Maurya. He came across Osterwalder’s book Business Model Generation and proceeded to tailor certain sections of the business model canvas to suit his business needs at the time; this is what accounts for their similarities. Maurya came up with a different approach to the traditional canvas because he felt it was too long and a bit difficult to pen down.  There was also the fact that the existing canvas was not tailored to new products, instead, they addressed existing ones such as big businesses without resources constraints.

To cater to the development of new products, Maurya added the sections on key metrics and un-fair advantage. I particularly found those two sections useful because as a business person, you have to define what success looks like for you. How do you know you are meeting your goals if you have not highlighted any clear indicators? These numbers could be number of registered users, customer acquisition costs and sales revenue just to mention a few.

Prior to learning about this in class, I had never paid any attention to what any businesses’ fair advantage could be. I approached issues like talent, access to research information or target group as “available resources” that could be leveraged as opposed to an un-fair advantage that one business could have over the other.

The section on key partners was also replaced with the problem and rightly so because businesses exist and grow as a result of the existence of problems. I also think that the “problem” section should fit permanently on the first version because even established businesses still try to solve problems every day. The only thing that changes is the type of problems they are solving. For example, a car manufacturing company may have started out designing an affordable car that can take people from point A to point B, but as the company evolves over the years and competitors push out versions of the affordable car, making it readily available for buyers, this huge company all of a sudden, has a different set of problems to tackle. I am glad I discovered the lean startup canvas, I definitely look forward to trying it on a number of products and services just to see what works.