One of the world's most successful investors and philanthropists, Warren Buffett, stated that "First come the innovators, then come the imitators, then come the idiots." He was talking around why the financial crisis in 2008 happened, but I think that the sentiment can be spread across to other situations.
First come the innovators, who see opportunities that others don’t and create something popular that is successful and envied, these groups tend to be the most successful.
Then come the imitators, who copy what the innovators have done, whilst successful they are riding on the coat tails of others so will never be true market leaders and exist in a world of average.
And then come the idiots, whose greed undoes the very innovations they are trying to use to get others, these people will undermine what's been built with poor interpretations of the original innovation and deliver a substandard execution, meanwhile the original innovator has probably moved on to something else.
What has all of this got to do with marketing?
Well, as you probably know I've worked in and around media and entertainment for most of my career and there have been a number of occasions where I have been a part of and seen innovation, it's always been exciting and often you need to doff your cap to what's happening. Thankfully I don't think I would put any of the teams I've worked with or products I've worked on into the idiots category, but I would certainly see a lot in the imitation area.
Why is this a bad thing? Surely copying something successful makes sense, if you cant win a gold medal, better to still be on the podium right?
In the marketing world this is the case to a degree but I believe that you will never truly drive your product forward if you are always imitating, you will always be in silver or bronze position or in some cases risk slipping out of the medals entirely.
Businesses spend big on R&D hoping to stay ahead of the competition, but often with media businesses you wait for someone else to come up with a concept and then bastardise it. Look at the awesome BBC iPlayer. When that first came out it was a wow moment, now there are imitations all over the place, but few to rival the original. Tesco Clubcard is another fine example of this.
You see imitation on a large and small scale. Often I've seen companies use innovation as a source of inspiration, "that's a great idea, how could something with the same premise work for us" so often you will make it work to your needs. In the world of radio and events you often see promotional teams floating around with big branded photo frames desperate to take your photo and share it. At Free Radio we didn't want to copy but knew we wanted something similar, and so the 'messages to the stars' concept was born, shown below. Similar in many ways but not a total rip off that you see in so many Instagram accounts. We felt that was a nice evolution of the original innovation:
Sometimes though you don't see innovation, just straight out copies of ideas, who really wins in this scenario? Every year Heart FM, like most other radio stations, would host Christmas Lights switch-on's. And every year they would hand out these very funky branded antlers to the crowd.
To my surprise during my time with one big media company the boss approved the purchase and distribution of an identical product for the many radio stations in territories where Heart FM was also around.
In this case no evolution meant that this wouldn't be a winner for the stations, how could it be? Heart were first past the post as they had been using these for years, but the late comer producing an identical product in this situation surely wouldn't get any great benefit, the colouring didn't even support the brand.
Ok, this is a small example and not meant to point fingers, but what I am trying to do is highlight lazy marketing. It doesn't take much to get a few heads around a table and find a suitable solution to a problem. If you cant innovate then evolution is better than straight out imitation.
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