I stumbled upon an interesting article in "Technology Review" when I was traveling last week about a new shopping service in South Korea that transforms a subway station wall into a virtual grocery store. Using cell phones, commuters snap photos of the toilet paper or sushi they want to buy, and the items are automatically delivered to their homes before they return from work. Pretty cool.
It all reminded me of the salad days (literally and figuratively), when online grocery shopping was supposed to transform the way Americans buy groceries, and Gregory FCA was working with a now defunct online grocery concept in New England. The company was admittedly so far ahead of the curve that it eventually ran off the road and into a ditch.
The problems were legion. Slow Internet dial-up speeds back then bogged down shoppers as they waited for the site to load. Delivering groceries to suburban homes proved a logistical nightmare, requiring the company to install free refrigerators in customers' garages for deliveries while working families were not at home. Entrenched behavior prevented shoppers from ever believing they could order the perfect cantaloupe without thumping it for themselves.
Even more disastrous, though, was the company's own narrative. Back in the dot-com days, newly minted and funded companies refused to tell simple, understandable stories, preferring to speak in broad, cultural, or economic terms about their concept and business plan.
The management team argued that the company was not about grocery shopping. Rather, it was a "content aggregator that served as a conduit connecting services and products to the home, completing the all-elusive final mile that was thwarting the online revolution."
It all made no sense to shoppers, who simply wanted the best quality groceries at the best possible price delivered conveniently. No one got it. No one bought it. Like Webvan, another high-flying online grocery store concept that raised nearly $400 million in an IPO back in the day, our client died the same sock puppet death as Pets.com, leaving a bunch of overly smart techies to lament that customers "just don't get it."
Oh, they got it alright. Simplicity rules. Think Apple if you don't believe me, and its uniquely understandable boilerplate.
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.Or Microsoft, whose entire boilerplate boils down to this.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions to help people and businesses realize their full potential.Hasn't the world come to realize that the length of a company's boilerplate or story is inversely related to the length of time it has been in business or will be in business? The longer, more convoluted the story, the less significant the business is in the first place. So here, for the first time, I will share with you the primary reasons why so much of corporate storytelling sucks:
1. My investors or investment bank just told me the story we need to sell to get the highest valuation. Oh really? Is that the story that no one can understand? All too often, investors live in echo chambers with the reverberations making it impossible for anyone to understand what's being said.
