I have been a member of the Berkeley Innovation Forum (BIF) for several years and this year Best Buy sponsored our spring meeting. BIF is a peer group of fifty members each responsible for some aspect of innovation in their respective companies, and it is organized and run by Dr. Henry Chesbrough, professor at Haas Business School and author of the bestselling book, Open Business Models. BIF is unique in that it is an open forum for innovation discussion amongst its members from a wide spectrum of industries, including retail, energy, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, government, and healthcare and information technology.
The Innovation Challenge
During the course of this meeting Best Buy, Cisco, Nike and other companies presented their current innovation strategies, however, Best Buy put forth an innovation challenge to the group. The challenge was to create an innovative marketing strategy and execution plan that would provide Best Buy with an innovative competitive advantage in selling its newest product line of electric bicycles. Teams were allotted three hours to come up with a strategy and plan, and each member of the winning team would receive a $100 Best Buy gift certificate.
BIF members were organized into four teams each with a specific area of focus:
- · Two teams developed traditional marketing and advertising programs.
- · One team developed a social media program.
- · One team developed government and university initiatives.
Each team had a budget of $1 million USD to work with in any way they wished. I led the social media team and helped develop our program.
Our first exercise was right out of Marco Iansiti's book, The Keystone Advantage and we quickly fleshed out the electric bike ecosystem on a white board with customers at the center, along with partners and other third party add-on parts and service vendors. This gave us a great big picture overview into how we could monetize the SMPG (ebikeplace.com) and who we could leverage to cosponsor it and/or be an active member of it with the electric bike owners.
Our strategy was simple, establish Best Buy as the thought leader for electric bikes by having them build and cosponsor a community for everything electric bike, so ebikeplace.com was born. As a co-sponsor of ebikeplace, Best Buy would be viewed as a "vendor neutral" in the minds of the community members and partners, including those that might help co-sponsor, such as Skull Candy. The team agreed that ebikeplace needed to be established in three regions: China, India and the US, with the greatest potential growth in Asia.
Who Buys Electric Bikes?
Best Buy had initially selected three target audiences to approach:
- · People who needed assistance (retired)
- · Fun seekers
- · Commuters
We thought that Best Buy should add other target audiences for their electric bike sales including:
- · Baby boomers
- · Students
- · Singles
Our next step was to design places (forums for discussion) in the community that would address areas of interest to electric bike owners:
- · Security
- · Safety
- · Maintenance
- · Charging Stations
- · Home repair
- · Road service
- · Pimp my ride
- · Children and electric bikes
- · Electric bike add on products
Once ebikeplace was up and running we would link it into advertising on sites that the target audiences frequent, like bebo, gathers, eons, facebook, etc and also set up Twitter feeds for new updates on ebikeplace. Bloggers would be recruited from Best Buy's employee staff thereby empowering them, in addition to recruiting other relevant bloggers from the electric bike ecosystem. We also came up with the idea of donating $100k worth of electric bikes to some universities with the caveat that each student had to blog to get a free bike. We also thought of building an iPhone app that tracks the carbon saving of an electric bike user.
Launching ebikeplace.com in three regions would cost around $250K for each region and provide Best Buy with an innovative competitive advantage in the social media landscape beyond Facebook and their own website. The team also came up with a series of ideas on how to add value to the community and generate sales leads. The first was a monthly series of educational webinars addressing the key issues, like service, safety, maintenance and kids. Webinars would be promoted primarily through the blogging network and Best Buy's customer list and Best Buy employees could conduct some of the webinars. Additionally, we thought that having contests on a regular basis like, the best pimped out ride, the best electric bike design, the best electric bike ride, etc would add value an excitement to the community.
In conclusion, the four teams worked almost until 12PM that night on their presentations and one team actually had the audacity to wager that they would win (that wasn't the social media team.) The next day all the teams had ten-fifteen minutes to present their programs, and they were judged by all BIF members and a handful of Best Buy executives. The presentations were all great and surprisingly each one included a short video clip, shows you what a visual society we are. As you all know I love competition and my DNA is sales so you know the ending of this story, the social media team won. What the other three teams failed to execute on was innovation, and leveraging it to create competitive advantage that leads to sales and thought leadership.
Social media is the new word of mouth marketing and there is no better place to drive volume sales and influence than through a social media peer group. The social media platform can be the center of any company's ecosystem of customers, partners and in this case even NGOs focused on sustainability. Best Buy's brand would also benefit from the green aspect of ebikeplace.com as a company that facilitates and practices sustainability. I sincerely hope that Best Buy will act on this innovation and welcome your comments and ideas on this post. Until next time I wish you great selling and marketing in the millennium.