Thought for the Day - The 10x Marketing Solution Comes from the Unexplored Potential

 While talking about Google maps with Anjali the other day, this story came up. Apparently, the Google maps team in India saw it as a product that might not work because in India the common culture was to ask for directions and everyone got from A to B thanks to help being available everywhere, right or wrong. But they launched it and discovered that Google maps released this huge untapped potential of drivers who did not know routes by heart, women drivers who sometimes find it difficult to ask for directions or to remember routes. With Google maps on their phone, 50% of the population was released from the problem of not knowing or asking directions. This empowerment led to so many women drivers, so many first time drivers like the Uber drivers, to only learn how to drive, and not worry about directions.

 This also reminded me of the story from Philip Kotler's 'Marketing Management' where an American shoe manufacturer sends a representative to Africa to explore the market - story which I related to Anjali. He comes back and says there is no potential - no one wears shoes in Africa and everyone is comfortable walking around without shoes so we cannot sell stuff. The company management accepts his conclusion and after sometime sends another representative to check out the potential. He comes back full of excitement and says there's tremendous potential - no one is wearing shoes and we can sell shoes to all of them!

The lesson from these two stories is to realise that the 10x solution is not what you see or assume, but what is hidden or has never been part of your focus. The 10x comes from the part that has not been explored, has been dormant. 

Brings to mind another classic marketing story, probably from Kotler's book - when a soft drink was launched in India, its market was not considered to be merely people who consumed soft drinks. It was expanded to cover all those who drank stuff like chai, water etc.  When contextualised like that, the market potential looks huge, and our thinking changes. 10x suddenly appears possible.

It was a good conversation to have with Anjali.