Performance Controller

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results"...WC Print

Some years ago as I walk around my supermarket and local stores in Melbourne, Australia I notice bottled water had become a very high seller. I wonder about that as it is widely known that Melbourne has one the purest and drinkable water supplies in the world.

Like selling snow to Eskimos this paradox defies logic, but marketing guys who figured it out had cleaned up.

To create this new category, rather than focus on changing buying habits of the natural competitor was done by selling the value of water as a health solution with a fashion image built around drinking bottled water. This also leveraged the trends in Asia and parts of Europe where water is sold in bottles, as the natural tap variety is not so good. In The winner was a brand new industry who got people to part with their money for something that was still basically free and just as good from the tap.

That got me to thinking how people change their habits when experts say it cannot be done. Like in clever saying about habit goes something like this:

To change a habit always leaves “a bit:, And then when you try again there is still one more bit, and so it continues.

But before I jumped to conclusion about habits I have figured may be several  types…..

There is of course the endemic habit that is there because it has always been so.

For example when I went to live in London in 1970’s I wondered then why people there seemed to always stand in a queue when they saw one. I learned this was a legacy from World War days when food was scarce. Rationing stamps. issued by the government to regulate shortages had in turn created a habit in people who joined a queue as it mean they got food.

This type of habit is so hard shift as it lingers even now in Britain having been passed on to the future generations, and in spite of the decades of affluence.

And then there is the leaned habit that may often be based on folk law which is out of date.

Like the one exposed when an mothers inquisitive daughter asked her why she folded the leg bone back on  the ham before she roasted it. “I leaned that from my mum”, she said. Not satisfied the girl went to he granny and asked her the same question. “My mother taught me that was granny’s response too. Still determined to find the answer the gild then went to her great grandmother who replied, “oh that is simply; because in my day we only had small ovens and it would not fit unless you folded the leg bone back”  

This granny’s folk law type habit persists through ignorance and even when uncovered it may still be hard to change.

And then there is the cult habit.

I only began to understand religion well when I lived in a Muslim community and my driver in Indonesia sought my approval to stop the care for a pee. He took with him a water bottle When I asked about that later, he explained it is part of his religion to  clean his penis.

Of course many others follow the same healthy habit but not always in the name of religion, but it was then I realized that religious administrations creates rules that become habits for the good of the community they serves. 

Thinking about changing these is generally impossible and one should never try unless a cult takes hold that places a community at risk.

And last on my list the environment habit

For example in Bangkok the queues of traffic create an insoluble problem. as every day traffic blocks the city unmercifully. It makes no sense to have a car there, yet minions still join traffic jams daily to face the residue of poor town planning of centuries ago that set the habit. I once recall seeing a traffic jam form in Bangkok as people joined it for so real reason in spite of alternative routes being there.

The massive network of freeways that have been built in the last 2 decades have not overcome the problem. It continues too even with high quality mass transport services in place; Sky Train, Underground. and cheaper bus and water ferry services. All  have all failed as the population growth outstrips the solutions and as commuter habits continue to see continuing use of the highly deterrent taxed car.Traffic management, there it seems, no matter how it matures with best practice, still always struggles to handle the habits of generations.

Like many large cities around the world Bangkok is a mix of old and new that sprawls through narrow streets. The often hard to find accesses to highways can be even frustrated with crossings in private land that serves as the link to an arterial superhighway city escape routes. Like the Londoners, with their food queuing habit, I wonder if perhaps the Thais have a deep seeded belief that jams, no matter how painful, in the end are actually seen as the way to get out of the city.

This type of habit may take an earth quake or some such other unacceptable disaster to bring about change so it always going to be a long hail to fix the symptoms.

So it seems Trying to sell change in habits in the market place is a paradox even on things that are obviously good or conversely bad for us. But by focusing on something new to build a following by using established habits, like the water in Melbourne, can and does work. 

The aim there is not on changing what is, but on a new category focus that brings perceived new value.  This concept is not new as business typically brings new product to market after often first testing it on a target group of zealous believers who may love it and to adopt new things.

Then as momentum builds, these people carry the message to otherwise skeptical masses and do the selling. In the meantime the masses are completely ignored at no cost, until the take up reaches the critical mass.

With this positive focus, like the water bottle example, habits may in fact change to eventually they become new folk law as something new.

I wonder if using this approach can also change the habits is all our large cities of the world.

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