Consider this classic story narrated by John Sculley in his autobiography
‘Odyssey’. In the 1970’s when he was the Vice-President marketing at
Pepsi, Coke dominated the soft drinks market. Sculley recalls that his
executives were certain that Coke’s distinctive hour-glass shaped
bottle was
Coke’s most important competitive advantage. The bottle design, they felt,
had become the product. Easy to grip and stack, more sturdy to
withstand a vending machine’s drop, a part of American culture and the
only company
logo which a person could pick up in his hand. Trying to compete with
Coke’s bottle, Pepsi had spent millions and many years in studying new
bottle designs.
In tackling the issue of how to compete with the Coke bottle, Sculley made
what is called a metadecision. He asked himself a few crucial
questions. What is the crux of the issue? How should problems like this
be
approached? He realized that the heart of the problem was not to compete
directly with Coke’s bottle (Pepsi’s focus in the past) but to nullify its
strengths. He decided to approach the problem by shifting the ground rules
to alter the whole playing field, pulling back and asking what the customer
really wanted.
Realizing that his people did not know enough about consumers to identify
what they really wanted in order to take marketing decisions correctly, he
launched a careful test to study how families actually consumed Pepsi and
other soft drinks in their homes. It became obvious that what the customers
wanted was packaging that made it easier for people to get more soft drinks
into their homes. Then Sculley moved into the first of the four stages in
decision making - framing the issue, which in this case was launching of
new larger and more varied packages. Pepsi began a new intelligence
gathering stage, and then, based on the findings, launched a new group of
larger packages and thereafter continued to refine the packaging. The results
were dramatic and Pepsi’s market share expanded substantially and almost
drove the Coke bottle out to extinction. Coke could not convert its famed
hour-glass silhouette bottle into larger containers.
What Sculley did is of immense significance to decision makers - take time
for an initial assessment, in which you ask yourself how this kind of decision
should be made. This activity of deciding how to decide is called
metadecision.
In the metadecision phase, ask yourself these questions:
1. What is the crux or primary difficulty in this stage? Which of the four
stages in the decision making process will be the most important?
2. In general how should decisions like this be made? Where do my own
strengths and weaknesses lie? Where do I need help?
3. Can I draw on feedback from related decisions and experiences that I
have faced in the past?
Read More: Tickled by Life
Posted by: Craig Syms
Posted on: Contagious Ideas
