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Innovative Methodologies for
Marketing and Product Development
Two new titles from entrepreneurial marketing pioneer Leonard Lodish and product development guru Howard Moskowitz
Creating Lasting Success in Marketing
Marketing That Works: How Entrepreneurial Marketing Can Add Sustainable Value to Any Sized Company
By Leonard M. Lodish, Howard L. Morgan, and Shellye Archambeau
 Every dime you spend on marketing
needs to work harder, smarter, faster.
Every dime must differentiate your
company based on your most valuable
competencies. Every dime must protect
you against competitors and commoditization.
Every dime must drive higher
profits this quarter, and help sustain
profitability far into the future.
Marketing That Works: How
Entrepreneurial Marketing Can Add
Sustainable Value to Any Sized Company can help companies diminish wasted
efforts and key into “Marketing-
Driven Strategy” that leads to sustained
revenue and profit increases.
The three authors all have Wharton
connections. Leonard Lodish is an
entrepreneurial marketing pioneer
at Wharton, as well as vice dean
for Wharton West and founder of
the Global Consulting Practicum.
Howard L. Morgan, director and
former vice chairman of Idealab and
founder and partner in First Round
Capital, is a former professor of decision
sciences at Wharton. Wharton
alumna Shellye Archambeau,
W’87, is CEO of Metricstream, Inc.,
former CMO and EVP of Sales for
Loudcloud, Inc., and former President
of Blockbuster, Inc.’s e-commerce division,
where she was recognized by Internet World as one of the nation’s
Top 25 click and mortar executives.
Lodish and his co-authors illustrate
why every company needs multiple
marketing plans, depending on
what constituency is addressed — i.e.,
customers, investors, or other partners.
They provide real examples, such
as the “own store” strategy of Limited
Brands that enables them to get the
best locations and lease rates in malls,
of how the concepts described have
helped ventures make more money on
a sustainable basis.
With competition increasing on a
global scale and new technologies and
communication sources putting more
power in the hands of the buyer, companies
are desperately implementing
marketing programs to stay ahead of
the competition and effectively influence
buyers. Too many of these programs
are failing to achieve desired
results. Marketing That Works will
show you how to avoid these pitfalls
and how to create lasting success in
your marketing programs.
The book also includes the opportunity
to access software that can help a
company improve resource deployment.
Every bit of the content inside the book
has been chosen because it is proven to
work and because it can add continued
value to any size company.
Tying Together the Value Proposition: Distinctive Competence, Sustainable Competitive Advantage, and Positioning
Excerpted from Marketing That Works, "Chapter 1: Marketing- Driven Strategy to Make Extraordinary Money"
Orvis Co.—Excellent Entrepreneurial Positioning
The Orvis Company has done an excellent
job over the years of capitalizing on
a unique positioning in a very competitive
industry. They sell “country” clothing,
gifts, and sporting gear in competition
with much bigger brands like L.L. Bean
and Eddie Bauer. Like their competitors,
Orvis sells both retail and mail order. How
is Orvis differentiated? They want to be
perceived as the place to go for all areas
of fly-fishing expertise. Their particular expertise
is making a very difficult sport
“very accessible to a new generation of
anglers.” 1 Since 1968, when their sales
were less than $1 million, Orvis has been
running fly-fishing schools located near
their retail outlets. Their annual sales are
now over $350 million. The fly-fishing
products contribute only a small fraction
of the company’s sales, but the fly-fishing
heritage adds a cachet to all of Orvis’s
products. According to Tom Rosenbauer,
beginner fly fishermen who attend their
schools become very loyal customers and
are crucial to continuing expansion of the
more profitable clothing and gift lines.
He says, “Without our fly-fishing heritage,
we’d be just another rag vendor.” 2
The Orvis positioning pervades their
entire operation. Their catalog and their
retail shops all reinforce their fly-fishing
heritage. They also can use very targeted
segmentation to find new recruits
for their fly-fishing courses. There are a
number of targeted media and public relations
vehicles that reach consumers interested
in fishing. Their margins are higher
than the typical “rag vendor” because of
their unique positioning. The positioning
is also defensible because of the consistent
perception that all of their operations
have reinforced since 1968. A competitor
will have a very difficult time and large
expense to reproduce the Orvis schools
and retail outlets. It also will be difficult
for a competitor to be a “me too” in an
industry where heritage is so important.
The positioning and segmentation decisions
Orvis made in 1968 probably added
close to $1 billion of incremental value to
their venture since that time. That value
is our estimate of the difference of Orvis’s
actual profit since 1968 compared to what
the venture’s profitability might have been
had they just been “another rag vendor.”
1. Greco, Susan, “Reeling them in,” Inc.
Magazine, Jan. 1998, p. 52.
2. Ibid.
Better Product Development
Selling Blue Elephants: How to Make Great Products That People Want BEFORE They Even Know They Want Them
by Howard R. Moskowitz and Alex Gofman
 Your customers can actually help you
create your next product, with the help
of Rule Developing Experimentation
(RDE), a solution-oriented learning experience.
Completely scalable for organizations
of any size and even for those
with limited budgets, RDE is an automated
seven-step process that defines
how to design, test, and modify alternative
ideas, packages, products, or services
in a disciplined way so that companies
discover what appeals to the customer,
even if the customer can’t articulate the
need, much less the solution.
Selling Blue Elephants: How to
Make Great Products That People Want
BEFORE They Even Know They Want Them examines the use of RDE in innovation
and design, as well as applications
in the international, political,
bioinformantics, and financial services
arenas. The best-practice examples from
today’s top companies, including HP,
Prego, Vlasic, and Mastercard, illustrate
how you can apply the same process
not only in product and service design,
but also in the marketing and messaging
of products and services.
“We have a proven solution which
has direct impact for those managers
with bottom-line accountability
for their organization,” explains Dr.
Howard R. Moskowitz, President of
Moskowitz Jacobs Inc. and the creator
of RDE. “This is the fastest, most cost
effective and intuitive way for executives
and managers to stay well-ahead of
the customer demand curve.”
How to Use Rule Developing
Experimentation
Rule Developing Experimentation
(RDE) is a systematized solution-oriented
process of experimentation which
designs, tests, and modifies alternative
ideas or messaging in a disciplined way
so that the developer and marketer discover
what appeals to the customer,
even if the customer can’t articulate the
need or solution. Follow these straightforward
steps:
1. Think about the problem, and identify
groups of features or “silos” that
comprise the target solution. Each
silo comprises several related features.
2. Mix/match the elements according a
planned design to create a set of test
prototypes.
3. Show the prototypes to customers
and obtain reactions.
4. Uncover how each element drives
each customer’s reaction.
5. Identify naturally occurring attitudinal
segments of the population that
show similar patterns of elements
driving responses.
6. Create learning rules, and apply
the rules to create new products,
offerings and more, by choosing
optimal elements.
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