It's all about Pigeons and Eagles

I recently attended a meeting devoted to the research for new opportunities in the marketplace. During the meeting, the concept of "Pigeons and Eagles" was introduced. It seems that Pigeons are described as product initiatives that have marginal benefit to the financial positioning of the company while an Eagle is an initiative that holds promise of strong financial gain. The intent of the presentation was to stimulate efforts towards the greater financial gains and reduce effort on those projects that showed only the chance of small gains (Pigeons).

I viewed this event with mixed emotions. While I agree we should devote our efforts to those things that will deliver positive corporate results, I had concerns on two main fronts. I do not judge on the basis of "big gains vs. Small gains." I prefer to use the "Investment vs. Return" criteria for action. First, I believe that there are some things that we can do with a little effort that have only moderate annual gains but over the years produce large profits. It is like someone once told me, a single block of stone is insignificant but when they are put together to form a pyramid, you have one of the wonders of the world. Below I will cover one such example.

My second area of concern deals with the ability to identify the Eagle. I have seen too many projects that appeared to be ugly pigeons until they hit the market and they turned into beautiful Eagles that fostered generations of Eagles thereafter. Some cases in point are Ivory Bar Soap, Tide and Pampers. These brands could not win blind tests against their major competition prior to market introduction. Actually after three decades of market leadership in the bar soap market, Ivory was still a 90/10 blind test loser. Unfortunately the more innovative a product, the less likely we are to read the market impact with most current research methods.

There are two relatively new books on the market that indirectly address this problem but more from the marketing point of view. Both were written by Mr. Barry Feig. The titles are: The New Products Workshop and Marketing Straight to the Heart.

An example of the small investment/long-term profit is best demonstrated by a project I was involved with after leaving Procter. I was working with a company on identifying new product opportunities when I noticed that one of their current brands, which came in multiple fragrances, was shrink wrapped. I asked the Director of Market Research if it was to keep the fragrance in the product. His response was that it was not, it was to keep the people from opening the shaker box and sampling the fragrances before purchase and then leaving opened containers on the shelf. He had no data to support the hypothesis but thought it was obvious. To cut a long story short, we conducted a study involving six stores for six weeks to determine if there were no overwrapping, how many would be left opened on the store shelves. We found only one opened carton through the six weeks. Today, and for the past six years, you will not find shrink wrap on their brand. A $5,000 test resulted in significant annual savings that will continue to grow over time.

From a distance it's hard to tell pigeons from little eagles and little eagles become big eagles.