We are big believers in Moore’s Markets Adoption Theory (famously known as Crossing the Chasm) here at Mortar. (In fact, it’s so bad my colleagues think I should tattoo it on somewhere on my body).

Many of you are probably already using Moore’s thinking, but for the uninitiated, allow me to present THE SINGLE GREATEST MODEL FOR LAUNCHING A NEW IDEA. ANY NEW IDEA. There. I don’t think that is overdoing it all. 

Moore’s model is not the first to describe the path innovation takes from whimsy to mainstream. But it is one of the best. And the popularity of the model makes for easy meetings with innovators and those who love them.

Now, if you asked a hundred people if you were crazy, and only one said yes, would you believe them?

Moore says maybe you should.

For Moore the early market is a special place. It’s populated by those on the fringe. People who care about features others ignore. In many ways, Disaster Preppers are in the early market for the apocalypse. Likewise, Flat-Earthers never crossed the chasm to join the rest of the world in believing the world is round (wait, what?).

But not every member of the early market is crazy. Some of the most passionate early adopters can be found in august institutions like Johns Hopkins, the Mayo Clinic, Stanford, UCSF Medical Center as well as mainstream giants like VMware, IBM and Cisco. And they can be found in every start-up. (Although, beware, not every start-up employee is a visionary… more on that in a second).

The first buyers of new ideas are often visionary in character, attracted by revolutionary change, and largely comfortable with half-baked features that others regard as untested or unfinished.

But these pioneers are also prone to be needy, goal obsessed, and keen to brag. Especially about being the first on the block to grab innovation by the horns and wrestle it into submission.

And, because they are obsessed with the new and promising, they will also be among the first to quit. Visionaries like to jump onto the next big thing. And that can be a problem. The early market is a dynamic, fickle force which can be hard to tame and even harder to keep caged.

Source: Wikipedia

Here are five things about the early market most overlook:

• The early market is always in the minority. i.e. It will be small. So if you talk to 100 people about your new product, less than two may say it’s awesome. 98% will tell you it sucks. And a 98% rejection rate is hardly compelling evidence that you’re onto something. And yet, that is exactly what you can expect in early market testing.
• People who sell to the early market are rarely comfortable selling to early adopters. Your team, those stalwarts who have chosen to join you on the front line of change, they too are surrounded by doubters and skeptics. So is your Board. And your investors. Everyone wants guarantees. Or at least promises. They will all push you to go for the money. Now. And the money lies in the fattest part of the bell curve with the elusive majority. So why aren’t you selling there now? Moore urges caution and the need to establish a beachhead first. But to do that is to sit back while someone else exploits the fat found in the middle of the herd! To win with early adopters is to focus on them and them alone: and that is often a counter-intuitive move. Savvy early marketers limit discussion to early market needs, focus research on early desires, and largely ignore what the rest of the market has to say. Don’t make the mistake of testing early ideas with the majority as the results are unlikely to be helpful.
• The early market is very different from the late market. To find where you are on the curve, it’s important to understand the differences between the two groups. Somewhere in your product’s journey to success is a gap. This “chasm” lies between the radicalized, crazy, fanatical first customers and their more prudent, careful, and risk-averse brethren. Put simply, pragmatists don’t trust visionaries. Pragmatists think visionaries are crazy. And pragmatists bore visionaries with their endless prattling about avoiding risk and loading up with check-box features that few want. Yet, significant numbers of pragmatists have to be swayed by visionaries for an idea to root and blossom. There is a gap between the two groups: and most new ideas fail trying to bridge the yawning chasm between pioneer and pragmatist.
• The traffic moves in one direction: from left to right, early to late. Ideas move from new to old. They are birthed. They grow. Mature. And eventually pass into the mainstream. And after a while they wither and die. The point here is that they rarely pass from mature to death and back to sexy again (note I said rarely: fashion is well known for resurrecting dead ideas, which partially explains why my teens are crazy about bell-bottoms). It is hard for a new idea to retrace its steps, especially when the gloss has worn off. One is reminded of the old saw “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.” If you are stewarding a new idea across the chasm, you will do well to avoid jumping too early.
• Your industry is not any different. Don’t fight the theory, embrace it. We (by which we mean the smart people and, yes, Mortar) have been teaching diffusion theory since Rogers first published Diffusion of Innovations in 1962 (check this out). It’s hardly a new idea or a novel expression of market development. The principles are tried and tested. Sure you can break into a market by penetrating the middle: but it takes a lot of effort and cash. That’s why so many Super Bowl advertisers are major, established brands — Coke, Pepsi, Jeep, Bud — and why so few companies trust debuting a novel idea in a $3 million commercial (although there is a stand out or two every year). Still, if you are launching an idea outside the mainstream, you can gain a significant advantage by embracing the lessons of market adoption theory and watching your own customers for the telling signs of quivering, flighty pioneerdom. Or you send me an email and we’ll do it for you.

* This article has been updated from our original publication: “The Joys of Selling to the Early Market” here.

Engineers and Creatives are wired differently.

What one group regards as self-evident and logical, the other is just as likely to dismiss as tepid or irrelevant. And yet it is every technology marketers noble mission to unite these two groups to produce the right blend of messaging.

It’s rarely easy. 

In fact, I’m reminded of the story of  the Great Architect who decided to build a bridge with a unique feature: a 20-foot gap midway across the span.

Drivers who exceeded 50 mph would effortlessly sail across the open gap thousands of feet above a canyon below. Tourists would flock to the new attraction and the neighboring town.

Opening day dawned.

The first driver accelerated towards the gap at 50 mph as instructed. Only instead of sailing effortlessly over the yawning hole, the driver plunged through the gap to a fiery death on the chasm floor below.

The distraught, but nevertheless still Great, Architect immediately rushed over to his horrified engineers. They agreed their calculations were indeed faulty and that any further traffic should cease.

Seeking a second opinion, the Great Architect turned to his designers. But unlike the engineers, the creative team responded with disdain “What? Are we going to make all our decisions after just one bad test?”

Readers of this story will be forgiven for concluding that given their different viewpoints, the best way to manage technical and creative teams is to separate them.

And when it comes to developing marketing strategies, many agencies do exactly that.

In isolation, they identify what the engineers want said. Cement it into a brief of some sort. And pass the newly minted instructions through to the waiting creative team.

Which, of course, is a horrible way to work. And a sure-fire way to introduce barriers when we should be building bridges (admittedly one without giant holes).

If you are interested in a smarter way to forge a partnership between technical and creative teams, drop us a line at heythere@mortaragency.com, subject “Crazy Bridge”.

For more on how to avoid the consequences of chronic marketing inefficiency, brought on by the failure to collaborate, see “THE SUCKER FOR PUNISHMENT DILEMMA: WHAT IF YOUR CREATIVE AGENCY IS WORKING WITH(OUT) YOU?  at Mortarblog.com. Or the follow-up post: “LIFE AFTER THE BIG REVEAL: A PROGRESS REPORT“.  

PS: A bridge with a huge hole in it is not so crazy. See how some engineers are designing roads that sing.

I never cease to be amazed by the power of small amounts of  testing.

I’m reminded of a Mortar client that made water out of thin air (they said it involved condensation, I’m pretty sure the dark arts were involved).

Like most tech teams they were in a hurry, and so the question of testing kept getting pushed further and further down the development cycle.

Only weeks from launch, our strategy was nailed, we knew how our product was different, and we had a new name, logo, and a crisp elevator speech.  All that stood between us and the Market was confirmation.

For this project we chose an engagement session: the agency, client team and prospects sit down around a coffee table for a moderated discussion. Although less scientifically objective than traditional focus groups (which make heavy use of one-way mirrors and bowls full of M&M’s) engagement sessions provide a more immersive experience for all parties.

The lessons learned in engagement sessions are often much more powerful, because the team hears the feedback directly and without filter, instead of weeks later as part of a 116 slide PowerPoint deck.

So, there we are, sitting on a couch, with eight early adopters, the pioneers we expect to be among the first to buy, and we launch into our idea.

The CTO lays out the challenge, details the product idea, and is about to reveal our first creative concept when a burly engineer leans forward and asks, “so what does the water taste like?”

The CTO turns green and starts to stammer.

Everyone else on the team is taken aback. Incredibly, we’d been so wrapped up in the genius of the technology that we never asked ourselves this simple question: what does the water our machine makes, actually taste like?

Before we can respond, the engineer says “I bet it tastes awful, am I right?”

Yes, dear reader, it turns out that water condensed from the air (or via the dark arts) has no flavor. And while that may sound like a good thing, it turns out we expect our water to taste like something, and that the lack of any flavor is… well… disgusting. How water tastes is a critical attribute for any water-making appliance.

The discovery that the A-ha Moment for our water-making innovation was not “Wow, I can make water, anywhere,” sent shockwaves through the team.

We had simply not considered that the benefit of providing fresh water would need to include taste.

That was not the only thing we took from our research.

We were also struck by the pride with which our first prospect pointed out the flaw in our marketing.

Members of the early market are often heavily invested in product details and are rarely shy about offering their opinions for improvement or further innovation.

But there is a point, as every innovator will attest, when a product should be hurled into the market, as there is no better indicator of success than purchase and use.

Still, our first customers would regard the lack of focus on taste as a critical product flaw—and it would cloud the bigger story: that they could now make water anywhere.

Not to fix the taste issue would leave our first customers feeling betrayed and ignored.

And it left me scratching my head over how I could have allowed the project to advance so far without considering such a vital factor.

My entire marketing career has been punctuated by moments like these.  I have learned the hard way that small, regular doses of feedback from potential customers are an essential ingredient of any successful marketing program.

And experiences like these are why we insist our clients test their A-ha moment before they head to market. For more on Mortar and our emphasis on the A-ha see this post: Five things we learned about A-ha moments in 2017.

For the last 15 years device marketing has been big business at the Mortar. As an agency on the forefront of technology and healthcare marketing, we took a step back and asked ourselves what we would do if we were the VP Marketing or Chief Marketing Officer. Here’s four things we believe most medical device–hell, healthcare–marketers miss:

A big market attracts Big Tech. So maybe you should get into bed with Amazon.

Healthcare spending is huge. Massive. After weapons, we spend more on our health than any other item. The biggest market is here in the USA. But the rest of the world is following along fast. And why? Because we all want to live longer and eat more cheeseburgers. Call it the pursuit of the fountain of youth or simply just a desire to keep sinning, healthcare is a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs seeking to make their mark on the planet.

For evidence, look no further than Jeff Bezos’ Amazon. Amazon is already well down the medical device path. It has sold supplies and equipment to clinics and hospitals for years, and is now looking to build out that business by bringing its Alexa artificial intelligence (AI) business into the operating room.  It is one thing to compete with an Abbott or a Baxter. It is quite another entirely to feel Big Tech giants like Amazon breathing down your neck.

But are most medical marketing chiefs running in fear of intrusion by Amazon? The more contrarian move would be to understand Amazon’s deep-seated desire to be a healthcare leader–and play into that strategy.

Your patients are learning to ask more questions. But are you thinking of them as connected customers?

We are increasingly customers first and patients second. Healthcare marketing is pushing us to ask doctors to do what we want, and many consumers are refusing to settle for what their doctor thinks is best. Large numbers of smart consumers are on the verge of not trusting what their doctor tells them.

Rising expectations in the face of inefficiency and an unwillingness to change are the perfect conditions for innovation to thrive (look no further than Uber and the Taxi industry).

And yet, in their conversations with us, most large medical device makers discount the impact of innovation from new players, secure in their ability to buy and integrate promising technologies into existing product channels. That is a dangerous position to occupy for too long. And it can certainly prove expensive in the long-term as behemoths come to realize the full impact of nimble rivals.

Traditionally, the big buy the small. And Big Medical is no stranger to snapping-up promising innovators. But big device marketers do not need to wait for the M&A guys to encourage their product managers to adopt new innovations like machine learning and AI. Where are the integrations with the genetics players? What about using consumer applications to give healthcare professionals and families access to better care by smoothing communication and networking? Customers want more ways to connect with their doctor, on their own schedule, and when it suits them.

Designers need to think hard about how consumers differ from patients–and build those features into their business models.

In a connected community, dumb devices are well, dumb.

The network is available to more and it can do far more. Partners, providers, internal teams, insurers, patients, prospects: we are all connected and our community is linked together in new and surprising ways. Still, most devices are dumb and were designed for single use and not to talk to one another or to us.

That’s changing fast. Our work for Vital Connect, a mobile, super-accurate, FDA approved biosensor, has now become the backbone of a solution connecting physicians to their patients everywhere and all-the-time. Increasingly our community demands that our devices talk to one another, to our physician and to us.

However, many modern device makers are much more comfortable selling business-to-business style to physicians, and far less adept at marketing (like say Apple or Google) to connected professionals and consumers. Could someone like Vital add a voice assistant, a healthcare database and modern AI to treat common ailments and keep patients out of clinics and hospitals—you know they can.

Hardware companies are becoming software companies. And that means you are in the App business.

Driven by those seeking to exploit the cloud, machine learning, genetics; technology is fast changing healthcare. Which means we need to think very differently about the devices we create and how we tell the market about them.

Another Mortar client, Varian, is known as a global healthcare hardware innovator. Yet the giant of Radiation Oncology markets multiple software solutions that connect Varian machines to the clinical team, to the braintrust (the Tumor Board) and other institutions, so caregivers can share the best treatment plans; in that sense Varian is taking the first steps to becoming a kind of network for cancer care professionals.

Elsewhere in our portfolio, Cisco’s “Network. Intuitive.” (another Mortar project) demonstrated the power of converting millions of dumb devices into a digital fabric of organic, learning machines that can continually adapt to changing conditions. Very soon that same machine lace will carry more of the burden for diagnostics and healthcare delivery. As start-ups like Doctors On Demand demonstrate, that same network has already replaced one million face-to-face consultations with virtual patient assessments conduced on a laptop or tablet.

Every device player is a software company whether they like it or not. And of course every software company should have a place on the iPhone. Med device marketers have long passed the point of needing smart and robust apps. The harder part is what comes with app development: learning to think and act like a software company–which requires reengineering how teams approach innovation. And the now dawning realization that the app may actually be the product. (More on that in later posts).

The belief that healthcare and device innovation lags popular technology like Apple, Google and Facebook by at least 10 years is widely held in Silicon Valley. But as healthcare spending continues to bloom, and successive administrations attempt to reign in public spending, the winners will be those pushing hardest to integrate new tech with their products, actively courting innovation to narrow the gap between today’s technology and tomorrow’s bedside.