How the Oldest, Safest Innovation Redefined a Web 2.0 Website
There are many myths about innovation. The biggest is that it’s risky. This myth is especially prevalent in the hi-tech community. That’s because when we think “innovation,” we think about technological innovation, one of the riskiest kinds of innovation. What’s more, we naturally feel threatened by the most secure and lucrative opportunities for innovation.
And that’s what happened to me. I faced an opportunity to innovate on one of my websites. My first instinct was “That’s crazy!” Fortunately, I knew enough to put my feelings in perspective. And this opportunity opened up a parallel market.
It all started with fanaticism for a TV show. As a storyteller, this is one of my all-time favorite TV shows. I’ve seen every episode at least 3 times. The earliest episodes I’ve seen close to a dozen times. I’ve learned more about telling stories watching this show than I have from any other source. If you were to ask me what is my favorite episode of this show, I wouldn’t be able to tell you which episode it is, because I love them all. Every single episode is a classic, in my opinion.
If you know my work, you already know what TV show this is. I won’t keep you in suspense. It’s Gilmore Girls. Not usually something you would expect a software developer to like. But it’s something a musician and writer should love. (And I am a musician and writer.) And one of the things about Gilmore Girls is its “Gilmore-isms.” Gilmore-isms are witty allusions to pop-culture buried in the dialogue. Yes, all TV shows have lines that refer to other TV shows, movies, books, or whatever. But Gilmore Girls has made them an art in themselves, via one of the title characters, Lorelai Gilmore.
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Lorelai is intelligent and well-read. But she’s a rebel with an abrasive, off-beat sense of humor. And she rarely passes up an opportunity to meld the two. For example, in the pilot episode, she invokes both Jack Kerouac and Officer Krupke (from West Side Story) and her daughter Rory mentions RuPaul and Macy Gray. (Like mother, like daughter.)
That’s 4 cultural references within the first few minutes of just the first episode. Many episodes have dozens of Gilmore-isms. And fans talk about them. They mention them on their blogs. They list them on their websites. They talk about them in on-line forums. They read the little “Gilmore-isms” booklets that come in the DVD box sets. They pick out their favorite ones. Me, I like to discover them, understand them, and find them in real life. My Netflix queue is half-full of stuff that was mentioned on Gilmore Girls. Just because it was mentioned on Gilmore Girls and I want to know what Lorelai was talking about.
On the Internet are many lists of Gilmore-isms. Fans love to list out their favorite Gilmore Girls quotes. The problem is that there are a lot of references that I don’t get. Because I’ve never seen the movie or read the book being referenced. And there are also many that I don’t get because they’re subtle. Sometimes, I don’t even know that they’re references. I’m always becoming obsessed with Gilmore-isms. I end up spending hours digging up answers, and I still feel like I’ve missed a lot. Of course, that’s part of the fun behind the show’s witty banter. But it’s also why I thought it would be cool to have a website that had all the Gilmore-isms. And the more I thought about the idea, the more excited I grew. And the bigger the concept grew. And before I knew it, I was facing a grand vision of the Gilmore-ism Database Project, the Gilmore witticism site.
Since then, the Gilmore-ism Database Project has changed significantly. Now Gilmore-ism.com is a Gilmore Girls fan-site, including lots of quotes you won’t find anywhere else. But before all the general features, it was only about Gilmore-isms. Users needed to be able to register on the site, log in, and add their own Gilmore-isms to the site. Think Web 2.0. Might as well throw in RSS feeds, too. Each Gilmore Girls quote can refer to a cultural reference. And the database also needed to keep track of which episode each quote came from. And not just the quote itself, but also a detailed description, an explanation of what the quote means in context. This is especially useful for the more subtle references.
To make a long story short, I settled on using Drupal to build the site. And I used a custom-programmed Drupal module for the Gilmore-isms themselves. And so began the long job of adding quotes and their descriptions to the site. I also set up an e-mail list. To this list, I send personalized e-mails, talking about Gilmore Girls, Gilmore-isms, and other stuff. This is an incredibly effective way to keep in touch with other fans of the show and fans of the site.
But a surprisingly high percentage of people who knew about the e-mail list didn’t sign up. And a surprisingly high percentage of people who signed up quickly unsubscribed, or even hit the “spam” button. I didn’t understand what was going on. The messages I send are decidedly not spam. Not even close. They’re packed with fun facts about Gilmore Girls and about Gilmore-isms. And I get numerous e-mails from engaged and thankful fans who want to chat about our shared interest. That’s exactly what the e-mail list is there for. I absolutely love to get e-mails like this.
And the more personal the e-mails, the more enthusiastic the comments. For example, on Valentine’s Day I sent out a quick e-mail wishing everyone a happy holiday. And I told the story of how the kids that day had to stay home from school because of an unexpected snowstorm. This was a mid-week break from the usual weekly e-newsletter format of new content on the site and so forth. I got more great responses from that single Valentine’s Day message than from anything else I’ve ever sent out. People wishing me a happy Valentine’s Day, too. Talking about their own Valentine’s Day plans. Talking about snow. It was overwhelming. It made me feel connected to other people. It made me feel good.
And then I got a positively acerbic comment from someone unsubscribing from the list. Usually, when people unsubscribe, they don’t say why. They just go away dissatisfied. And this is one of the unfortunate realities of marketing. But this one person did say exactly how she felt about me. She wrote:
A lot of it had nothing to do with Gilmore Girls… Your not going to school and the snow, what does that have to do with Gilmore Girls? And the GG quotes… You had the quotes then some explanation or something. How stupid! We just want good quotes and not their explanations.
As Lorelai once put it, “Ouch.”
Every once in a while, there will be a wave of posts around the blogosphere, all about how to handle negative feedback. And by “negative,” we usually mean feedback like this. Not just negative, but feedback we perceive as nasty. Our first instinct is to respond in an equally nasty way. Get into an argument. Or flip them off. Or if we are “in control” of our emotions, we just write off the complainer.
And this was my first instinct as well. “She just doesn’t understand. After all, look at all the positive feedback I got from all these people who loved this e-mail. I guess you just have to break a few eggs if you want to make an omelet. You have to say something meaningful if you want anyone to listen. And you’ll have people who love you. And you’ll have people who absolutely hate you. And that’s okay.”
And it is okay. It’s okay to have people who hate you. I’ve even heard of consultants firing their clients, as it were, because the job was a poor fit. That’s very professional. And I’m all for people unsubscribing from any of my lists if they don’t get what they want. My hatred of spam is not just philosophical; it’s practical, too. I’d rather have ten subscribers who are engaged with what I have to say, who hang on my every word, than ten thousand who don’t really care one way or the other. That’s why I use mailing lists that make it incredibly easy for people to unsubscribe, risk-free. Yes! Unsubscribe if you don’t get what you want!
But in this case, there was more to it. There was something happening here that was not just weeding out those who didn’t want to be on my list. There was something happening here that made me want not to just “fire my customer.”
Instead, I remembered a point that Peter Drucker had made in his book Innovation and Entrepreneurship. This is one of those classics that I keep on the shelf, except when I’m reading it. And I read it over and over again. And I discover new insights each time I do. And on this occasion, I felt one of these insights tunneling through my mind.
One of the things–in fact, the most important part of the book. Drucker lists 7 sources of innovation. The most reliable of these is also the most frequently overlooked. And that was the source of innovation I was facing. Just like Ford did with the Edsel.
This is one of the examples Peter Drucker gives in his book. Legend has it that the Ford Edsel was a market disaster. And it was. Legend also has it that Ford had no idea what they were doing when they designed the Edsel. And this is a myth. Ford knew exactly what they were doing with the Edsel. It was to complete their product line. They had a plan. Everything fit. They used the best marketing. They had the best data on what customers wanted. They did their utmost to make it a quality product in the eyes of the customer. They poured their heart and soul into the Edsel. The Edsel was Ford’s crowning achievement. And it was an immediate and incontrovertible failure.
The first question most of us ask is, “What happened?” And this is an interesting question, yes. But it’s the wrong question to ask first. The right question is, “What did Ford do about it? And what would we have done?”
Most of us would probably blame the customer. He doesn’t know what he wants. Or he wants the impossible. Or there are better people out there who do want an Edsel, and we just have to find them.
But that’s not what Ford did. They knew they had done everything right. And still, the Edsel failed. So they reexamined the market. They questioned all of their initial assumptions. And they made a remarkable discovery. The automobile market was changing. Whereas before customers bought a car based on social class, now they bought based on lifestyle. Or at least a new kind of automobile buyer was emerging on the market. And he was buying something different in a car than anyone thought.
With this new discernment in hand, Ford went back to the drawing board. And they came out with the Ford Thunderbird. Yes, the Thunderbird rose from the ashes of the Edsel. It’s the cycle of life and marketing. Without the failure of the Edsel–and failing as it did at the time it did–the Thunderbird may never have come to be.
The lesson here is that negative feedback is valuable. Stark criticism is valuable. And when one of your customers uses words like “stupid,” you should be listening. Yes, he might be a jerk. But he might also be handing you information you can use to innovate.
When I realized this, the first thing I did was to reply to this unsubscriber’s comment. I wasn’t interested in getting her to resubscribe. But I did want to let her know how much of a help she had been to me. I told her, “Thank you,” and explained that she revealed to me something right in front of my face that I had been too closed-minded to see. Judging from her reply, I think she was taken aback.
Then I looked at what I was offering users of Gilmore-ism.com. Each week, when a new Gilmore Girls episode aired, I went through the episode and picked out all the interesting quotes. I did this as a matter of course. Then I typed them into a free-form notepad, on a special “planning page” of the site. But I didn’t enter these into the database, because I had not researched the quote. Researching the quote is a lot of work, relatively speaking. So only a few select quotes got full entries in the database.
This detailed information is what I valued. And I know that many fans also value it. Especially fans from other countries, who sometimes have trouble understanding references to U.S. pop culture. But I never stopped to think that there were visitors to my site who just wanted quotes. Or if they did that they would come to me when there are so many sites that already have long lists of quotes on them. But these visitors did want just quotes. Lots and lots of raw quotes. No background. No story behind the quote. No research on the cultural references. No quality, as I defined it. But quantity. Just lots and lots of raw Gilmore Girls quotes… Which I already had, but I was not giving them!
Less than a day later, I had made some simple changes to the database. And I was entering in all the raw quotes from that week’s episode. I also created a new e-mail list, a weekly dose of raw Gilmore Girls quotes. When I announced the new list, there were a few who switched over, and a number of people who subscribed to both. It’s almost a useless little change. But my unsubscribe rate went way down. Because I was now giving each kind of subscriber exactly the content she wants. And I am now also tapping a market I hadn’t even known existed.
The thing is, Peter Drucker didn’t even address this specific situation. But his advice applied precisely. This isn’t the first time Innovation and Entrepreneurship has bailed me out. And it won’t be the last.
When I worked in a Dilbert cube, I relied on this book and on The Effective Executive. I used these to help me understand how my role fit in with the rest of the company. I used them to help me understand how I could make a difference in the organization. (Unfortunately, I was still miserable. But that’s another story.)
Now that I’m self-employed, I need to understand these principles more than ever. In fact, if Gilmore-ism.com is to thrive, I’ll need to take advantage of an upcoming opportunity. You see, this is possibly the last season of Gilmore Girls. Rumour has it, the show will probably be canceled this year. There’s a huge write-in campaign to keep it on the air. And I personally would love for it to continue for another season, or two or five. Because I love the show.
But the show being canceled is also an opportunity for a fan-site to innovate, because it will suddenly change the way fans interact with the show. It will change the kinds of fans looking for community. It will change the kind of community they want. It will change the alternatives available to them. It will change everything. It’s a big change. And change means opportunity. And big change can mean big opportunity. I learned that from Peter Drucker.
As I said, Innovation and Entrepreneurship is a classic. That is, the examples are a little dated, but the advice is timeless. I bring it out from time to time. Sometimes just to look something up. But I can’t really just look something up in it without getting sucked in again. I end up reading large swaths of the text. In writing this blog post, for example, I ended up re-reading the whole first half of the book. And I bookmarked the second half for later in the week. After all, I need to refresh my memory. What are my options in the next two months, assuming that the CW announces in May that this is the last season of Gilmore Girls?
(That’s actually pretty impressive for a 260-something page book. I read through about half of it in one night.)
I’ve mentioned this book before, too. It’s one of my ten favorite books. (Though I grouped my 3 favorite Drucker books into one item on that list.) I also talked about its lessons with regard to web site marketing and questioning whether Google thinks it’s bigger than the market. And it’s interesting that each of these examples draws upon a similar lesson.
The thing is, innovation isn’t complicated or mysterious. The best innovations are so obvious and simple that you end up with a V-8 moment. Like I did when I figured out what was happening with my Gilmore-ism e-mail list. I should have known it all along. I felt like such an idiot. And then that night, I attended a talk by Jared Spool in which he told of much more idiotic mistakes made by people with a lot more to lose than me. And I felt a little better.
(Read more about Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker at Amazon.)
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[...] Tim King presents How The Oldest, Safest Innovation Redefined a Web 2.0 Website. You’re just going to have to read this post to understand what’s going on. There’s a mix of Gilmore Girls, pop culture, web marketing and innovation. Yup. [...]