EPISODE 138

The Visionary Chronicles Podcast

CHRONICLE: January 4th, 2024

Content from Bryan’s new Award Winning, Bestselling Book

The Visionary Brand, The Success Formula Behind the World's Most Visionary Brands.

• Readers Favorite Award Winner: Best, Non-fiction, Marketing book
• Amazon Bestseller.

THE VISIONARY BRAND | The Product Vision | Building a Product Pipeline

" Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." – Steve Jobs

Creating or building a Drawdown Product Pipeline is a strategy that the most innovative brands deploy. The strategy allows brands to position products along the entire Product Lifecycle curve, increasing market share while not degrading brand equity.

I was a part of the product leadership of several of these brands when they were created. It is challenging to develop and even more difficult to surf for generations. The strategy is to create a breakaway design, creation process, and culture inside the brand. This takes a Visionary leader, one who understands the risk it takes and the rewards for successfully creating a Breakaway product plan.

As I mentioned in my previous podcast, you can only create a product pipeline if you have successfully built a Breakaway design and creation culture. A cultural foundation built on anticipating what your customer wants, embracing risk, creating an idea machine, and being a relentless innovator who always strives for disruption! Having these places before building a product pipeline is why so few authentic brands and even fewer can sustain a culture of continuous disruption.

A key element to creating a product pipeline is understanding where to “fill the voids” with your price tiers. If you are a premium brand, you are already at the “best” level, and you must stay true to this tier. The question then becomes, “How” do we you build a pipeline that crosses into “good” and “better” price tiers without degrading brand equity? This is the question I always receive from brand leaders when doing our LiquidMind “ideation sessions.” It is a delicate balance, but it can be achieved if you understand the game.

The brand that plays this game the best is Apple. Apple always wants to create a breakaway product, load it on the front of the adoption curve for the “Innovators” to adopt and the “Early Adopters” to anticipate, and at the height of its popularity, pull it from the shelves and make it a previous generation product. This is before the “Early Majority” or “Late Majority” are allowed to purchase. This is called the “Innovators” adoption curve, which is much steeper than the traditional curve. In The Visionary Brand book, I provide an example of the “Innovators” curve.

Pulling the product from the shelf gives Apple “permission” to reduce the price of the previous generation, as long as there is another generation that feeds the front of the curve. Building this “pipeline” along the adoption curve creates a “product squeeze,” where Apple can secure market share along the entire curve without degrading brand equity—a brilliant strategy and extremely hard to pull off effectively. Most brands we work with at LiquidMind understand the concept but are not always committed to executing it sustainably. This is Apple's lifeblood, along with other brands, and they have stayed committed to this strategy since Steve re-joined Apple.

So, having discussed this Product Pipeline strategy, what steps can your brand take toward achieving this generational pipeline?

1. Build a Product Breakaway Ideation, design, & commercialization foundation.
2. Create Authentic products, don’t move down, stay Premium
3. Understand your market and channel opportunities to gain market share
4. Be Relentless with Innovation & Disruption
5. Embrace Risk and Reward Progressive Failures
6. Know when to discontinue and when to release. Timing is everything
7. Build a Sustainable Breakaway Design Culture, regardless of who is in the driver's seat
8. Feed the Innovators, the Early Early Adopters, and their Community is instrumental in achieving sustainable innovation

Being a revolutionary innovator is a generational goal, and it takes a commitment from the Visionary leader to sustain its success. If your brand wants to be a generational leader while maintaining market share growth, you will need a sustainable, long-term strategy built around your product pipeline.

You can achieve greatness if you understand the rules of the game. Go ahead play the game, have fun, be relentless, be great!

Stay True, Stay Authentic, be Different, and be Great!

Enjoy the Journey!

Bryan Smeltzer, President

LiquidMind Inc.

#TheVisionaryChroniclesPodcast

#TheVisionaryBrandBook

@LiquidMindsite.com

@BryanSmeltzer.com

© All rights reserved, Bryan Smeltzer, 2023

Bryan Smeltzer is a consumer products business executive and entrepreneur. He has held executive-level roles in business development, Product, and marketing with some of the world's most prestigious brands, including Oakley, TaylorMade, Adidas, K-Swiss, and Schutt Sports, among other international brands. He also founded a men’s apparel brand, successfully running a profitable business for ten years, eventually selling to a VC firm.

He also hosts a Podcast called The Visionary Chronicles, ranked as the #1 Visionary and Top 50 Marketing Podcasts by Feedspot, and recently finished his first bestselling book, The Visionary Brand, The Success Formula Behind the World’s Most Visionary Brands, and recently received the prestigious Readers Favorite Award for BEST Non-fiction, Marketing Genre book.

With the book's release, Bryan created The Visionary Brand MasterCourse. The Master Course site at The VisionaryFiles.com includes a Master Course with 18 Video Learning segments and almost 2 hours of Visionary lessons training. Over the past five weeks, over 1,500 brand leaders and Entrepreneurs have taken the Master Course! Unleash your potential as a brand leader and take the Master Course.

He is also a member of the Board of Advisors at UCI’s BCIE along with their New Venture Program, an Innovation Advisor at the UCI’s Applied Innovation program at the Cove, a Mentor/Advisor to UCLA’s Price Center Venture Accelerator Program, and a Mentor/Advisor at the San Diego Sports Innovators Accelerator (SDSI) center.

Bryan oversees LiquidMind Inc., a global brand strategy firm that partners with start-ups and establishes mid to large-cap consumer brands to empower businesses to think differently, be different, drive a passionate culture, and execute relentlessly.

You can contact or  follow him at;

email | bryan@LiquidMindsite.com

Facebook | @bryansmeltzer33

Instragram | @bryan_smeltzer

X | @bryansmeltzer

LinkedIn | linkedin.com/in/bryansmeltzer/

The Visionary Chronicles Podcast was ranked the #1 Global Visionary Podcast & Top 50 Marketing podcast by Feedspot in 2022 & 2023.

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