Member Article

Built a better mousetrap?

Contrary to the popular saying “ Build a Better Mousetrap and the World will beat a Path to Your Door“, the only sure-fire way to ensure that your product or service has any chance of success is to market it ‘To the Right People, Using the Right Media, At the Right Time’

The phrase ‘Build a Better Mousetrap and the World will beat a Path to Your Door“ is a misquotation of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s original ‘If a man has good corn or wood, or boards or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or organs than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten path to his house, though it be in the woods’.

In 1889, seven years after Emerson’s death, the mousetrap, more or less as it looks today, was invented. Despite being dead for seven years, the writer was attributed with saying “If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon or make a better mousetrap than his neighbour….”

Unfortunately, many American citizens took this advice literally, with almost 5,000 patents for mousetraps being issued for new mousetraps by the US Patents and Trademarks Office – and thousands more being rejected – making the mousetrap ’the most frequently invented device in US history.

That’s not to say marketing didn’t exist in Mr Emerson’s time; the origins of marketing go way, way back.

Take Josiah Wedgwood for example.

Josiah Wedgwood became the 18th century’s most famous potter through innovative, artistic products and a lean production system. But what really differentiated Wedgwood was his brilliant marketing strategy. Centuries before David Beckham got his first set of sponsored razor blades, Wedgwood was exploiting the value of celebrity endorsements. Once his pottery pieces started being used by Queen Charlotte, Wedgwood added to his status as “Potter to Her Majesty” by increasing prices for the nobility.

Despite being able to sell his products to the less affluent by bringing down his costs through efficient manufacturing methods, his clever marketing and product niche-ing guaranteed that Wedgwood items were very much in demand by his richer clients.

Being a global marketer in the 18th century is a remarkable achievement, but while marketing nowadays has become a much more complex animal calling for skills in whole plethora of disciplines, the principles remain largely the same.

Without sales any company will wither and die; without the right marketing the likelihood of generating any volume of sales and thus guaranteeing that the world will beat a path to your door, will also ensure a slow, lingering company death.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by James McRoy .