What we can learn from Tiger Woods about B2B technology value propositions

I’m not much of a professional golf fan, but I was - of course - well aware of Tiger Woods and the brand attributes - superb control, killer cool, supreme confidence, highly intelligent (that time at Stanford!), near perfection, uncommon discretion - that made him such a desired and prevalent spokesman for a broad range of products and businesses, including Accenture. The appeal to an outfit like Accenture was clear. The pre-Thanksgiving Tiger Woods represented the very attributes that they want associated with their brand. After all, they’re asking major corporations to pay them big bucks for advice and IT outsourcing. Control, cool, confidence, intelligence, perfection, discretion. What’s not to like? Plus there was the added bennie of association with Tiger: all those golf-playing C-level executives vying to stand in TW’s shadow in the Accenture tent at the US Open. From Accenture’s standpoint, what’s not to like?

Any old high-end jock will pretty much do for some of Tiger’s other advertising gigs - Gillette, Nike - with no points off for being not so intelligent, quasi-articulate, and/or a womanizer. But for a high-end business brand like Accenture, there was Tiger. And maybe a few others. But not all that many.

But when the carefully crafted “brand” sustains not a small nick, but is smashed to smithereens. Oopsie!

I’m sure that Accenture’s senior execs figured that, if they couldn’t get the image of Tiger’s wife chasing him down the driveway wielding a nine iron, neither could their clients.

Not to mention that long list of girl friends - porn stars, waitresses, hostesses, cougars, none of whom, apparently, could keep her mouth shut. Maybe if it had just been one. Or two. Or even three. But n+1, where n = the figure we heard yesterday. Wowie! (If it had been one, bitty little affair with, say, an Accenture consultant, in her charcoal gray suit and sensible shoes, with her MBA and briefcase, things would have been fine.)

Promiscuity, duplicity, arrogance - not attributes any business wants associated with their good name. Not to mention the sexism implied by Tiger’s general preference for dim-bims, which really won’t fly with those golf-playing, C-level execs who happen to be women.

No, Tiger had to go.

But he had to go because the image he and his handlers had so craftily cultivated was at some odds with the man himself.

Sure, he’s still a great golfer - confident, competent, etc. - but his crafted image was meant to convey something that transcended the golf course when it really didn’t.

That’s where B2B technology value propositions come into this story.

And that’s where we, as marketers, have to be awfully careful to make sure that what we say about our products and companies actually has some grounding in reality.

If you want to tell the world that your product’s robust - which, in truth, I wouldn’t actually advise, even if it is - then you had best be certain that it actually works. If you want to talk about scalability, better be sure that when the 10th user signs on, it doesn’t freeze up or topple over. If you want to tout security, make sure there aren’t big, gaping holes. Don’t talk about your company’s fab customer support if all a call does it get someone into a chirpy-voice, endless loop,menu hell.

And those are just the feature follies you don’t want to get into. When you get into the benefits, don’t go claiming that ROI can be achieved in a week if you don’t have the evidence to back the claim. Don’t prattle on about saving time if using your product will actually take twice as long as any alternative.

You don’t want to build a product without thinking through what the value prop is. But we all know that can happen. If it does, the last thing you want to do is ignore the reality of your existing product when you create an ex post facto value proposition.

A number of years ago, I was asked to brief the new president on the value propositions for all of our company’s products/services. Those products had, originally, had fairly strong value propositions. We were early providers of Internet services, and, as one of the first in for a wildly growing market, we could extract premium prices. Unfortunately, as new providers entered the markets, products like ours were being rapidly commoditized. We had done little in terms of our products to add value beyond what we’d offered initially. And then there was the problem of all the giddy, exaggerated claims that all Internet services providers were making about how greatly their customers were benefiting from their services. (Pets.com, anyone? Arf!)

Anyway, my group put together a truthful accounting of the value propositions for our products, making no pets.com-ian claims about their wonders.

“These value propositions are weak,” the new president told me. “We’ll need to change them.”

He was right.

We did need to change them.

But you can’t change your product’s value proposition by re-wording it.

If you have a weak value proposition, you need to either change your product, or find an audience for whom the product as is will work.

And that’s what I, at least, am reminded by the Tiger Wood fiasco.

If you want to be a play-ah, you can probably still shill for golf shoes and aftershave. But you can’t represent for Accenture.

So it is with B2B tech products. If you want to be able to say that they’re highly secure wonder-widgets that enable your clients to improve their top line and their bottom line, you’d better make sure that your products actually fit the bill.

Just do it!

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