This Friday, I was attending the TiE Kolkata member mixer.
I learnt a new term from the invited speaker, and a well respected entrepreneur, Sunil Chandra Saha – “The familiar novelty”.
The discussion was around an interesting behavior –
1) People are most drawn to the term “new” in a marketing message. This means they want change.
2) However, when you bring the change, they are non-committal. Because though people in general want change, they don’t want to go through the uncertainty and pain of adapting to the new.
3) The challenge is to balance between “similar” and “surprise”, and make it comfortable, such that there is familiarity as well as novelty.
Novelty drives the pull (interest) and Familiarity drives the action (comfort).
It was a good reminder from someone who has spent sufficient time in consumer business, and has lived the theory that he shared with us. He scaled a micro niche of “blue tea”. Blue is the novelty, whereas this being a herbal tea is the familiarity.
How can you innovate your product or service to being in the familiar novelty?
Sunil Chandra Saha – all the best. May you make “blue tea” as popular and big as “green tea”, if not bigger.
A common thread binds us (Blue Tea India and Indus Net Technologies (INT.)):
Born in Bengal,
Built in India,
Serving the World.