Our industry loves to follow trends.
Storytelling.
Programatic.
Digital transformation.
DTC.
And the current fave – subscription services.
Each one promising better results than what went before – and yet they often leave a trail of destruction in its wake.
Part of this is because some companies do it simply to look like they are not being left behind, regardless of the fact the business situation they are in means it is either inaaprioate or irrelevant. And part of it is because the impact being promised by the agencies and consultancies is more fiction than a career write-up on Linkedin.
Subscription models are just another example in a long line of examples.
We are seeing companies jump on the subscription model as if it’s a guarantee of unbelievable success.
That by simply offering your product or service at a small monthly fee, untold riches will be raining down on you.
It isn’t.
For a start you need a quality product that fulfils a continuous need – real or perceived.
NIKE’s brilliant Adventure Club is a brilliant example of this.
It satisfies a real need with a quality product that makes sense to parents and appeals to kids.
Disney+ is another.
Both of those are examples of companies who know their audience, know their business and know how to offer a service that has real value to their customers emotionally and culturally.
Then there’s companies like Prisma.
Remember them?
They’re the company who was momentarily popular with it’s smartphone photo filtering app.
Well today, they’re trying to charge £65 a year to use their ‘service’.
SIXTY FIVE POUNDS!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Now I appreciate that works out to be only £1+ a week … people are taking endless amounts of photos each and every day … but while that might all sound a perfect justification for a consultant to sell a subscription service, it fails on so many of the basics.
Their plan shows no understanding of who they are talking to.
Nor any understanding of the actual business they are in.
And don’t get me started on the lack of understanding what problem they’re solving or the lack of evolution their product offers.
It is a perfect example of bandwagon jumping.
A desperate, last-chance-saloon act to try and stay alive.
A business model based on hope rather than actual strategy.
Someone sold them this.
I don’t know if it was someone internally or external, but this one-size-fits all, white label productising approach to business is killing business.
Yes there may be common issues.
Yes there may be common considerations.
But thinking you can just plug and play a solution because it may have worked for someone else is almost criminal.
And yet many companies don’t want to hear truth.
They don’t want to listen to what their real problem is.
They don’t want to accept people only have a limited amount of cash to spend on these things.
Instead, they happily pay exorbitant amounts to outsource their responsibility for a solution that looks like everyone else’s solution.
As with so many of these ‘business approach trends’, the real winners are those who are the most adept at selling the problem rather than the solution. The organisations who ‘package approaches’ that allow the C-Suite to feel they’re doing something, even though they have been designed to substantially drive the ‘sellers’ growth. ‘Approaches’ that will be sold almost identically to the next client, regardless of their industry or situation.
And the market thinks this is a good thing.
Selling bandaids at ridiculously high prices.
And while PRISMA may have had no other option left to them than to jump on the subscription model bandwagon, you can almost guarantee this approach won’t work for them … because their problem isn’t really price, their problem is they’re not a business.