Social Networking and PR - the power of complements

You can't let what you know limit what you can imagine. Case in point – Mrs. Kumar, a 65 year old neighbour who was excited to share with me the success of a get-together she organized via facebook. Facebook? I repeated in disbelief. She sat me down for half an hour and gave me a lecture on the various benefits of social media, reiterating how it is transforming the communication landscape. Oh! certainly – I remarked and eased myself as I was keen now more than ever. Her husband was feeling really bad for me and informed Mrs. Kumar that people my age are proficient in social networking and that she should stop advising me on the same.

The response from her was immediate and will stay forever with me. She said, “as one attempts something new and exciting, it is important to look to others for ideas and practices, especially from an unrelated field. What works with or for them can possibly be applied to solve your challenges.” In a nutshell, if one wants to improve business, look at adjacent market for ideas. I quickly recalled the power of complements about which I was reading that morning. Complements are products that tend to be consumed together. Think of movies and popcorn, or pen and paper, or personal computers and digital cameras.

The story of Michelin brothers is a classic case here. Nicholass carr detailed the story. In 1900, shortly after the two brothers took control of their family’s venerable rubber business, they suddenly decided to publish a guidebook for tourists. Their Michelin Red Guide provided information on gas stations, hotels, restaurants, and other roadside attractions along with various maps and driving tips. The brothers printed 35,000 copies of the first edition - and gave them away free.
The move seemed hard to justify. After all, book publishing has little to do with rubber processing. Management gurus, if they had existed then, might have chided the brothers for losing sight of their “core business” and expanding beyond the scope of their “organizational capabilities.” They might even have used the story as a case study on why family businesses should bring in professional managers. But the diversification turned out to be an act of genius. The brothers had already realized that they needed to shift their company’s focus from the production of rubber, a basic commodity, to the production of rubber products - goods that they might be able to differentiate in the marketplace and sell at a premium price. They started by launching a line of pneumatic bicycle tyres, which quickly became popular. As the turn of the century approached, they realized that car tyres might turn out to be an even more lucrative extension of their traditional rubber business.
There was just one problem: automobiles were still rare and exotic products. Cars tended to be purchased by a fairly small set of well-heeled thrill-seekers, who drove them only occasionally. Before the Michelin Group could make a go of the car-tyre business, more people would have to start buying cars and they’d need to drive their vehicles more frequently. That’s where the Red Guide came in. André and Edouard saw that by giving motorists a practical, problem-solving handbook for traveling by road, they’d encourage the sale and use of automobiles - and in turn pump up their company’s nascent tyre business. Tourist guides and automobile tyres are complements. Make it easier for motorists to find a decent hotel room, and they’ll take longer trips in their cars and, in turn, replace their tyres more frequently.
Mrs.Kumar has more on the power of networking and leveraging social networks for the same. The more the medium, more need for communications and hence more PR professionals.