How to Have “The Golden Touch”

Brand Strategy

Guy Kawasaki | February 18th, 2009 - 08:48 PM
(22) Found this useful. Do you? Yes

Gold Bars

This may surprise you, but “Guy’s Golden Touch” is not “whatever Guy touches turns to gold.” If only that were true. Instead, Guy’s Golden Touch is “whatever is gold, Guy touches.” The concept is that something that’s gold is easy to brand and sell, so the task is simple: find or create something gold.

This recommendation may impress you for a second but probably not much longer. It’s really a duh-ism as in “Duh, of course I should create something great. I had to read this blog post to learn this?” What I need to do is take you from this 50,000 foot strategic view right down to a 2,000 feet tactical view.

For this, I invoke the acronym DICEE. It stands for deep, intelligent, complete, elegant, and emotive. These are the five salient qualities of stuff that’s made of gold.

Deep. A deep product has lots of features. The company that sells it has anticipated what people need as they come up the curve. They won’t need to buy another product or another version as they get to be a power user.
Intelligent. An intelligent product shows that the company really understood the problems people face or the opportunities that are available. Frankly, people might not be able to articulate what they want it to do or they may not even know they “need” it yet.
Complete. A complete product is not simply a physical gizmo, download, or widget. The totality of the a brandable product includes support, documentation, revisions, conferences, and an online community around it.
Elegant. An elegant product makes it obvious that the company cared that it is easy to learn and easy to use. Metaphorically, people get the product, plug it in, and go—as opposed to plug it in, hit a wall, and go online looking for help.
Emotive. An emotive product generates strong feelings. People either like it or hate—but they don’t feel indifferent to it. Think about it: people either love Macs or hate Macs; love Harleys or hate Harleys; love Tivo or hate Tivo. The worst case is indifference.

The key to branding is to brand something that’s deep, intelligent, complete, elegant, and emotive. That’s all you really need to “know,” but it’s a helluva lot to do. There’s also a very important and subtle ramification: Marketing is not solely responsible for branding because engineering is truly what makes a product deep, intelligent, complete, elegant, and emotive.

Hence, this is as much marching orders to engineers as it is to marketers. Ideally, you’d have marketing so good that engineering doesn’t matter, and engineering so good that marketing doesn’t matter. How hard could that be? Very hard, actually, but then branding is a walk in the park.

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COMMENTS

2/25/09 - Caroline Says:

Thanks for this! it is a simple concept, but one worth thinking about seriously. If the idea underneath isn’t sound, then it is often just a lot of wrenching around to get it to become something. Better to research more carefully and start out with something good. A great reminder and one I will think about a lot, I am sure!
2/25/09 - Michael Says:

I love it when seemingly complicated overall strategy is broken down to a memorable acronym. It definitely supports our overall strategy – whew!
2/25/09 - Nicole Says:

Agree with Michael– appreciate so many important core elements in an easy to remember acronym. DICEE. Love it.
2/25/09 - Mr Corbett Says:

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I have to confess to being a little confused with this post Guy. When you talk about ‘branding’ are you using the term as an alternative term for ‘marketing’? I agree with the DICEE acronym for the elements best needed if you want to create a great product or service. But ‘branding’??
To my mind the brand is not what you say your product is it is what other people say it is. Your brand equity exists in the tangible and non tangible things people say and feel about your product and service. I must be missing something with this post or perhaps just misunderstanding your use of the word branding. I am unsure how the maker goes about ‘branding’ their product? I always thought you create a great product (see your post), you tell a wonderful story about it, you are authentic and genuine in every thing you do and hopefully over time your customers tell you what they feel about your product..surely that is the brand?
2/26/09 - John Spence Says:

Guy — fantastic post! It is been my experience that far too few businesses think deeply about the quality, design, elegance and usability of their products. Oh, they talk about it, and say it is important, but it is the rare business that truly goes below the surface and takes a hard look — from the customer’s standpoint — at building a uniquely valuable and useful product. I sent a link on to this article to all of my clients — thanks so much Guy I really appreciate you posting this. Take good care — John Spence
3/5/09 - Jeff Johnson Says:

Your post validates everything i preach to my co-workers, and you say it all in just a few very well chosen words. I woul love to interview you and include the message and some of the text in this topic in our magazine
visit http://www.ctngreen.com/mag thanks
3/16/09 - King Khan Says:

Would you apply DICEE to Twitter?
3/16/09 - gushin Says:

King Khan…how about Twitter from an iPhone.
3/17/09 - What You Can Learn from the Ice Business | Small Business Marketing Guide - Brought to you by HP Says:

[...] my last post, I discussed how to get the golden touch by producing a DICEE product or service. This advice was [...]
5/23/09 - Business How To Start Says:

It is a really good branding formula. These tips recommend us to fully focus on the customers. Whether they are for product creation or product innovation, it is a good to start to think on what customer wants, not on what we as a businessman wants. A creator of the product must think how customer thinks, wants, and how they walk.