Did you ever think that money could flow your way when you’re searching for a product you want to buy? Why not? Picture for a moment a group of companies wanting to sell you the same product, say a car, like Nissan, Toyota, Honda, BMW..Audi, all sitting around a poker table making bets on you at the time you are considering to buy from one of them. As you collect everyone’s bet you are evaluating their hands and the one company that beautifully presents you with the best hand of cards wins your business. The cash you have collected from all players is now yours.
This is exactly how I imagined it 2 years ago when I came across the work of Michael Porter, on Corporate Shared Value, in an HBR article. It was the beginning of my journey into the visionary world of Corporate Shared Value (CSV).
At that time I was working for Nissan Corporate, in the city of Dubai, managing their marketing and business development for Middle East, North Africa and part of Russia. My wife and I were blessed with 2 girls. Every night I would tuck them in bed and tell them that one day they will change the world. In the morning I would head to work and one thing stood out among all the anomalies in my life and line of work; I started to notice the discrimination against women in the entire car buying process. I went back through my notes and realized that in my tenure in the auto business I was never allowed to include women as target customers in the research we conducted for all the cars we launched over a 10 year period, although we knew that women represented 80% of the decision in buying a car and 50% of actual buyers. I went into hundreds of showrooms around the world for the sole purpose of observing how women are treated during the actual purchase and noticed how the majority of women were bullied and forced into bringing a man along to take the brunt of the pain in the sales process. In a nutshell, everywhere I went and every women I talked to (without exception) hated the process of buying a car.
I reflected for months on this scenario, what can I do to change it and in the process somehow help my girls face a different world when they grow up. I dug deeper into the process and the numbers. I found that globally car dealers along with the brand headquarters are spending an average of $1,000 per car on advertising alone to sell us that car. Knowing the impact car ads have on us today, you can imagine the waste generated on a global scale. I realized that the waste in the process is our doorway for change in the auto industry. For the past 2 years I have been co-creating the first piece of the solution with a phenomenal group of mentors and contributors.
Shared value is a mutual exchange of value in which a business AND its customers benefit. Our new poker game is raising the stakes for everyone. As individual buyers we take the role of the bank in this new game, each business antes up $40 for each hand we deal and gets the chance to win in several ways. Nobody HAS to go to Vegas because we all can play the game from the comfort of our homes. We save them on all that money they spend trying to reach us and the best part is they get to participate in a fun game where they can compete in delivering better value for us. So instead of dropping their pants and giving away the store to get us to come to them, we reverse the flow of money, where they invest in us for a higher value buying experience.
I believe we can change this industry, fix the wrong and reverse the flow of money in our direction. This is the beginning of an amazing journey. Join us… Get WiifMe!
What's in it for Me? 