Sometimes you’ve got to change how you go to market with your product for it to gain traction.
Take Cemex (one of the worlds largest cement produces) as an example…
In Mexico most of the population lived in chronic overcrowding, and few people built extra rooms onto their property to solve this.
Why? Because most family’s extra money was spent on village festivals, quinceañeras (daughters 15th birthday & a big deal in Mexico), baptisms and weddings.
Contributing to these events was a chance to distinguish oneself in the local community, whereas not contributing would be disrespectful and make your family look bad.
Even though having a cement house was what Mexicans dreamt about, because of this situation, they never had enough money to purchase the required building materials.
Cemex had worked out this market could be worth up to $600 million annually, if only they could work out a way of servicing the sleeping demand.
There solution came in a program called ‘Patrimonio Hoy’, which moved the purchase of cement as a functional product to one that made dreams come true, by making it a winner’s gift.
Cemex used a traditional Mexican system, called a ‘tandas’, which is a community savings scheme.
Initially the Cemex ‘Patrimonio Hoy’ building materials club was a group of 70 people contributing 120 pesos (£4.50) each week for 70 weeks, and each week drawing lots to find a winner.
Each person involved wins one time only, but when they win, they receive a large amount to make a large purchase.
The winner though didn’t receive money, they received the equivalent building materials to complete an entire new room on their house.
And to make sure the new room was completed, Cemex also provided construction training and a technical advisor, who helped people complete their new room projects.
Whereas Cemex competitors struggled to sell bags of cement, Cemex was fulfilling people’s dreams.
Cemex would then throw a small festival for the town when a room was finished, reinforcing the happiness it brought to people, which soon spread to other towns throughout Mexico.
It’s not on the same scale, but we found organisations struggled to fund large office technology purchases and pay for the ongoing supplies and maintenance.
Which is why, our go to market model changed, to providing organisations with ‘fit for purpose’ office technology (printers, copiers, internet phones, laptops & PC’s) in affordable monthly payment schemes with a lifetime warranties and no strings attached.
…have you a product struggling for traction, maybe you can learn from Cemex too?
