But Kelleher resisted the temptation—not because he was eager to disappoint customers, but because he was determined to stay true to the airline’s mission. “Everybody was stunned that we didn’t go with this beautiful new plane,” Spence recalls. “But Herb said, ‘If we go with this new plane—and granted, it’s prettier and customers like it better—we’ll have to train our pilots to fly two different kinds of aircraft and train our mechanics to service two different kinds of aircraft. That will increase our costs, which we’ll have to pass on to our customers. We’re not going to do it, because that’s not the purpose of our airline. That’s not how you democratize the skies.’”*
In other words, companies that compete on a distinctive set of ideas are comfortable rejecting opportunities and strategies that more traditional players would rush to embrace. ING Direct even rejects customers that it considers out of sync with its advocacy message. A case in point: Kuhlmann himself turned down a $5 million deposit from one high roller who wanted to do business with the bank. It was nothing personal, the CEO insists, but if ING Direct is building an institution that promotes the financial interests of the little guy, then it doesn’t need to (and shouldn’t) cater to power brokers. “Rich Americans are used to platinum cards, special service,” he says. “The last thing we want in this bank is to have rich people making special demands. We treat everybody the same.”
Indeed, ING Direct is one of the few financial institutions that has no deposit minimums for customers but imposes (unofficially) deposit maximums. You want to start a savings account with one dollar? No problem—ING Direct will even deposit an additional $25 as a welcome-to-the-bank gesture. You want to open a savings account with a million dollars? No thanks. “We are about Main Street, not Wall Street,” explains customer service chief Kelly. “Our most important role is to help people who need help the most save money. People who are going to deposit a million dollars—they don’t need a lot of help. And let’s be realistic. That customer is going to want more from us—‘I’ve got a lot of money in your bank, I need this now.’ They’d expect us to do things for them that we just don’t do. I would much rather have a thousand accounts with one thousand dollars each than one million-dollar account. I can touch more people that way.”
It is an undeniably upside-down strategy for building a bank—placing a premium on customers with less money to deposit than on those with more money to deposit. But it’s a strategy with a clear economic rationale—executing a low-overhead, low-cost, low-margin, high-volume business model. It’s true to the value system that has shaped ING Direct’s identity in the marketplace. It’s a strategy that makes a statement—a point of view that resonates with customers and employees, that changes the conversation about the future of financial services, and that attracts more than its fair share of attention from the media and other commentators.
“Re-creating an industry is about creating a story around customers, around employees, around products,” Kuhlmann says. “Banking is about money, and money is about who you are, how you think about your future, looking out for the ones you love. We are trying to make savings cool. We’re creating a story that carries a sense of mission, a story that shifts people to a new point of view.”
For example, Kuhlmann and his team love to think of themselves as advocates for their customers. But just as Kuhlmann turned down that $5 million deposit, there’s little tolerance for customers who don’t fit the model—whether those customers are Joe Millionaire or Joe Six-Pack. Every year the company “fires” more than 3,500 customers who, one way or another, don’t play by the bank’s rules. Maybe they made too many calls to customer service, maybe they asked for too many exceptions to the bank’s carefully designed procedures, maybe they made big transfers for short periods of time to skim off some interest. Whatever the infraction, ING Direct doesn’t hesitate to close the account and automatically transfer the customer’s funds to its backup bank. (“Our china shop is too fragile for us to let bulls run around,” quips Kelly.)
Firing thousands of customers every year is a controversial business practice, CEO Kuhlmann concedes, which is why he believes it’s good business. “It’s good because it agitates everybody,” he says. “It agitates the marketplace. It agitates the customers who don’t belong. But we want to sort them out. The customers who are right for you, they love you. They become evangelists. The customers who you close out, they hate you. But you know what they do when they hate you? They tell everybody about you—and that’s good. It creates dialogue. There’s nothing like differentiation.”
WHY ME TOO WONT DOSTRATEGY AS ORIGINALITY
There is an undeniable populist strain to the organizations we’ve encountered thus far. For 35 years, Southwest Airlines has pursued a flight plan to recast the economics of travel and “democratize the skies.” For more than five years, ING Direct has banked on a critique of the worst practices in financial services and vowed to “lead Americans back to savings.” GSD&M’s Roy Spence, an unapologetic Texas progressive, urges clients not just to sell products but to express the “higher calling” of their business.*
But disruptive points of view come in all shapes, sizes, and sentiments. Advocacy is about strategic clarity, not the business world’s version of political correctness. The make-or-break issue isn’t fighting for the little guy. It’s fighting the competitive establishment with insights that challenge its me-too mind-set.
In their no-nonsense competitive manifesto Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win? strategy experts George Stalk and Rob Lachenauer urge executives to stop pussyfooting around with “softball” issues such as corporate governance and stakeholder management and to focus on what matters most in business—“us [ing] every legitimate resource and strategy available to them to gain advantage over their competitors.” Stalk and Lachenauer celebrate tough-as-nails companies that “focus relentlessly on competitive advantage” and “unleash massive and overwhelming force” against vulnerable rivals.9
We admire hard-charging companies too. But we’re convinced, based on the cast of fiercely competitive mavericks we’ve come to know, that the most effective way to play hardball is to build an agenda for growth around a strategic curveball—to prosper as a company by championing fresh ideas about the future of your business. Originality has become the litmus test of strategy.
Nowhere is the power of strategic originality more evident than at the West Coast headquarters of HBO, the powerhouse (and super-profitable) cable network that is the most original force in the numbingly me-too world of mass entertainment. HBO headquarters is anything but a place of populist pretense. The building, near the beach in Santa Monica, is a potent mix of Hollywood power and a laid-back California lifestyle. The eager valet attendants and the phalanx of headset-wearing receptionists provide visitors with a tingle of celebrity. In the cavernous lobby, young actor-writer types fidget on boldly patterned furniture. Gleaming white walls, green glass, and splashes of hot pink give the space a futuristic feel—in sharp contrast to the beige-toned inner sanctum with its views of palm trees, tennis courts, and lush green lawn.
The calm of the executive suite is ruffled only slightly by the daily turmoil of show business. In one corner office, Nancy Lesser, HBO’s high-powered publicist, is finalizing seating arrangements with the producers of the Golden Globes award show for a delegation of celebrities, including Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, and Mark Wahlberg, who are flying in to attend the gala. (HBO’s programs and stars were nominated for 20 Golden Globes in 2005, more than twice as many as any other network.) Meanwhile, in another corner office, Chris Albrecht, HBO’s chairman and CEO, is finishing a call, headset on, eyes focused intently on the middle distance: “Fifty million?” he asks. “Sixty million? Okay, if it has to be sixty million, it’s sixty million.” Click.
Wrangling for prime seats at an awards show or haggling over big-budget productions comes