Wednesday 20 August 2008

Communicating the purpose through

I am eating something similar to a Soupy Snax, so I decided to publish this text I wrote as an MBA assignment. It is one case were I can combine the themes MBA and harmonica safely.

I had previously seen the Soupy Snax 4:00 example somewhere, but it is a very good instance where the purpose of the product is so well communicated to the client.
In yet another example of the harmonica industry, Hohner has secured for them the best name a diatonic harmonica could ever have: "The Blues Harp".
Harmonicas are divided in mainly 3 groups: traditional instruments, chromatic instruments and, the most popular, the ten hole diatonic harmonicas. The latter are the more affordable models and are the only ones whose notes can be soulfully bent, giving it the characteristic wailing sound so intrinsic to harmonica blues playing.
But these instruments are not known as ten hole diatonic harmonicas, but under the nick name "blues harp". So, by registering this name decades ago, Hohner has made sure that, when an aspiring musician comes to a music dealer and asks for a harmonica to play the blues, he or she will probably ask using the most common name in English (and several other languages, additionally): "I want to buy a blues harp". The consumer is not aware that he is using a specific model name, but he has narrowed the choice of the dealer to this Hohner product. If he or she asks for a blues harp and gets a Hohner Blues Harp, he or she will be reassured to be buying the correct item. If the dealer offers a Suzuki Folk Master, which is a very similar instrument, the customer might become confused.
Just as a side note, the most traditional blues harmonica is The Hohner Marine Band, which, for a harmonica, is an awful name, as it doesn't convey any meaningful message to today's population (the Marine Band was a popular American Navy brass band in the late 19th century).
Hohner has tried to name their chromatic harmonica in a meaningful way. A chromatic harmonica is a harmonica which, differently from the other two categories* of instruments, can play a full chromatic scale. It was probably the most significant invention in 200 years of harmonica history. The name the Germans out of Trossingen came up with was "The Chromonica", which should convey the differentiating quality of this instrument. They had success in that, as it is easy for a buyer to figure out that he or she is doing the correct purchase when looking for a chromatic instrument. But Hohner's hopes of establishing the name Chromonica as a synonym for chromatic harmonicas didn't really work out that well. Some older generation Germans will use it in that way, but most of the harmonica community uses the term "chromatic harmonica" instead.
During my stay there, we launched the "7 Blues Harmonica Starter Set", which is a set with 7 inexpensive and low quality harmonicas, for a very affordable price. We tried to manage consumers' expectations by including the "starter" word in the name and by mentioning in the package that this was the ideal product for starters wanting to experiment with different keys or tonalities. Furthermore, we refrained to use the expression "blues harp" to differentiate this product from the actual "blues harp" model.


*Okay, not really. Richter style harmonicas and even tremolo harmonicas can be played chromatically with the use of advanced techniques.

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