There were 5,127 prototypes. James Dyson spent years of his life and accumulated a mountain of debt before introducing the G-Force cleaner in 1983. By the mid-nineties, Dyson had revolutionized the British vacuum market.
What Built Dyson?
Dyson’s success can be laid squarely at the feet of the legions of British homeowners who purchased the innovative vacuum and raved about it to their friends. The Dyson was more than another cleaner. The innovation went beyond being bagless. Dyson’s vacuums looked different, felt different, and performed differently than anything the British consumer had experienced before.
Dyson had changed the vacuum into “an aesthetic lifestyle product, a status symbol,” according to Nick Platt, a vacuum expert with the GfK group.
Dyson’s best customers were realizing more than one benefit from their new vacuums. Their floors were cleaner than ever before, certainly, but they also had a neat new possession to show off. They were eager to discuss how well the Dyson worked, how easy it made cleaning, and how much they enjoyed using the cleaner.
The audience for this conversation? Almost limitless: everyone who has a place to live needs a way to keep it clean. The ability to have and participate in this conversation is, in and of itself, a benefit that Dyson’s best customers appreciated. Along with their vacuum, they’re getting a valuable type of social currency.
Understanding Dyson’s Powerful Appeal
Another reason that Dyson has become such a dominant brand is their almost intuitive understanding of what a person really wants from the cleaning experience. They’ve moved beyond the clean all the carpets level into more nebulous, but ultimately critically important, psychological territory.
The pressure to do a great job keeping house is deeply and profoundly tied to many people’s—particularly women’s—feelings of self-worth and identity. Heavy societal pressures reinforce the idea that being a good person means providing a clean, pleasant living space for your family. This combination of internal beliefs and societal pressures forms what we call a biological driver: an unconscious motivator that guides and directs purchasing decisions.
The impact of a biological driver on an individual consumer is greater than almost any other force: it outweighs logic, price, and other rational considerations we’ve been told are so important in consumer behavior. Time and time again, consumers have proved that when they are presented with a way to feel better about themselves in such a fundamental, if often unarticulated, level they’ll respond with unprecedented levels of brand loyalty.
Brand Lovers Build Businesses
The loyal customers we’ve referenced are called Brand Lovers, and they play an integral role in building your business. A Brand Lover can be defined by many criteria, including the amount of business they do with you. Your Brand Lover will return to your business time and time again, rewarding your organization with higher frequency of business and greater wallet share per engagement and over the long term.
The cultivation of this growth is a great untapped opportunity for many businesses. Dyson has leveraged the power of Brand Lovers effectively to become the dominant vacuum cleaner company not only in Britain, but in Japan and Australia as well. Introduced to the US market in 2002, Dyson now controls 23% of the US vacuum market.
It’s a testament to the power of innovation. Dyson connected with what their Brand Lovers valued most, and delivered it consistently. And now? They’re cleaning up.