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December 10, 2007
Caterpillar's roadshow: show, not tell
Mike Cai is relying on word of mouth, not advertising, to sell Caterpillar's massive construction machines in China.
His strategy: roadshows. He hauls things like 38-ton tractor-scrapers (seen above) all over China to demonstrate their functions. People in China's construction industry haven't seen a tractor-scraper and don't necessarily understand its concept, so why not let them see a tractor-scraper in action?
"Word of mouth is the best form of publicity for the construction industry in China," he tells the WSJ.
By investing in a roadshow, Caterpillar creates tangibility through evidence. Evidence inspires word of mouth. Word of mouth generates sales.
Mike's marketing results are tangible, too: In just three years, Caterpillar's revenues in China have quadrupled to $4 billion.
Update: Wallstrip assembled a funny send-up of Caterpillar's growth by making fun of a corporate PR person who declined their request for an interview. Naturally.
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So what does this look like for the church. Obviously, when we are serving others we are giving them a "roadshow" or if we make and distribute DVDs of our services- but what are some other ideas about how to show and tell.
It's interesting but this seems very similar to how religion was brought onshore to other countries. In more of an evangelistic nature. The metaphor brings light to challenges of creating the conversation and in fact translating it from English industry jargon to Chinese which is also similar from one religion to another in who they worship to. Great post.
This is definitely a Make it Stick concept. Kudos to him!
The roadshow approach can be accomplished through video. At CalMagazine.com we have accomplished a similar situation by videotaping a story, allowing people to view it and eventually through word of mouth, Woman's Day magazine saw it and picked it up as a story that was featured in December's issue. The article is titles: "A Family For Christmas." Kudos for the word-of-mouth approach.
This is the idea of the bite-size chunk, which we explored in "creating customer evangelists." People tend to make a more binary decision of yes/no after having experienced something rather than having just heard about it.
"Roadshow" can mean a lot of things; perhaps we'll blog a few ideas and concepts for a future post.
