Just reading through the summer (actually the second) issue of M/I/S/C (Movement Intuition Structure Complexity) a publication of Idea Couture. An article about the experience and end of El Bulli, Ferran Adria’s fancy restaurant of molecular cooking and the future of food got me thinking how this would translate into the telecommunication business
What you have is the idea for an innovative restaurant or rather a sensory experience, where people apply and enter a lottery to get one of the 50 places each night for the 6 month of the year it is open.
So it combines a sensational experience with a high level of exclusivity. And maybe just because I’m writing this on a plane, it sounds very much like the top-level frequent flyer class of most airlines. The important part is also that there is something money can not buy.
Start thinking about it from a telecommunications provider perspective and you find that (1) this is not part of their standard offering and (2) it gives you a new angle about what customers desire about the service (hint: it is not free SMS – fails the money can buy test)
Here a just a few thoughts: better quality of service (like a frequent flyer), and this could be faster connect, quaranteed bandwidth, more bandwidth. Or on a more sophisticated level: a cool app that you can not buy for your smartphone, a free contract for the spouse (maybe also fails the can’t buy test), a special phone – immediately identifiable as member of a special tribe.