Eliminate

Eliminate is one of the Four Actions Framework. In earlier posts I've explored Create; we'll get to cousins Reduce and Raise in another post. But for now it's Eliminate's turn.

Eliminate means just what the word says: get rid of something entirely. The "something" must be a key element, which means that it must be something substantive that consumers will notice. Something that your red ocean peers are clobbering one another over the head to include; something that's taking lots of competitor's bandwidth and getting lots of their red ocean marketing money.

Nintendo, as usual, is a great example. The Wii doesn't play movies. It's not that they decided to wait out the Blu-Ray (Sony)/HD-DVD (Microsoft) slug-fest; Nintendo skipped all movie capabilities, even DVD's.

I'm sure some engineer or marketer argued that it probably would've been relatively inexpensive to put a DVD player in a Wii, then kids can watch movies in their room on their Wii. See the catch? To market the capability they would have had to define the benefit to their new market, and by doing so limit the market. Nintendo would have had to spend more technical budget, and added complexity, to add a feature that boxed in their core message and made it more difficult to message the key value proposition to their larger base of customers and non-customers alike.

So Nintendo eliminated movie playing entirely. Not for technical reasons, and probably not solely for cost reasons. Rather, they didn't want to waste money, time, and focus to box in their new, blue market.

Take that key element, remembering that if the element isn't one at least a few people absolutely love and swear is necessary it isn't a key element, and get rid of it completely. Figure out what the right 1-2 elements are and vanquish them from your offering. Don't try to disguise the key element as something that's really just cost savings ("we'll eliminate employee health benefits!"). Key elements matter to consumers: if the buyer doesn't notice, you're not eliminating anything.

Eliminate is probably the toughest of the Four Actions Framework. It isn't easy. It's substantially more difficult than Raising and Creating, but is vital if you're hoping to create a blue ocean rather than a slightly less red one.