13 Jun 2016

A perfect example of the Golden Circle

Audience

• Someone who happened to see this Ad by Momondo that made a lot of fuss in the social media.
• Someone who also happened to see this amazing TED talk by Simon Sinek.

What is the Story

Alright, so this is what happened. I was scrolling down through my facebook feed. I happen to stumble upon the Momondo Ad. At first, I didn’t see that it was an Ad. I just saw some words like, “DNA journey”, “Find your origin”, “More things unite us than divide us” and such. It caught my attention.

The Ad started with a lady unable to control her emotions and tears dripping out. That ought to catch any man’s attention. One by one, people of different ethnicity are shown. Each one sits at a desk and explains their background to two experts sitting in front of them. It is clear that each of them is being interviewed as a part of a survey. All of them seemed very proud of their nationality and culture. Then one of the experts asks the question, “How would you feel about taking a Journey based on your DNA?”. Perplexed faces everywhere. “Why not?”, comes the common reply. The participants are then asked to spit into a small test tube that obviously contains their DNA. Time moves on and two weeks later, all of the participants gather together in the same room. Each one comes forward and receives an envelope. Inside the envelope is a small booklet. It contains a world map and a graph. The map shows the parts of the world that matched their DNA strands and the grows how much ethnic they really are. The participants are unable to handle it. They are shocked, surprised and most of them break down in tears. There is also a nice background music to add to the touch. They find out they are more related to each other than think they are. Two of them ended up as cousins. They all make a pledge to visit these places and get to know the people and places better. It ends with the statement, “An Open World begins with an Open Mind”.

So What is so Special

What a splendid Ad! Oh, wait. I did not know it was an Ad. All along, I saw the colorful “Momondo” logo on the right bottom of the video. I believed they were some research agency that made a wonderful discovery that could change the whole world with their idea. Curious as I was, I clicked their link to know more about them. I went to the website. The first thing I notice is the top navigation bar. I was expecting to see things like, “About Us”, “Research Projects” and so on. Instead, I saw “Flights”, “Hotel” and “Car rentals”. Intrigued, I found their About Us page. It said,

In 2006 a small group of skilled and dedicated Danish developers united around a mission: to open the world. Challenging the dogmas of the flight industry, they created momondo: a free, independent online flight search offering full price transparency across the market. Putting their highly specialized skill within coding, robot building and programming to work, they provided people with an un-manipulated listing of all flight prices in the entire world – and made it available to everybody.

I sat in my seat, giggling to myself. An online travel search company made an Ad, (a touching, moving, mind changing Ad) to lure people in; to give them a reason to travel the world. This is a huge selling tactic. There are countless people out there, who have the financial potential and the time to travel around the world. Tourism is indeed one of the fastest growing industries everywhere. But most of these people are unaware of where to go and when to go. Momondo just helped these people. It is like telling them, “Hey, you have ancestors in France, Greece, Egypt and all over. Go visit your ancestral land!”. They told them why they should travel. They told them where they should travel and as far as for the when , they can always use the search engine to find when the flight and hotel rates will fit their wallet.

Flashback

The very same time, as I am taking all these in another bell rang in my brain. A few years back, I watched a great TED talk by Simon Sinek. It was a very inspiring talk. You will find the transcript here. You should either watch the video or read the transcript to understand what I have to share. Simon talks about thinking and communicating from the inside out. He talks about the success of Apple and the Wright Brothers and how they followed the above illustrated “Golden Circle”. The following lines describe it,

People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it and what you do simply proves what you believe. In fact, people will do the things that prove what they believe.

Yes, it is simple as that. If people believe what you believe, they will do it. All you have to do is make them believe it. Right after, I watched this talk, I thought to myself about other products and businesses that use the same strategy. Well, many of the big shots, do follow this strategy. But I was yet to stumble upon a company or industry that would use it in the best possible way. I believe Momondo has exactly applied this principle. They believe in connecting the world and in connecting people. They just happen to provide awesome (Disclaimer: I haven’t used their service, nor am I a booster) travel services. Want to try them? Who wouldn’t?

It is a great lesson for other businesses out there. It is not always the number of features and services that matter. It is the why you do it that matters most. Then comes the how and the what.

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