The invention of the revolving door
One example
When Theophilus Van Kannel was a kid in the 1800s, he was brought up with the idea of chivalry.
His mom taught him that men should always open doors for women.
Theophilus however would have none of it.
So he and his mom would fight.
When he was 13, his mom had finally had enough.
You see, she hosted a gathering with her female friends in the drawing room and our medieval Eric Cartman was being his usual rebellious self.
She snapped and smacked him in front of everyone.
His embarrassment only fueled his rebellious nature even more.
Many years later, he married a woman called Abigail.
Abigail had the same beliefs as his mother did. And just like Theophilus, she was incredibly headstrong.
She’d tell him: “Manners are the measure of man,” and try to mold him into the man she believed he ought to be. He, in turn, would have none of it.
According to a biographer, in 1885, he told his wife: “You’re a grown woman and can locomote perfectly well on your own.”
When he returned, she was sitting in the same room where he left her in a show of defiance because he had refused to open the door.
So at that point, as you might expect, Theophilus did the only logical thing he could…
Spending £8,200 (£833,939 adjusted for inflation) over the course of the next three years to invent a new door.
The first revolving door in the world was installed in 1899 at Rector’s restaurant in Times Square, Manhattan, situated on Broadway between west 43rd and 44th streets.
Okay… fun story over.
How does this help us?
Well, Theophilus wasn’t just an engineer… he was also a marketer.
An engineer is someone that solves technical problems with atoms given the constraint of reality.
A marketer understands that consumers aren’t interested in tech per se… they’re interested in solutions to the problems they have!
Tattoo that on your brain!
The way he pitched it was that it was great for business owners because:’
It was noiseless.
It prevented snow, rain, and dust from blowing into the building.
It couldn’t be blown open by the wind.
It kept street noise out.
It enabled people to enter and leave simultaneously without a bottleneck.
As a partial airlock, it minimized heat loss and kept the cold air out.
See also this essay on benefits instead of features.
In the original ad campaign, they used the slogan: “always closed”. But they changed it cuz they didn’t like the association of never having your doors open as a business.
Van Kannel would make creative that said his doors would avoid “noxious effluvia” (unpleasant odors) and “baleful miasmas” (bacteria causing diseases such as cholera) from blowing into the building. And went as far as saying his invention was “saving lives”.
Apparently, it would bug him when customers described his design as being “like a turnstile”. He quipped this was like saying a “kettle resembled a locomotive boiler”.
He wrote how the “unfortunate salesman, cashier, or clerk” who worked near a constantly opening front door was more susceptible to “deadly lung and throat diseases” wafting in from the streets.
Eventually, the slogan became: “Always Open, Always Closed.”
The point I’m making here ties in with yesterday’s essay on empathy:
No one gives a fuck about YOU. However, your customers DO care about THEM! So if you use empathy to simply understand their POV by putting yourself in their shoes, you’ll be significantly more effective at marketing.
Because notice, despite how stubborn Theophilus was, he didn’t insist on how his invention should be used. He was willing to work with the market.
This is a critical observation I want you to make.
This is also why solopreneurs that come from a technical background struggle so much. They fail to understand the interplay between a product in isolation and people.
But the bridge between the two occurs when a product is a solution to a Star Problem.
So remember the fights with his wife that started this whole journey? Well, he installed 14 revolving doors in his own home and his mother’s.
But business-wise, as a good marketer, he was okay that his invention was mainly popular with business, and skyscrapers.
The latter liked them for aesthetic reasons. Coming out of a small revolving door made the lobby feel more grandiose.
Today’s takeaway: regardless of whether you started on the creation side or the market research side, the benefits of the end result have to be communicated in terms of a solution to a Star Problem. That takes empathy.
Notes
Link to the original patent: