Governance is for Chumps: What We Can Learn From a Mattress Company

By Stephen Fishman (@trivoca) Dec 8, 2011

If you've read any of my previous articles, most notably my opinion on SharePoint, I'm not afraid of throwing bombs on the cherished myths of others. My target today: the governance myth. You know the one I'm talking about, the panacea that's trotted out as the solution to all the problems that crop up when you are trying to manage an intranet. So what do mattress manufacturers have to do with governing an intranet? Please humor me and read on.

Lack of Moderation

Mattress manufacturers have one of the hardest challenges to overcome in business; Commoditization. From what the commercials would have you believe, Tempurpedic would have to be the best selling mattress brand in America. After all, all we hear about online and on their TV commercials is how beloved their mattresses are. Here's the weird thing — Tempurpedic is a minor player in the mattress market. They hover around 10% in revenue and in single digit percentages of units sold.

What is even weirder is that Tempurpedic holds the both the mattress dealer industry and the major manufacturers Sealy, Simmons and Serta hostage at the point of sale. But the weirdest thing by far is how they've managed to do this — lack of moderation.

For the last few years, Tempurpedic has turned social media strategy and even marketing strategy on its ear and as a result, consumers, competitors and partners can't keep their eyes off the little guy. Let's take a closer look at how they do it, why it matters for their business and what we can learn from it.

How They Do It

Tempurpedic does not respond to criticism — Take a look at Tempurpedic's wall on facebook and you'll see something strange. They have a very active social presence and do interact with customers who pose questions, but they never respond to criticism. Tempurpedic has unforgotten a lesson that very few of us practice; a willingness to open oneself up to slings and arrows of outrageous fortune is a show of strength; a statement of being. And taking arms against a sea of troubles is, in Shakespeare's view, a route to death.

Tempurpedic's commitment to unvarnished authenticity has created a consumer perspective that Tempur must have a ridiculous level of confidence in the quality and attributes of their product; why else would they not bother to respond to criticism? They embrace being different, because the love hate dialogue by their consumers has done something nobody else in the mattress business has been able to do. They have differentiated their product in a commodity marketplace.

Why It Matters For Their Business

Tempurpedic has been able to leverage their social content strategy of confidence into a point of leverage at the point of purchase. Consumers looking for a mattress buy mattresses in one of two places.

Through a dealer — People walk into the mattress showroom knowing one thing: "I need to try the Tempurpedic." They know this so well, that Tempurpedic is the only brand name that consumers mention by name when they enter the showroom. This means that a dealer without Tempurpedic will also be a dealer with no customers. This envious position, known as the catbird seat, means that Tempurpedic can do all sorts of things that are unheard of in typical OEM to dealer relationships. Tempurpedic not only controls how much floor-space they have in the dealership, they also control how much floor-space their competitors get and even get a say on which of their competitors products will even show up on the floor in the first place — this is why you see very few non-Tempurpedic memory foam products on the floor of mattress retailers.
Online — There are not a lot of OEMs who compete against their dealers by offering their products online in any market. The myth of disintermediation has long been exposed as false in most markets and distributers and dealers still have power enough to prevent OEMs from selling direct to consumers. Once again, Tempurpedic is the exception to this rule. Tempurpedic has such a strong hold as the only differentiated product in the marketplace that they not only can tell their dealers what to do, they can even directly compete against them!

What We Can Learn

To understand exactly why this no moderation approach is important beyond the obvious, look to objectives most enterprises cite when developing a more typical moderation approach. In general, most enterprises engage in moderation to "control the message". What we can learn from Tempurpedic, is that not trying to control message can be an advantage with your target audience. Tempurpedic has controlled the message by not attempting to control it.