Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
108
 www.ideavirus.com
But the biggest mistake Toyota made was the way they designed the car. Unlike the VW
Beetle and the Mazda Miata, the Prius is not a driving billboard for itself. Here’s what it
looks like:
You could have 1,000 of these cars drive by and you’d never, ever notice it. You wouldn’t
notice the styling, you wouldn’t notice the gas mileage or the lack of emissions—and you
certainly wouldn’t aspire to own one just by looking at it.
Is Toyota on a mission from God? Are they acting like zealots, aggressively pushing a car that
will change the world for the better, the most powerful idea to come out of the car industry
since Henry Ford perfected the assembly line? We need 
passion
from our manufacturers.
What a lost opportunity! An idea merchant in search of a virus would take a very different
tack. Instead of trying to make it cheap and boring, they’d realize that the first people to buy
a car like this are people with money to risk on an unproven technology. Realize that the
opinion leaders and nerds who are most susceptible to this idea are also the most likely to
want to drive an exceptional car.
I’d redesign the thing to be stunning. Different. Unique. Maybe a permanent bumper sticker
announcing my current gas mileage on an LCD readout. Or a fleet of far-out colors. The
first 50,000 people who buy this car will be doing it to make a statement. And every person
who does will be making that statement to the 1,000 or 10,000 people who see them driving
it. A virus waiting to happen.
Remember what I said about the VW Beetle? 180
°
difference.

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Unleashing the Ideavirus
109
 www.ideavirus.com
Toyota forgot to pick a vector for this car. They don’t know exactly who they want to buy it,
so they designed it for everyone. Precisely the opposite strategy of the new VW Bug. But
remember, an ideavirus adores a vacuum, and there is a very big and very empty vacuum just
sitting here, waiting to be plucked. Toyota could have picked any vector they wanted,
leading to any hive they chose, and yet they chose none.
And finally, I wouldn’t let just anyone buy the first models off the line. I’d select the very
best sneezers, the loudmouths, the pillars in their community and do whatever it took to get
these folks to drive a car. James Bond? Julia Roberts in her next film? The mayor of Carmel,
California or the head of Greenpeace?
This is urgent. This isn’t about making another few million bucks from a website. It’s about
infecting the population with a good virus, and doing it before the vacuum fills up with junk
and it’s too noisy to communicate about it.

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