Socks, notes and fluff. Is Evernote falling into a strategy trap?

Being both technologically literate and highly organised many of you will be well aware of Evernote. You will have downloaded the app and enjoyed the ease with which you can manage data; organise appointments; share across many platforms etc. etc. Soon you will be able to sit in your office chair organising your life and enjoying the comfort of a pair of socks made by ....Evernote. You could stuff them in your bag made by.... Evernote. You could write about the experience in a notebook made by... yes you've got it by now.

This seems to be highly strange behaviour for a company that specialises in methods of delivering electronic data organisation to people. More in keeping is Evernote's decision to form a deal with 3m whereby you can take photos of your post it notes and Evernote will automatically categorise them based on their colour. There are a number of other deals (developing scanners with Fujitsu) that are solidly based around the idea of organising people's data and lives. These may or may not work - personally I feel that if you can be bothered to write a post it note, take a photo and download it then you might as well enter it directly onto a note keeping app!

Image courtesy Evernote.com

It is however the broadening out into diversified physical products that intrigues and somewhat alarms me from a strategic perspective. In a recent address reported in Forbes, CEO Phil Libin stated that "Paperless is not the goal. Great experience is the goal". It appears to be an attempt to change Evernote into a lifestyle brand which enables them to sell across a range of platforms and products. It was reported a broadening of mission for the company. All this is very well - except it seems to be a classic strategy trap.

Richard Rumelt rightly describes much of bad strategy as being 'fluff', the hallmark of which is to dress up nothingness in meaningless phrases and pretentious words and let them masquerade as strategies. He cites an example of a bank as stating: "Our fundamental strategy is one of customer- centric intermediation" (Rumelt p.37) Your guess is as good as mine as to what this really means but it appears to be saying that the bank is a bank!

What is required in strategy is a clarity of purpose that provides a unique position and has a chain of operational activities to support it. Evernote have clearly found this in their digital offerings but the desire to provide "a great experience" strikes be as vague and unfocused and dangerously like 'fluff'. Evernote may be able to make great socks and great bags (despite the obvious lack of capabilities in these areas) and it may well be a sensible move to broaden its scope of activities (it's really not hard for others to come up with organising apps), but I cannot see a compelling reason for someone to buy their socks or bags. "I love the Evernote app so I really must try their socks. Everyone will look at me and say 'he's an Evernote guy - cool', does not strike me as a likely scenario.

The only real way that this can work is for Evernote to have a clear strategy for developing itself as a diversified company. Identifying specific target markets, value propositions, making trade offs, designing and aligning value chain activities to deliver quality are all strategic imperatives for this to work. Declaring oneself a lifestyle brand and offering 'great experiences' look like 'fluff'. It may well be that Evernote have thought this through and have a clear strategy to make this work but the early signs don't look good.

About the Author: Eliot Lloyd

Eliot joined the University of Bedfordshire in 1996 where he currently works as a Senior Lecturer in Strategy. Eliot is also undergraduate Field Chair for Strategy and Course Leader for Executive MBA.