Jab, Jab, Reframe

"The task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen, but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody sees." - Arthur Schopenhauer

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In the fall of 1920, the New Jersey State Athletic Commission announced a prize fight in Jersey City that created a global sensation. The fight would be between the Frenchman Georges Carpentier and the American Jack Dempsey. Both were considered among the best heavyweight boxers of their era. It was a big deal. Boxing was at the height of its popularity, and this would be the fight of the century.

The match was scheduled for July 2, 1921, and ticket sales immediately went gangbusters. By the time July finally rolled around, 90,000 people attended the fight, making it one of the first sporting events to generate $1 million in ticket revenue.

In the lead-up to this spectacle, David Sarnoff, a young man working for the nation’s largest radio manufacturer, RCA, became convinced that his company needed to broadcast the fight. When he took the idea to management, they told him it was the stupidest idea they had ever heard. Nothing like it had ever been done before. In those days, radio was in its infancy and struggling to catch on. There was programming, but it was mostly a few channels of news and music. But Sarnoff didn’t take no for an answer. He continued to press the leadership at RCA to let him broadcast the fight. Finally, just to get him to stop bringing it up, RCA told Sarnoff he could do the broadcast—but the company wouldn’t help him.

Sarnoff pulled together a makeshift broadcast booth using a stolen radio transmitter from a nearby Army base. He recruited the first play-by-play announcer of all time. He partnered with the National Amateur Wireless Association to set up radio receivers in various locations to broadcast the event. They established listening sites in 58 venues, including theaters, halls, and auditoriums, from Massachusetts in the north to Maryland in the south—and as far west as Pennsylvania. On the night of the fight, nearly 500,000 people tuned into the broadcast.

Sarnoff had completed the first broadcast of a major sporting event in American history. In the days and weeks that followed, an extraordinary thing happened: radio sales took off. It transformed from a technology people weren’t terribly interested in, to becoming the dominant media force it would continue to be for decades.

How did that happen? What was it about one broadcast that changed radio sales forever?

Sarnoff had reframed the way customers thought about the radio.

If you had asked most people in 1920 what they believed a radio was, they would have likely told you that it was an extremely expensive piece of equipment that gave you the news.

The problem with that was that Americans didn’t have a news problem in 1920.

There were more than 20 daily newspapers in New York City alone. The city was covered with them. And they were cheap - about the price of a penny.

“Why,” most Americans thought to themselves, “Would I pay the princely sum of $100 to $200 for something that replaced a commodity that might cost $4 per year?”

As long as the radio was perceived as a replacement for traditional newspapers, it’s sales were going to struggle. The investment made no sense.

What Sarnoff did when he broadcasted the fight between Carpentier and Dempsey, was that he showed Americans that this piece of technology was not about the news, it was about allowing you to experience the most important sporting event of the year from your living room, pool hall, local diner or bar.

He didn’t add a new precision tuning knob to the radio. He didn’t add higher quality components or highlight the superior signal strength of RCA’s machines. He redefined what the radio could mean to its listeners.

This is a lesson that has lasted across time: creating 'better' technology isn’t just about refining features—it’s about redefining the problem it solve. The true value of technology lies in how it’s framed and presented to users, reshaping what they believe it can do for them.

When leaders and marketers describe their technology as universally “better,” they’re wrong.

• The iPhone wasn’t necessarily “better” than the Blackberry in 2007.

…Unless the definition of a smartphone shifted from an email communicator on-the-go to a device delivering a connected suite of applications.

• Sara Blakely ’s Spanx were not necessarily “better” than pantyhose in 2000.

…Unless the definition of shapewear shifted from visible hosiery to a new type of undergarment designed to make clothes look and feel better.

• Flying Southwest Airlines in 1971 was not necessarily “better” than flying with Braniff.

…Unless the definition of air travel shifted from a premium, exclusive experience to an affordable, accessible service for the everyday traveler.

• Buying your thing, whether it’s in seed, iron, chemistry, agronomy or some other adjacent market, is not “better” than what else is on the market.

…Unless the definition of the value you deliver shifts from simply having a new product to having a solution that uniquely addresses a specific challenge your customer faces.

Far too often, conversations about on-farm innovation break into a simple-minded argument between two sides that fundamentally disagree about the benefits of new tech.

Unfortunately, a critical question is frequently lost in the scuffle: 'What problem are we solving here?' The question isn't really whether or not agtech is essential - the question is what your customers believe about the problem you solve.

The companies who define the future of agriculture will be those who stop assuming the market for their product and instead focus on the unique way they solve their customer's problems. The ones who force a choice and not a comparison.

Make something different. Make people care. Make fans, not followers.

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