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Like I said in the first sentence, I wasn't criticizing the content, neither I'm saying flywheel is a new concept. Some call it flywheels, others call it engin

Like I said in the first sentence, I wasn't criticizing the content, neither I'm saying flywheel is a new concept. Some call it flywheels, others call it engines, others call it funnel. David Ogilvy didn't name it in 1963, with the Confessions of an Advertising Man, but the concept was there: >Why did I write it? First, to attract new clients to my advertising agency. Second, to condition the market for a public offering of our shares. Third, to make myself better known in the business world. It achieved all three of these purposes. My point is that some disciplines look into have closed concepts, marketing discipline doesn't.

csallen 6y ago
Engines might be an appropriate analogy to flywheels, but a funnel is a different thing entirely, as is your quote from David Ogilvy. A funnel typically represents the customers' journey, with some amount of dropoff at each step along the way, e.g. discover the site --> sign up --> become active --> convert to paid. And although each step of a funnel leads to the next one, the last step of the funnel doesn't loop back around to feed into the first step, which means the funnel isn't a closed loop that feeds into itself. A flywheel, on the other hand, is always a closed loop. And most commonly the steps on the flywheel are business strategies, advantages, and activities, rather than steps along a user journey, e.g. provide a wider selection of goods from sellers --> make buyers happier --> get more buyers --> attract more sellers --> repeat. Just Google Image search a picture of a flywheel and a funnel and the difference should become immediately clear to you. And note that you can combine the two concepts. For example, in the flywheel, the arrow between attracting more sellers and getting a wider selection of goods could be represented as a funnel. Finally, your David Ogilvy quote is neither a funnel nor a flywheel. It's just a list of three distinct benefits, all of which derive from him writing something, but none of which feed into the others (or at least he doesn't describe how they do.)

csallen 6y ago

Engines might be an appropriate analogy to flywheels, but a funnel is a different thing entirely, as is your quote from David Ogilvy. A funnel typically represents the customers' journey, with some amount of dropoff at each step along the way, e.g. discover the site --> sign up --> become active --> convert to paid. And although each step of a funnel leads to the next one, the last step of the funnel doesn't loop back around to feed into the first step, which means the funnel isn't a closed loop that feeds into itself. A flywheel, on the other hand, is always a closed loop. And most commonly the steps on the flywheel are business strategies, advantages, and activities, rather than steps along a user journey, e.g. provide a wider selection of goods from sellers --> make buyers happier --> get more buyers --> attract more sellers --> repeat. Just Google Image search a picture of a flywheel and a funnel and the difference should become immediately clear to you. And note that you can combine the two concepts. For example, in the flywheel, the arrow between attracting more sellers and getting a wider selection of goods could be represented as a funnel. Finally, your David Ogilvy quote is neither a funnel nor a flywheel. It's just a list of three distinct benefits, all of which derive from him writing something, but none of which feed into the others (or at least he doesn't describe how they do.)