From dawn to dusk - reminding your husband to pick the clothes from dry cleaning, writing a sweet love note on the lunch box for your children, reminding yourself about the client’s meeting, jotting down to-do tasks - your go-to medium will be the Post-it notes. These small paper squares are an integral part of your life. They have become ubiquitous office products as much as staplers and paper clips.
Ever wondered how
it was created?
The serendipitous discovery:
In 1968, Dr Spencer
Silver, a research scientist in the Minnesota-based manufacturing empire 3M,
was tasked to develop a new, stronger adhesive for the aerospace industry. In the
process, he discovered an adhesive called acrylate co-polymer microspheres,
which was a weak, pressure-sensitive adhesive. It was far from the stronger and
tougher adhesive Spencer intended to develop. What was peculiar about this
adhesive is that it stuck lightly to surfaces; could easily be removed without
a residue; and can be reused multiple times. While he believed that his
invention was a game changer, he, however, struggled to find a use for his
invention.
The hymn notes trouble:
Dr. Art Fry, a new
product development researcher at 3M loved to sing in church choir. While
practising with his choir team, he used to prepare a makeshift bookmark for the
hymns they were to sing in the upcoming service. However, he would find that
they had fallen out of the hymnal at the time of service. This frustrated him.
He wanted a bookmark that would stick to the pages without falling off and at
the same time not damaging the sheets.
The aha moment:
Dr Fry once
attended a seminar on Silver’s new microsphere adhesives. He asked Silver to
make some notes with the adhesives. When Fry and his choir team tried it, they
were thrilled. Together, Silver and Fry began developing the new product. The
first Post-it prototypes were created with yellow colour paper because a lab
next door only had that yellow scrap paper available at the time. Since then,
the iconic canary yellow colour paper has become the product’s signature.
The initial hiccup:
Fry decided to
test the product in 3M corporate headquarters. He supplied the entire company
with the new adhesive notes and the employees loved them. In 1977, 3M
officially launched the new product in 4 US cities under the name “Press ‘n
Peel.” However, hardly anyone bought the product and Press ‘n Peel was pulled
off the shelves.
The runaway success:
The management
realised the reason behind the lacklustre sales was the lack of awareness and
knowledge of how to use the product. So, the marketing team in 3M decided to follow
a new strategy. They made massive promotions by placing the notes directly into
the hands of consumers in a new name- “Post-it note.” They sent out large
numbers of free samples to companies to try and they decided to track how many of
them re-ordered the product. This massive sampling effort is called “Boise
Blitz” as it was launched in Boise, Idaho. This turned out to be a runaway
success. 90% of the companies that sampled the product re-ordered the product
indicating a scope for the product.
On April 6, 1980,
Post-it notes were launched across the United States of America.
And the rest is
history.
From the creators:
In the words of
Fry, “Post-it was always a self-advertising product because customers would put
the notes on documents they sent to others, arousing the recipient's curiosity.
They would look at it, peel it off and play with it, and then go out and buy a
pad for themselves."
Silver said, that like many ground-breaking innovations, theirs was a product nobody thought they
needed until they did.
Today, 3M sells more than 50 billion individual notes per year in more than 100 countries. What Silver and Fry created was not just a notepaper but a whole new communication medium. Had they given up, we would have lost this creative invention of all time.
"An invention does not end with the Eureka moment. It needs persistence and perseverance to bring it to life."
Timeline:
1968- The
accidental invention
1974- The
lightbulb moment
1977- Launch of
Post-it Note as "Press ’n Peel"
1979: The Boise
Blitz: A Free Sampling Campaign
1980: Launch
across the United States
Post-1980: Massive success.
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