Week 3

             The first thing I consumed this week was the TED talk by Seth Godin.  I am a fan of Seth’s and have seen him speak before watching this video.  His talk was about how to get ideas to spread.  His main point was that even good ideas fail if they are not spread properly and the best way to spread ideas is changing. 

            He spoke about how mass marketing used to be the best avenue to communicate to people.  Marketers were targeting the “average person.” Advertisers shoot for the middle because most people are in the middle and so you would expect the highest return on investment.  However Seth points out that the middle has become increasingly good at ignoring mass marketing.  One of his best points was about how people have more choices and less time in the world now.  With less time and more to choose from, people tend to just stick with what they know and ignore marketing.  This is primarily true when it comes to the average person.

            Seth takes this to mean that we should not be targeting people that don’t want to listen.  Instead we should be targeting the first adopters and innovators that are willing to listen.  We should be striving to make are products so good that they are remarkable.  Make them so good that people actually remark about them.  Turn this group of people that are looking for a new product into advocates for our product.  It is better to be different, and therefore remarkable, than to be average.

            I also greatly enjoyed the recording of Gil and Frank talking about the Long tail Theory.  I was not aware of the term “Long Tail Theory” but I understood the concepts behind it.  It pretty much says that the demand curve is flattening between the very popular and the less popular.  The 80/20 rule might be flattening out a little.  The most interesting part of their talk was when they talked about while even if this is true it might not be so easy to build a business model around.  While it might be true that you can sell more of the less popular items now than before, it doesn’t mean it is profitable produce them.  Volume is still needed in many cases to help offset costs of production.  In addition to this problem, they mentioned that the less popular items are sometimes met with less satisfaction from the customer.  This could result in the loss of return business if you focus on selling products that are not as mainstream.

            Both these things also lead into the main point of the article about the death of segmentation.  More data that is available will drive marketers to be more specific with their marketing.  Segments will grow smaller and smaller until we are focused on marketing to individuals.  I think this will lead to more and more customizable products and services.  No longer will you be able to mass produce one product and sell to the masses.  There are no more masses anymore.  People are becoming more and more independent.  This will force a shift in marketing and business strategy.