ripe forparody.
Imagine for a second the same thing happening to L. L. Bean or Lands’ End. Inconceivable. Those catalogs are safe and steady and boring. The original J. Peterman catalog, on the other hand, was so ridiculous that it was delightful to parody. We feel the same way about Martha Stewart’s obsessive calendar in the front of her magazine or the two “cheeseburgah” guys at that diner in Chicago, as parodied by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.
In each of these cases, the very uniqueness that led to a parody results in a huge increase in attention, in sales, and in profits. If you can show up in a parody, it means you’ve got something unique, something worth poking fun at. It means there’s a Purple Cow at work. The paradox is this: The same word of mouth that can make your product a huge hit can also lead to someone’s snickering at you.
Most companies are so afraid of offending or appearing ridiculous that they steer far away from any path that might lead them to this result. They make boring products because they don’t want to be interesting. When a committee gets involved, each well-meaning participant sands off the rough edges, speaking up for how their constituency might not like the product. The result is something boring and safe.
How could you modify your product or service so that you’d show up on the next episode of Saturday Night Live or in a spoof of your industry’s trade journal?
Seventy-two Pearl Jam Albums
The music business is all about interrupting jaundiced strangers with news about ever more similar acts, all trying to breakinto the Top 40. Ninety-seven percent of all records lose money because this model is fundamentally broken.
Of course, in 1962 this was a brilliant strategy. People were starved for great new music. Retailers wanted more titles to stock, radio stations wanted more acts, and consumers wanted bigger collections. Advertising (in the form of radio payola or retail spiffs) was quite effective. No longer.
Virtually all breakthrough acts in the music business now are the result of blind luck (and a little talent). A band (brand?) captures the interest of a small group of sneezers, who tell their friends, and suddenly they’ve got a hit. Rather than accepting this, though, the music industry tries to manufacture hits the old way.
Except for Pearl Jam. They seem to get it. They broke through. They worked hard (and got lucky), recorded some hits, and became headliners. Then, instead of insisting that they could do it again and again and again, they rallied their core audience and built a very different system.
If you’re a Pearl Jam fan, you know that from 2001 through 2002, the band released seventy-two live albums, all available on their Web site. They’re not trying to interrupt strangers; they’re selling to the converted. Pearl Jam knows that once they have permission to talk to someone, it’s much easier to make a sale. They know that the cost of selling an album to this audience is relatively minuscule, and they’ve turned a profit on all seventy-two albums. The big win on top of this income stream occurs when some of this core audience is so delighted by this bounty of great products that they take the time to indoctrinate their friends. Thus, the Pearl Jam universe grows. Big fans bring in new fans, and old fans stick around because they’re catered to. There’s very little leakage because the band keeps the existing customer base satisfied with remarkable products.
Do you have the e-mail addresses of the 20 percent of your customer base that loves what you do? If not, start getting them. If you do, what could you make for these customers that would be super-special? Visit sethgodin.type pad.com and you can sign up for my blog and get daily updates.
Case Study: Curad
When Curad wanted to challenge the Band-Aid brand for the market for adhesive bandages, most people thought Curad was crazy. Band-Aid was a household institution,
Imagine for a second the same thing happening to L. L. Bean or Lands’ End. Inconceivable. Those catalogs are safe and steady and boring. The original J. Peterman catalog, on the other hand, was so ridiculous that it was delightful to parody. We feel the same way about Martha Stewart’s obsessive calendar in the front of her magazine or the two “cheeseburgah” guys at that diner in Chicago, as parodied by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.
In each of these cases, the very uniqueness that led to a parody results in a huge increase in attention, in sales, and in profits. If you can show up in a parody, it means you’ve got something unique, something worth poking fun at. It means there’s a Purple Cow at work. The paradox is this: The same word of mouth that can make your product a huge hit can also lead to someone’s snickering at you.
Most companies are so afraid of offending or appearing ridiculous that they steer far away from any path that might lead them to this result. They make boring products because they don’t want to be interesting. When a committee gets involved, each well-meaning participant sands off the rough edges, speaking up for how their constituency might not like the product. The result is something boring and safe.
How could you modify your product or service so that you’d show up on the next episode of Saturday Night Live or in a spoof of your industry’s trade journal?
Seventy-two Pearl Jam Albums
The music business is all about interrupting jaundiced strangers with news about ever more similar acts, all trying to breakinto the Top 40. Ninety-seven percent of all records lose money because this model is fundamentally broken.
Of course, in 1962 this was a brilliant strategy. People were starved for great new music. Retailers wanted more titles to stock, radio stations wanted more acts, and consumers wanted bigger collections. Advertising (in the form of radio payola or retail spiffs) was quite effective. No longer.
Virtually all breakthrough acts in the music business now are the result of blind luck (and a little talent). A band (brand?) captures the interest of a small group of sneezers, who tell their friends, and suddenly they’ve got a hit. Rather than accepting this, though, the music industry tries to manufacture hits the old way.
Except for Pearl Jam. They seem to get it. They broke through. They worked hard (and got lucky), recorded some hits, and became headliners. Then, instead of insisting that they could do it again and again and again, they rallied their core audience and built a very different system.
If you’re a Pearl Jam fan, you know that from 2001 through 2002, the band released seventy-two live albums, all available on their Web site. They’re not trying to interrupt strangers; they’re selling to the converted. Pearl Jam knows that once they have permission to talk to someone, it’s much easier to make a sale. They know that the cost of selling an album to this audience is relatively minuscule, and they’ve turned a profit on all seventy-two albums. The big win on top of this income stream occurs when some of this core audience is so delighted by this bounty of great products that they take the time to indoctrinate their friends. Thus, the Pearl Jam universe grows. Big fans bring in new fans, and old fans stick around because they’re catered to. There’s very little leakage because the band keeps the existing customer base satisfied with remarkable products.
Do you have the e-mail addresses of the 20 percent of your customer base that loves what you do? If not, start getting them. If you do, what could you make for these customers that would be super-special? Visit sethgodin.type pad.com and you can sign up for my blog and get daily updates.
Case Study: Curad
When Curad wanted to challenge the Band-Aid brand for the market for adhesive bandages, most people thought Curad was crazy. Band-Aid was a household institution,
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