What Happens When You Put the CUSTOMER In Charge of Your Marketing?
A while ago I wrote a post asking the question, “who is really in charge of your marketing?” My intent was to highlight the marketing impact (for better or worse) of the rank and file staffers who come face-to-face with customers.
Recently however, I have noticed something truly fascinating that I believe may very well change marketing forever. And it forces me to revisit this same issue of who’s in charge of marketing.
This time I would ask you to consider the role of your customer in the marketing equation. No… I’m not talking about generating referrals. I’m actually talking about the customer as the deciding and active force in an organization’s marketing.
Recently, Entrepreneur magazine featured a company called Threadless.com. In the words of the company, “Threadless is a community based tee shirt company with an ongoing, open-call for tee design submissions.”
Here’s the business model. And I must say – I love it.
People submit their artwork to Threadless as part of a never-ending campaign to find the coolest tee shirt designs.
The public votes online for their favorite designs.
The winning artist is paid something for his/her work and soaks up the thrill of victory.
Threadless produces shirts using the winning artwork.
The voters (and others) buy the shirts.
And Threadless sells out their inventory every time.
Needless to say, the company and its founders are doing quite well. It reminds me a bit of the making of stars in American Idol. After millions of people vote week after week for the winning Idols, is it any wonder that their records sell when they’re released?
Look at what’s happening…
The customer/community MAKES THE PRODUCT.The customer/community tells the company which one they will buy.
The company listens.
And the product made and selected by the customer/community sells out.
Now let’s take this concept a step further… to the realms of the seemingly absurd.
A band called Radiohead recently produced an album called “In Rainbows.” To date, it is only available from a web site the likes of which you have to see to believe. (pretty strange)
You can pre-order the CD, or you can order and download the record right now.
Now for the amazing part… The price of the record is WHATEVER YOU WANT IT TO BE. YOU DECIDE. If you don’t want to pay, it’s free. Want to support the band? Pay something north of zero.
MarketingProfs recently reported that the band has sold 1.2 million downloads for an average price of $8.00. Apparently scores of bands are now looking at doing the same thing.
I hardly think of myself as old-school, but this blows my mind.
The world is changing, and with it – the very fundamentals of marketing.
Start thinking about how to collaborate with your audience.
marketing revisited, Social marketing, Viral Marketing, Web Marketing
November 3rd, 2007 at 7:41 am
We pioneered and trademarked the concept and practice of Consumer Creativity to collaborate with consumer audiences in the creation of new product concepts, product positioning strategies and revolutionary product design, packaging and delivery systems in 1954, based-on pre-computer US government code breaking practices solicited by the United States and later utilized with great success by companies as large as Procter & Gamble and General Motors, the world’s largest advertisers, and as small as E.E. Dickenson Witch Hazel Company in Essex, CT. With true consumer creativity, stimulating the consumer minds with structured product-based dimensions that caused them to say and think things they’d never otherwise say or think or perceive about a product or brand’s “POTENTIALS” we consistently hit more home runs than any other breakthrough idea manufacturing process around - anywhere. With the growth of “new media” came new choices to chase consumer ears and eyeballs and young marketers started stepping off a different rung on the ladder than first finding a highly different and consumer desired product-based selling solution. Once thus set adrift they were unable to work their way back to shore so to speak, breeding generations of marketers who now practice what they’ve “learned” as CMOs with life expectancies under 24 months. Would it not be better to speak with someone who can extend that life expectancy to years? In part, being set adrift, marketers (no, decision makers) succumb to what is called Search Satisfaction. They stop looking for better answers once they find solutions they like. That’s how Crispin Porter + Bogusky lost ConAgra and Orville Redenbacker’s $34 million account in less than a year. It wasn’t because consumers didn’t set market prices. In fact that’s pretty much their agency’s MO - they do no consumer homework. Oh, they might ask questions or do market research but question based marketing is full of pitfalls and poor traditions. By the time you get an answer to a question the answer has already happened. By default you are a pound short and a day behind the consumer. Atticus Finch said in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, “You can’t ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.” Which is why research and qualitative work generally only reconfirms the things you already know. Which is why ranch resources are so small. I found, in speaking to well over a quarter million consumers in almost every SIC category that whenever you ask consumers questions, you do not get the voice of the consumer, you get the voice of the inquirer through the question being asked - a form of bias that will lead you astray. So if you ask consumers no questions they can tell you no lies - and that’s how we built companies such as P&G through 10 generations of Chairmen, or invented brands such as Tylenol Gelcaps to restore the 92% of capsule segment sales lost to cyanide tampering. What else is wrong with Search Satisfaction? It afflicts physicians who stop diagnosing patients once they find answers they feel fit the symptoms patients present. The only problem is that doctors misdiagnose patients a far higher percentage of the time than anyone wants to admit.
So who really is letting the consumer drive their business? Almost no one. McKinsey, Bain, Booz Allen all report that revenues in the US $2 trillion CPG industry are flat and key executives wonder where the growth is going to come from.
I like your points but are you, on the surface, suggesting Tide or Crest set “market pricing?” With the tail (Costco) already wagging the the dog (P&G) (P&G lost control for the first time in history under Al Lafely’s leadership) setting terms and pricing it will be a long time before that happens. Like Jean Luc Picard said in Star Trek, “In the 24th Century we no longer use money. We spend all of our time bettering ourselves.” Better yourself with my Multi-Dimensional Creativity. It remains the only available Consumer-Creation process that lets the consumer do 100% of the product creation process, from concept inception to end-user consumption.
Whew! That was a random stream of consciousness (or unconsciousness)late at night. Thanks for the workout.