Who Cares?
You can’t make people
listen. But you can figure out who’s likely to be listening when
you talk, and then invent the right combination of Ps to overwhelm them with the rightness of your
offer.
Even if someone is
listening, your offering of “a little bit cheaper,” “a little bit
better,” or “a little bit easier” is just a waste of time. The
influential sneezers, the people with a problem to solve—they’re
open to hearing your story only if it’s truly remarkable;
otherwise, you’re invisible.
The “Who’s
listening?” question drives not just the success of individual
products, but also the status of entire markets. Consider classical
music for a second.
The classical music
industry is now officially moribund. The big labels are hurting.
Orchestras are seeing recording money dry up. There are virtually
no commercially important new works being written or
recorded.
Why?
Because no one is
listening.
The influential
sneezers already have all the music they’re ever going to buy.
Everything old that was worth recording has been recorded—and quite well, thank you. So the
sneezers have stopped looking.
Because the sneezers
have stopped looking, all of those folks farther down the curve,
who seek their advice or listen to the radio stations, are busy
buying cut-rate $8 versions of the classics. There’s no money there
for the record companies and the orchestras. Because listeners have
stopped looking, composers are turning to film scores or lawn care
as a way to make a living. There’s an attention blockade, and no
player in the music business has enough money to change the
dynamic. Music marketers can’t buy enough ads or reach enough
sneezers to spread the word about interesting new music. So the
entire market stops.
The insight here is
not that the music industry ought to
figure out a better way to solve this problem. They don’t need a
better form of advertising. The insight might be that there
isn’t a better way. The Naxos music
label (they’re the guys who sell the $8 CDs) is doing great. Why?
Because they organized the product-marketing in all its
forms—around the idea that sneezers wanted good, cheap versions of
the music they already knew. Naxos was right. The market stopped
listening. Naxos won.
Sony’s classical
label can’t compete because they’re not organized at the product
level or the promotion level to win at that game. So they
wither.
When faced with a
market in which no one is listening, the smartest plan is usually
to leave. Plan B is to have the insight and guts to go after a
series of Purple Cows, to launch a product/service/promotional
offering that somehow gets (the right) people to
listen.