Oh, the choices…
May 6, 2008
So, class is officially over!!! While I’ve definitely enjoyed the semester of reading some great books and learning about the Web 2.0 world, I can almost taste the salt, sand, and coconut (you know…like the beach)…that feeling that always comes with the last day of class and the first day of the summer.
I’m sharply brought back down to earth, though, as I realize that this isn’t college… it’s grad school, oh, and the real world. So, no spending weeks at a time on the shore, no spur of the moment mid-week road trips to Dewey or last minute plane rides to Florida. But, hey, a girl can still dream, right?
In the effort to not let my brain turn to a margarita-soaked mush (hey, work gets slow in the summer), I plan to continue writing this blog. Obviously, my focus will change a little bit, but I definitely plan to read some new books, stay current on the technology in my field, and most importantly, expand my knowledge of my division’s products.
Regardless of what I end up spending my free time doing, though, I will have to make conscious choices to decide what to spend my extra hours that were previously spent on doing school work on. On top of the previous list of what I would like to do, reality says that I have a wedding in 5 months to finish planning and a condo to move into in the next 2 weeks. Each one of these huge processes entails numerous smaller choices. We just went through the agonizing process of choosing paint colors. Any couple who’s ever done it can attest to the fact that the overwhelming choice of 50 different shades of beige is enough to drive the most loving relationship straight into the ground. Ok, so I’m being a little dramatic, but seriously…the fights that paint can provoke from an ordinarily sane couple… Chris Anderson calls this “The Paradise of Choice,” I would venture to call it “The Hell of Choice.” While choice can be fantastic when you’re looking for that specific book on the long tail of Amazon or searching for that lost classic love song your grandparents loved to use as your first dance on iTunes, 50 shades of beige is a little excessive.
Chris Anderson answers these questions and others in his book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. The Long Tail can be described as the niche strategy of certain business such as Amazon.com or Netflix. The distribution and inventory costs of these businesses allow them to realize significant profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers, instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items, as traditional retailers have always done (see Walmart or Best Buy). The group of persons that buy the hard-to-find or “non-hit” items is the customer demographic called the Long Tail.
My favorite chapter in Anderson’s book is chapter 9, “The Short Head: The World the Shelf Created for Better or Worse.” Anderson analyzes the way our society has adopted “hit culture” as a fiber of our being. We are drawn to hits, we always are striving to have the best – or the next “hit” as those who make music, movies, books, television shows, etc. strive to make the hits for us. The way our society primarily shops, in bricks and morter stores, is a clue into our gregarious nature…the fact that we actually like to do things together. So, there is something innate in our culture of mass consumerism, similar to the way the population clusters around large urban centers.
Anderson explains the irony of our nature to group together and how it relates to the long tail “These population spikes – the great cities of the world – exist because the cultural and economic advantages of being around lots of other people more than compensate for the costs of urban living. One of those advantages, ironically enough, is massive variety in every possible niche.” It truly all clicked here, especially with my life and why I always have been a “city girl.” Although sometimes it’s unbearablly crowded, expensive, loud, the traffic is terrible, and all I want to do is get away to the beach…all the advantages far outweigh the negatives. Where else can you go see an incredible art show, shop for funky jewelry, buy a bunch of cheap fresh flowers, eat Ethiopian and then have sake cocktails at the hip new sushi bar? You can spend your Saturday doing all those things only if you live in the long tail of urban space, of course.
The Long Tail really does seem to be the future of internet business as mass consumerism is replaced by niche markets. Or, as Tim O’Reilly said it best in his article What is Web 2.0, ”Small sites make up the bulk of the internet’s content; narrow niches make up the bulk of internet’s the possible applications. Therefore: Leverage customer-self service and algorithmic data management to reach out to the entire web, to the edges and not just the center, to the long tail and not just the head.”
O’Reilly contends that the success of eBay and Amazon and other giants is derived from their key principle of embracing the power of the web to harness collective intelligence. While it is certainly true that eBay has grown because of the collective actions of its members and Amazon has grown because of its innate principles of user engagement, I would argue that the success of these companies has equal to do with their commitment and catering to niche markets – to increasing the length and breadth of the tail, if you will.
In his accompanying blog, Anderson writes about current events in the digital world and how they relate to his Long Tail theory. This week, he asks if human-powered search should abandon the long tail.
David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR considers himself a fan of Anderson’s groundbreaking theories and followed his blog before it became a book. He notes that some of today’s most successful Internet businesses leverage the long tail to reach undeserved customers and satisfy demand for products not found in traditional physical stores. “Anderson shows that the business implications of the long tail are profound and illustrates that there’s much money to be made by creating and distributing at the long end of the tail. Yes, hits are still important. But as the above businesses have shown, there’s money to be made beyond Harry Potter, Green Day, and Pirates of the Caribbean” Scott says (p. 18). My favorite tie to Anderson, is what is Important to us as marketers. Scott argues, it’s the long tail – where instead of thinking from the short head or a “one size fits all” solution, we should be thinking in a much more targeted, strategic way, where we go after these niche micromarkets with precise messaging. This lesson can be applied to marketing communications across all industries, and not simply “early adopter” technology industries. We should all take a hint from Anderson and Scott and strive to market to niche segments of the long tail.
