The New York Times ran an article this week titled “Sell Big or Die Fast,” about the fierce competition in the tech industry (disclaimer: The story discusses HP, who are a client. This is not a post about the TouchPad). The issue of smaller and smaller windows to prove success begs plenty of questions about what impact the digital age of information consumption plays. It’s at the core of what every marketer is grappling with: how does the internet change how people will buy my product?
The point that Jenna Wortham and Verne Kopytoff make in their story is that there is a “blockbuster-or-bust” mentality in the tech industry – whether you’re making tablets or trying to get people to ride the Google Wave. In order to succeed, you need to shoot out of the gates, and stay there. Anything less is failure. But, this story defaults far too quickly to Apple as the sole driver of this trend. There is something much more foundational happening that has less to do with gadgets and more to do with online behavior and the new consumer psyche.
Talk to any big technology company and you’re bound to hear phrases like “time-to-value” or “time-to-ROI.” I’ll introduce a new one: time-to-groupthink. In today’s online environment, it is supercharged.
Traditionally, a new product would be released and it would be up to you to figure out if it’s good, bad or just plain uninteresting. Sure, there were consumer reviews, but you always took them with a grain of salt. Today, however, a product is released and – if it’s high profile enough – within hours or even minutes, there are countless reviews, blogs, forum postings, tweets, etc. And, more often than not, they eventually all start to sound the same. Look at the top 5 articles across a few of the big tech blogs right now and see how many don’t include the same stories about Facebook, Google, Apple, random start-up of the moment, and Facebook again. The point being – while we always have the liberty to form our own opinion, a singular opinion is pushed on us faster than ever. Sure, the individual points and angles will differ, but generally speaking “product/company X is great”, “product/company Y is terrible” is decided upon almost instantaneously (at least it feels that way).
Is this good or bad for marketers? It doesn’t matter. What it means is that un-convincing consumers that your product sucks is really hard now and probably not going to happen. So, the stakes are higher for anyone in a marketing function.
But, that leads me to the next point: don’t rely on the Blockbuster effect.
While groupthink CAN be great for whatever you’re pitching (regardless of whether it’s a gadget, a piece of software, a box of cereal, an online service, etc.), you can’t rely on it. Too many brands put all their eggs in the launch basket. “Buzz” and “viral” are not just overly used words, they are overrated.
Not to continue using Google as an example, because clearly they have a lot of exceptional products, but case in point of a great “blockbuster weekend” that didn’t pan out was that of the Nexus One. When the product originally launched last year, it took Twitter by storm, and search traffic went through the roof. The conventional wisdom was that Google was ready to seriously challenge the iPhone, but the reality was that the launch ended up being completely dismal. A poor online-only sales strategy and lack of momentum following the initial spike in interest ultimately led the demise of the phone.
Put simply, you need a holistic strategy. You just can’t rely on hype, or a funny video with a cat, or some really catchy hashtag. It’s as much about the spike as it is about the momentum and the smarts to keep people interested. This basic rule applies to high-profile tech gadgets the same way it applies to consumer goods or your friend’s band website. So, it’s not just the Apple effect.
To carry the analogy through, the creative hook (what most people reading this blog are paid to do) is essentially the movie trailer. It’s our job to get people to stop and think “hm, that’s interesting.” And, if the trailer is good enough and they show up for opening weekend, ideally they’ll like the movie, tell their friends, buy the t-shirts, DVDs, you get the idea. You want to have the opening weekend of The Dark Knight, with the longevity of Star Wars. Basically, you want to be Harry Potter. But, you probably already want that, you nerd.