Category: relationship hubs

Saw a post over at Matt Homann’s site (hey Matt, turn yer comments on, would ya?) that led me to a post by Andrea Learned entitled “‘Editing’ in the Retail Environment.” The pull quotes from Learned’s post:

“Not every laptop known-to-man needs to be available at your consumer electronics store. Rather, do some research and reflect that you know your customers: deliver the top 10 sellers or the ones about which your customers requested most information in the past few years. … If your camera store, clothing store, appliance store or computer store has done its work, you will have discovered the “top 10″ of your women customers’ favorites and those will be the ones you provide and the products for which you train your customer service staff to know EVERYTHING about.”

and

“In a retailer’s situation, narrowing product selection can just reflect an excellent understanding of the store’s core customers.”

Some thoughts on this, cross-posted in the comments over at Learned’s site:

Interesting. But a question…isn’t this fundamentally disconnected from the direction that things are going? Chris Anderson argues that we now have the option for infinite selection.

(I’ve argued this as well.)

Retailers limit selection because of limited shelf space. Now, well…there’s infinite shelf space.

You state above:

“…women want to know and trust your store to edit that first layer or two of extraneous product for them”

and

“…in a retailer’s situation, narrowing product selection can just reflect an excellent understanding of the store’s core customers”

The first statement is a broad generalization, the second is a rationalization.

To respond to the first statement, what if, instead of having to “read the detailed instructions,” a customer (woman or not) had the ability to know which items solved the problems of others with similar problems to themselves? It might not be one of the “Top 10.”

And to the second, what if, instead of focusing on homogeneity, the retailer was able to focus on the customer’s unique needs?

Opinion: The “sell just the hits” approach is fundamentally flawed, and changing. Selling just the hits, frankly, leads to the case where we have WalMart everywhere, selling the same stuff. Every intersection has the same strip mall. And every woman has one of the same 10 laptops, or one of the same digital cameras.

Now, that last sentence sounds OK at first blush. What’s wrong with “editing” things down to make search and selection easier?

Here’s what’s wrong. It’s not just about the commodities. Don’t you feel that every individual (woman or man) has *some* aspect of “themselves” that they need/want to express uniquely? And connect with others who share that idiosyncrasy? Sure, for some, a laptop is a laptop is a laptop. But what about things that someone might be passionate about, and *not* want to buy off-the-rack? There are going to be some dimensions (be they music, media, fashion, or interests, etc.) that everyperson – woman or man – has a unique perspective on. Without choice, and when being forced to select from just “the hits,” those unique aspects of a person’s personality atrophy over time, and eventually the homogeneity seeps in and bleeds over into, well…everything.

Oh yeah, one other thing:

“Barnes & Noble only stocks 130,000 books, yet more than half of Amazon’s revenues from books comes from titles outside of the top 130,000 books.” (source: Rick Klau)

Companies that focus on the hits-only model will be leaving money on the table. And a lot of it.

Background:

Chris Anderson: “Everyone’s taste departs from the mainstream somewhere, and the more we explore alternatives, the more we’re drawn to them. Unfortunately, in recent decades such alternatives have been pushed to the fringes by pumped-up marketing vehicles built to order by industries that desperately need them.”

myself: “It’s about relationships. Being a customer in the long tail is not as much about acquiring the things that are unique to you. It’s about connections.”

Susan Mernit: “…web-like organizations don’t fit corporate structure, so we’ll see those networks grow outside and around the new tools as they’re fitted into the mainstream–and see additional tools (maybe FOAF?) radiate out from their hub.”

Steve Gillmor: “Attention is about what we do with our time, and attention will win. Friends and family are about who we do it with, and we will all win.”

Ross Mayfield: “I almost see a new system of checks and balances between personalization (corporate interest, information-centric), customization (personal interest, information-centric) and socialization (social interest, relationship-centric) as memes lobby for attention.”

Edward Vielmetti: “…if you go far enough away from the centers of media and economic production, it’s hard to find lots of choices in the stores and in the movie theaters.”

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“Imagine a crystal clear bitterly cold night in Alaska, inside a cabin with candles on the windowsill and these two guys playing for you and a bunch of friends next to the woodstove. Oh my god….”

Talkeetna, Alaska has a population of 772 souls, and is a three hour drive from Anchorage (assuming the road is open and the moose aren’t rutting). In the winter, it can get down to 30 degrees below zero there. And that’s without the windchill.

There’s a tiny little cabin in Talkeetna. At 12’x12′, it’s probably smaller than your bedroom. (It’s certainly smaller than your garage.) In the winter, it’s heated with a single wood stove.

I would argue it is the heart of the Long Tail.

(now playing, Amy Rigby)

How can any place, let alone an unfinished cabin in the middle of the Alaskan tundra, be the “heart” of the Long Tail? Well, this particular cabin is ground zero for a little radio station called Whole Wheat Radio, a self-described “labor of love” according to its creators Jim and Esther. But, although it’s served up 2.9 million songs to over 180,000 web-based listeners, it’s not a typical “radio station” playing to a passive audience. From the WWR website:

“By definition. an automated radio broadcast is pretty boring. That’s where the listeners come in. The absolute best way to listen to Whole Wheat Radio is to keep the web site handy in your browser. We call this the WWR Listener Console. Click here to see how it looks.

Using the WWR Listener Console, listeners can…

* Get detailed information about the music being played (including photos and website links)
* Make music requests
* Communicate with each other, using a live chat window
* Type a message to be read on the air (it’s read by a synthesized voice)
* See who else is listening, and where they are from
* View an automated display of photos and pictures (and you even request a different set of images).”

It’s this community aspect, this relationship infrastructure, that makes WWR unique. There are thousands upon thousands of internet, satellite, and terrestrial radio stations. What is it about the little cabin that has not only drawn 180,000 listeners to the website, but has also convinced all these people (scroll down for the full effect) to travel to the middle of friggin’ nowhere to play guitars, sing songs and eat potato salad?

(now playing: Peter Mayer)

Whole Wheat Radio, both online and in the wilderness, is a relationship hub. It’s a nucleation site where socialization can occur, for people who have similar “music taste” vectors. Similarly, this place, and this place, and all these places are also relationship hubs in the Long Tail.

Relationship hubs are passion amplifiers. Prior to the having the ability to connect with others who also have an interest in a particular obscure topic (read “niche in the Long Tail”), we all needed to indulge our various idiosyncrasies solo. As a result, sometimes those aspects of our personalities atrophied and withered away for lack of feedback and support. No longer is this the case. The Long Tail is an opportunity for individuals to embrace our true interests and connect with others who share them.

(now playing: Big Head Todd and the Monsters)

Who’s on right now? “16 Listeners In: Seward, Alaska – Victoria, British Columbia Canada – San Rafael, California – Half Moon Bay, California – Escondido, California – Indianapolis, Indiana – Derby, Kansas – Wichita, Kansas – Burtonsville, Maryland – Tucumcari, New Mexico – Old York, New York US – Fayetteville, North Carolina – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma…“

Update:

Tim Bray and Julie Leung: “the Long Tail is actually a tangled mess of microcommunities and subcultures and tribes and hobbies and fanatics”

I’ve always believed the Long Tail is real (even before the concept had a trendy name and a piece in Wired). Maybe it’s some sort of subconscious iconoclasm on my part; perhaps it is the desire to not fit into any well-defined bucket.

I suppose marketers would call this a desire for “differentiation” in both my personal and professional personas.

Most of discussion so far around the long tail is tied to consumerism. That is, long tail economics seem to make sense when one is a consumer (in the strictest sense of the word) of “stuff.” Most of Chris Anderson’s additional writing on the subject centers around this idea as well. The long tail gets invoked when figuring out what is marketable, what is saleable, what is interesting, and to whom.

After further reflection, and at its core, I think the long tail discussion is about personalization, and the human need/desire/want/jones for experiences that uniquely resonate, emotionally, within an individual.

“But most of us want more than just hits. Everyone’s taste departs from the mainstream somewhere, and the more we explore alternatives, the more we’re drawn to them. Unfortunately, in recent decades such alternatives have been pushed to the fringes by pumped-up marketing vehicles built to order by industries that desperately need them.” – from the Wired article

This inherent tension between the “hits” and the long tail is not going to cause a mass jump to “only” long tail scenarios, however. There are still plenty (30%? 40%?) of things that will be hits. And 30% of “everything” is still “a lot.”

What we will see, I think, is a bifurcation. A split. A schism. This will occur not only in the way things are “marketed” to customers, but, moreso, in people themselves. One group, a fragmented set of loosely connected folk (“small pieces, loosely joined,” some might say) will be the “long-tailers,” actively seeking out and creating experiences for themselves that are unique and personalized to them. These folk, in aggregate, will be the majority. (But at the same time, they won’t. Each small community of like-minded folks will be teeny-tiny in comparison to the “mainstream.”) The other group will be those firmly rooted in the mainstream.

Of the long-tailers, there will be a particular set that completely eschews the mainstream. These are the ones who will rail against the monoculture that still, when compared to any particular long tail subgroup, is many times larger. And will continue to be.

Why is this? Why is it easier to be a consumer of the mainstream, rather than creating one’s own experience in the long tail? I think there are a few reasons.

Reason #1: It’s easier to be a customer of the monoculture. Search costs? Zero. Everything is marketed on the billboards, right to your front door, right to the TV, and blown into the most recent issue of People. Information about the mainstream is everywhere. If these are the products and companies you know about, they are the ones that are most familiar.

Reason #2: It may be cheaper, in monetary terms, to be a customer of the monoculture. For items that have signifcant fixed costs of production, spreading those fixed costs out over more units makes things cheaper to produce.

Reason #3: Depending on where one is a customer, the suppliers themselves may actively discourage long tail activity. Anderson’s article states that Wal-Mart, in particular, needs to sell at least 100,000 units of an item to make it worthwhile for them to carry it. It’s hard to be a customer in the long tail if you are never exposed to it.

Being a customer in the long tail takes work.

Now, traditional marketing tries to provide what matters to a buyers who are stuck in the monoculture that exists in a “hits-driven” marketplace. In the absence of local knowledge (e.g. a recommendation from a trusted source), one needs to draw one’s own conclusions. If the only information you have to go on is what is beaten into your head via thirty second spots, those are the products and relationships that you are going to engage with.

This is why technologies such as social networking are lowering the barriers of entry to the long tail. If you have visibility into the movies, the music, the people that other members of your community find worthwhile, you have not only awareness of things that were previously obscured in the long tail, but also an implicit recommendation. Your community has supplanted the traditional marketing machine.

Now, here’s the money shot. Organizations have been hung up on producing products that are “the hits.” We are now on the verge of getting hung up on a similar thing, but in the long tail…because everything that has been discussed about the long tail so far is about stuff. And the long tail really isn’t about stuff. It’s about relationships.

Being a customer in the long tail is not as much about acquiring the things that are unique to you. It’s about connections. It’s about doing business in the unique way you want to, on a day-to-day basis, with organizations who get it. (And, in this case, “get it” means that they offer you exactly what you want, in the way you want it, when and where it’s convenient to you.)

It’s also about building relationships within a community of like-minded folk. When you find out about the amazing Liz Phair B-side, you immediately want to share it with your friends. It’s not about you anymore. It’s about building a community. A community of individuals whose connections will span vocation and time and distance.

Listen up, vendors. If what you’re trying to do is serve only the mainstream, and everybody in it in exactly the same way, you’re about to miss the boat. Trying to build the exact same, cookie-cutter relationship with every one of your customers may work for your organization. But it’s only going to work if you have “the hit.” And people get bored with the hits after a while, and look for something that is different. So, it’s your choice. If you enjoy life on the treadmill, keep doing what you’re doing. Otherwise, you need to have the courage to change your game, and start building some bridges. And fast.

Update:

Ross Mayfield has complementary thoughts on this here and here.