Marketing BS

Yesterday, as I was in Amsterdam I just bought a book.
In the train station, there were some english books -which you would not find in France, for that matter.
Anyway the cover was a good attention grabber: the natural successor to the “tipping point” in the field of business ideas.
I remember the tipping point theory left me quite unimpressed.

Anything can happen, don’t be surprized…
Behavior, messages and products can behave like outbreaks of infectious disease.
Start your own “positive ” epidemics.

Ok. Nice message. I understand it has the bestseller potential: easy to understand comparison, impossible to prove wrong (it is after all just an image), and quietly surfing on the viral marketing effect. But I think that’s all. Allow me to criticize, this is my blog, after all.

Chris Anderson, with “the long tail” develops a fantastic idea.
“How endless choice is creating unlimited demand”
Yes! Now that everything is sold online, the catalogue can be almost infinite. -No stocking fees, no racks where one inch is one inch.
But then what?
-More niches products will be produced. (Long tail producers -any specialized producer)
-More niches will be distributed (Long tail aggregators -e-bay, amazone)
-People will find their niches easily (Long tail filters -google)

So where the sales used to be concentrated on a few hits, the distribution will be spread more evenly, giving more importance to the long tail (if you rank the products by their sales, you will see a bump at the first products, then a steep slope, and a tail that decreases slowly).

Niches markets as a whole are becoming more and more valuable. And the old 80/20 wouldn’t work any more. (20 products totalize 80% of the revenue).

Have a nice day.

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