Words of Danny O'Bigbelly My idea of a good time

A few careers ago, an author named Geoffrey Moore wrote a book named “Crossing the Chasm”. The topic is market penetration of products of a new or somewhat revolutionary nature. At first, it seems, there are people–the so-called “early adopters”–who will try and sometimes even buy a product just because it is new and novel. They like things that are new and novel, even if that’s all they are, because they are risk-takers and want to be ahead of the curve. Unfortunately, there aren’t all that many of them, and they don’t have a lot of money, and they don’t like to spend it. Selling to them is a terrible business model.

A mature and well-positioned product, on the other hand, can be effectively marketed to the masses. It is not frightening or risky. It might seem flashy or cutting edge, but only in a superficial way. It’s a safe bet, because its utility is easy to describe and understand.

A great example of this is the iPod. The iPod was not the first portable digital music player–not by years. At no clear point in time has it the best in terms of sound quality, nor has it been the least expensive, when compared to its ever-dwindling cohort. What it has always been, however, is the safe bet. Using earlier MP3 players felt almost like a shady, illicit activity. Music was typically acquired and downloaded into them via processes that might even have been illegal, at least according to the RIAA. But Apple made it all legit, by providing all of the software, in a branded package, to rip CDs and/or buy music directly over the web for the sole purpose of loading onto an iPod. There were no hand-written instructions cribbed from back-alley chat rooms to follow, no additional software that needed to be acquired from strange ‘open source’ bazaars. Just push your favorite CD into the slot of your mac, and before you know it, the music is magically installed in your iPod.

The trick of high-tech marketing, or at least the trick espoused in “Crossing the Chasm” is to leverage the funding and feedback available from the risk-taking early adopters to get your little start-up (or your product, or what have you) across the chasm that separates the early-adopters from the plump, profit-laden mass market that lags behind, eschewing anything risky or unfamiliar.

At least, that’s what I think it’s about. I vaguely remember a very expensive consultant lecturing about it to the staff of the small startup at which I worked in the early 1990’s. We didn’t make it across the chasm. I believe that one of the reasons that we didn’t was because of the large amount of money that we spent on very expensive executive training taught by very expensive consultants who all were old, dear friends of our CEO, who knew nothing about our product but was brought in by the board to lead us because of her incredible marketing savvy, even though it turned out that what she was best at marketing was herself.

But I’ve never had a head for business.