The more complex and horizontal markets become, the more capturing a core consumer impulse seems a prerequisite to success.
I can’t get away from this thought.
And I can’t stop wondering whether our traditional way of viewing supply and demand as market determinants really matters any longer.
This hit home in a series of conversations with entrepreneurs after my Community as the marketplace post.
Really top notch entrepreneurs who drew passionate pictures of a world populated by communities that were using their marketplace as core to how they lived their lives.
Their decks made it easy to imagine that magical market moment when network effects took hold and it just all worked for them. Where the synergy between buyer and seller got better the more of them there were.
But here’s the rub.
There is no market we can’t justify by its size, and without much imagination visualize a strong demand.
Supply, especially in a consumer marketplace model, is in most every instance I can imagine over abundant.
Is there really a question of whether there are enough people who want home delivery of groceries?
Or have stuff in their basement that they don’t know how to sell easily? Or pine for companionship? Or want healthier food? Or vacations that are built around a common good?
Since Uber made the impossible crowd logistics possible, I can’t think of a single paradigm where aggregating supply is a barrier to entry.
On the flip side, the question of how big is the addressable market is simply less relevant as niches become less distinct, as markets themselves move horizontally cross demographic and groupings.
I am not saying the core economics of supply and demand have vanished certainly.
And I’m very much aware that on the vertical b2b side, there are markets for goods like non-gmo wheat, or (so strangely) watermelons grown on their own root stocks not pumpkin stalks. Where scarcity on the supply side is real and key.
But on the consumer front, it seems marginalized.
Two asides that add some color to this.
My buddy Jeff Carter’s post on Due Diligence for investments is a list of all the right stuff—market size, frictionless supply chain, understanding competition, the quality of the founders. The usual suspects.
But in the end of the checklist, it’s simply his gut that tips the scale to say yes to investments.
In Semil Shaw’s exceptional post this week, where he carefully constructs an investment ecosystem for his new fund yet at the end acknowledges that in actuality he is looking for undiscovered sources of kinetic energy in segments and solutions.
Something that translates to what just feels right. Has the right ‘kinetic’ energy.
There’s a meme bubbling up here.
Experienced people cross their T’s and plot out their checklists certainly but we must acknowledge two things:
-That the market has dramatically changed and embrace that with abandon.
-That at the end of it all, what changes the world the most defies logic and is driven by simple and core consumer reflexes.
In my corner of the marketing world, I’m bumping into this for the third time in as many weeks in my posts.
First, that the corralling of complexity on the data side mirrors a drive for emotional clarity and connection on the other. Post here.
Second, that communities as an emotional construct are really the structure of our markets today, moving horizontally, not vertically, connecting to pieces of peoples core beliefs and emotions. Post here.
And today’s post echoing both ideas.
That our nets are not at all flat but they are certainly horizontal and that all the possibilities of supply and demand already exist. That understanding market size is a checklist step but nary more than that.
And that today, where by dint of human habit and the real estate restrictions of our phones front screen, it is getting so much more challenging to connect with consumer intent.
Damn near impossible to crack a handhold in the collective want of a large enough population of people and have it stick.
And that on the other, when you do, it can be massively explosive as it just touches a nerve horizontally cross the consumer world.
Maybe this is simply a shifting of gravity in a marketing sense.
A reinterpretation and refocusing of what engagement means. And burying the idea of guiding ourselves by approximated scales of sentiment.
Post a dinner party at my place recently I watched the guests milling about, finishing their drinks and waiting for their Uber rides to show up before heading down 25 floors to the street and winter cold.
Impulse reaction pure and simple
Need something, tap and move on. The very pin prick top of a massive network of logistics that is simply a twitch of a finger to hail your ride.
With that you have the world. Without that not a thing.
When I look at projects I think of this as my market lens. My behavioral litmus test.
Can Instacart become that core shopping reflex? Can any one of hundred local delivery services replace the extension of Uber cross the front screen of our phones?
I think we are iterating towards a new definition of personal market dynamics and marketing itself which has lagged far behind.
We see it in out daily lives and the intersection with our mobile habits. Actions that are just reflexes connecting our thoughts to our phones as key to navigating and personalizing our world.
This also determines in many ways how long a play list of actions can really exist on the front screens of our phones and in our conscious thoughts. And limits what can influence us to go here rather than there, do this or something else.
The more choices, the more easy options, the more complex the solutions become to capitalize on a limited number of consumer reflexes.
Starting from that impulse back, not from measurements and approximation forward, is where I think marketing is going and what the market demands.
A blank slate of opportunity just waiting. Unplumbed for the most part.
Discovering and platforming these impulses is I think marketing’s next frontier.
