The end of mainstream?
Part of the purpose of this blog is to express some thoughts. Sometimes these take the form of questions as opposed to predictions.
A thought occurred to me the other day that when I was younger, you were cool if you wore Nike or Reebok clothes. There may have been a couple of other brands too like Starter, Mossimo and Stussy, but that was about it.
These days though, it seems that there are many more ‘cool brands’, you simply wear the brand which is closest to your self image.
If you’re into boxing you wear everlast, rugby – Adidas, surfing – Rip Curl/Billabong, skating – Vans, edgy – Abercrombie and Fitch – You get the picture.
None of these are wrong. 20 years ago you could tell the warehouse/Wal-Mart T-shirt and you would be mocked for wearing it. But these days it seems that you won’t get mocked for wearing Everlast if you’re a boxer to school. Sure none of your friends wear Everlast, but that doesn’t matter, they respect it as a brand.
This is clearly bad for business for the bigger companies, mainstream is no longer cool. It’s not uncool, it’s just not as cool as it used to be. Nike sensing this change moved their brand from meaning ‘cool’ to ‘successful’. Cool started to become too hard to define, but success was easy. You either won or you didn’t. They moved from supporting cool players like Dennis Rodman to Michael Jordan. This was an amazing pivot, but that’s another topic.
The same shift happened to music. Once upon a time the top 40 songs were what mattered. Now that chart has expanded to be the top 200, and there are sub charts for R & B, Latin, Dance and Christian amongst others.
And also to books. In 2000 there were only 3 categories, fiction, non-fiction and self-help. This from ehow.com about the New York Times best seller list:
Throughout the 21st century, the New York Times Bestseller List has been greatly expanded to include hundreds of books in over a dozen categories… In 2007, Paperback Fiction was divided yet again into separate lists for Trade volumes versus Mass Market paperbacks. By early 2009, the Times had added another category for graphic novels.
I count 20 categories on their website, at 20 books per list means that 300 books are listed on the New York times best seller list. An increase of almost 7 times over the last 10 years.
So mainstream has become fractured. So what? What does this mean?
To be honest, I have no idea. What I’ve said above are observations. Discussing the implications of these is a lot harder. But I’ll give it a crack anyway.
1. There are a lot of opportunities for targeting specific niches, and targeting these niches will become easier.
Targeting specific niches has become easier. How do you find those who fit my niche – easy, look at the clothes they wear, the music they listen to, and where they spend their time. It seems to me that people also self select themselves into groups online. For example they join Facebook groups, LinkedIn Groups, use the same apps, ect. If you have a product to target a specific niche, gaining access to these people should be easy. Find the gate keepers, and you’re in.
2. Mainstream is dead.
Given that people are inclined to identify themselves with one of the many thousands of brands out there, it’s unlikely that one or two companies will be the definition of cool. Why? It just costs too much to advertise to the point where everyone thinks you’re cool. Furthermore once you’ve run those ads cool has moved on.
3. The rise of the gatekeeper.
Because mainstream has splintered into many fragments, each niche needs someone to tell others what cool is. This means that there will be more and more people who take on this gatekeeper role. In some instances the gatekeeper will be a corporation, in other cases it will be a person. One example which comes to mind is Red Bull. Red Bull has come to represent energy, speed and risk taking. To my knowledge they haven’t done this via ads, but by sponsoring activities which they think will suit their brand. This has worked very well for them.
Robert Scoble is another example. His is considered a thought leader by many. As we have less and less time available, we rely on these ‘gatekeepers’ to help us make quick decisions. Robert Scoble thinks color sucks, therefore I won’t try it because he is mostly right.
Each niche and segment will look to one or several thought leaders who tell them what to think. Do you think Fox news was an accident? Someone very smart decided basing a television channel around right wing conservative ideas was a good idea, and it turned out to be. This segment looks to O’Reilly and Beck to be their gatekeepers.
I admit there are some counter examples of this behavior such as Apple. Apple is cool. But Apple never set out to capture the mainstream, their advertising is aimed squarely at young hip kids, not at old folks, and yet old folks buy iPads. Apple is cool because it is the anti-Microsoft.
Chris