The Zen of Venn
There’s no line at my local hospital. No line for a flu shot.
Just down the highway, there’s a line in front of Pearl’s restaurant every night before it opens.
Why a line for lobster but no line for a life-saving flu shot?
Isn’t making what everyone needs the best way to succeed?
It’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to satisfy a large need for a large group of people. The problem is that this leaves out the other half of the equation. Who’s looking?
The reason for almost all marketing successes is the overlap between the media (whether it’s a tv show, a commercial, YouTube or one high school kid talking to another) and the product. Selling beer during TV football, for example, is a successful matchup.
It’s not an accident that YouTube is filled with scatalogical humor. The people most likely to make YouTube videos like that sort of thing. Flu shots, on the other hand, are hard to market to the audience that needs them because that market (over 50, recently ill, small children) isn’t choosing to pay attention to the media that is talking about the shots.
Before you embrace your wonderful solution to the marketplace’s problem, first decide how many of consumers are choosing to listen to messages like yours. Are they listening in a medium you can afford?