Interesting piece of research that predicts the future of mass
marketing and mass brands in the age of the long tail and successful
niche brands.
From Forrester "THE TAIL WILL NOT WAG THE DOG
The End Of Mass Marketing"
by
Jaap Favier
…niche brands will grab a growing part of
the consumer goods, media, retail, finance, and telecom markets. What
will incumbents do for damage control?
Focus on communities, not brands.
Mass brands like Kellogg’s are a mile wide in targeting and an inch
deep in relationship, evidenced by the fact that they attract as many
clients as nonclients to their site. Such brands are particularly vulnerable to niche brands that market,
for example, an organic cereal via interest Web site
organic consumers.org. Kellogg’s can only defend itself by establishing
many deep relationships with specific cohorts, for instance by
developing community sites around personal and social values jointly
with other shallow brands like McDonald’s or Disney.
Change their brand portfolio, geographic footprint, and media mix.
As firms focus on communities, they will realize that some of their
mass-market brands have no link with any specific group. They’ll have
four choices for such brands:
1) reposition them with strong, explicit
values;
2) turn them into price fighters, and abandon all brand
advertising;
3) move to developing markets like China where Social
Computing is less prominent; or
4) bury them .
Each of these brand strategies will lead to a new media strategy, away from mass media.
Jon
