Asia's Leading Highly Specialized Youth Agency

Notice how outstanding brands like Monster Energy, Vans, Red Bull, Jet Blue, Apple, Nike and Jones Soda are confident in standing for their values? That’s because they’re not focusing on the 100% we call “the market” but the 10% who are already sold on their product.

Saying “no” more often is the best advice a manager can take on board these days; we’re often trying to please everyone resulting in mediocrity as opposed to standing for something.

UNASHAMEDLY NOT FOR YOU

When Red Bull decides to market it invests its energies in the 10% – the Passionistas – those already sold on the brand. No point selling to the likes of you and me – let the other customers do that because it’s those 10% that influence the 90%. That 10% is the most influential constituency you have access to. That’s why they come up with ideas like Rooms of Red Bull – 90% of you’ll hate it…good.

The problem with the Pepsi Generation approach to engaging customers is that influencers don’t want to be lumped en masse into the mass. They want to feel significant in their own way and its brands that are able to give them this access to cultural context that are winning the game of advocacy.

Great brands, great services know where their Beachhead is – they know growing a brand is no different to managing a farm; you only have so much seed to scatter and a lot of acres. When Scion aims its sights at the youthful lifestyle that encompasses its brands it doesn’t care if most of the market doesn’t like, participate or have interest in the kind of situational contexts it creates. The approach works. Marketing theory is only just catching up.

WORLD OF WARCRAFT

When your customers talk of “the viability of Shadow Priests” you know this kind of dialogue isn’t going to appeal to the mass. But, WoW players aren’t the mass-market – they’re a legion of passionate customers who, still to this day, are the brand’s most effective marketing department.

CINDERELLA TIME

When a retail outlet in Tokyo starts pushing “Cinderella Time” to attract 20 something females it also knows that it’s going to isolate a wide range of potential customers. That’s why LCafe isn’t afraid to ban males during certain periods because it isn’t catering for the 90% – it’s focusing its product testing environment on an elite and highly influential niche whose advocacy will eventually warm the rest of the market.

NIKE 6.0 – Contextualizing Influence

Closer to home, Nike knows that to win the trust game it needs to win over the opinion leaders. Traditionally this would mean a high visibility series of media buys, a tier 1 name sponsorship with global reach. But these days, these strategies spoken are rarely spoken with confidence in the same sentence as “youth” by the most progressive of brands. Nike knows that capturing influence means going the extra yard. Nike’s project in San Clemente (Nike 6.0) is certainly an eye-opener; a motel renovated to house influencers and athletes for a whole Summer.

Nike calls Motel No Tell “the most unique stop along the journey to the world-class wave, Trestles.”

Being unique means creating context that captures the eye and needs of the influencers. This is so focused in fact, 90% of you haven’t heard of it yet which, according to the logic followed here, is the sign of a successful marketing strategy.

Passionistas are exactly that; youth with passion – youth able to influence large swathes of the market because they, like the brands, aren’t afraid to plant their flag in the earth and let followers rally round.

The difference between Passionista and the rest, isn’t just a factor of 1 or 2 times influence but potentially 1000s. As the legendary former CTO of Microsoft Nathan Myrhvold once said, the difference between an elite programmer and a good one isn’t that the elite programmer is 5 or 10x more productive, it’s that they are 10,000 times more productive. Similarly, the difference between the people in your market is pronounced – so why invest your energies democratically?

Imagine the difference in returns in $100 of marketing invested each in one of two young prospects – one completely sold, the other unsold on your brand. As Seth asks “How big is your farm?” Chances are it’s pretty big… The question isn’t “How am I going to reach the whole farm?” but “How do I concentrate my efforts?”

“Who Are Your Passionistas?” is written by Graham Brown, our Global Partner from London.