like a true teenage product of the 90’s i blame video games.

last week i caught the tail end of an npr bit about the nintendo wii which mentioned that the console was currently outselling both sony’s playstation and microsoft’s xbox combined. the explanation for this seems to be that because of its uniquely simple controller the wii is able to appeal to a much broader audience than the other more complicated consoles. the implications of that on the dynamics of adoption is what’s inspired this recent investigation on the subject.

about a year and a half ago i was busily dashing all over L.A. on a quest for sneakerheads. while scouring undefeated, kicks, sportieLA, kendo, greyone, and generally cruising melrose ave. like a freakin pimp (in the traditional sense of the word), i was actually on a black ops consumer insight mission. i was working with an agency that was preparing to pitch pony, and so we wanted to glean from these kicks connoisseurs info on the current state of shoedom. now, sneakerheads are folks with an average of like, oh…. say 80-180 pairs of sneakers (i don’t know if maybe you do, but i don’t think i own 180 pairs of anything), and i was on a quest to find these experts and offer them the opportunity to get to talk about their #1 favorite subject: shoez.

yet uniquely suited to aiding and abetting the process of marketing research with their undisputed ability to distill meaningful patterns out of that which to the layperson is just chaos, though they may be, these kinds of experts hanging out on the knuckles of the s-curve arm have a very obvious shortcoming. that very same expertise skews their particular perspective. these VERY early adopters, who get up while all the rest of us are still sleeping, typically represent a demographic whose expectations and predispositions are colored by the standards of what kathy sierra calls the “higher resolution experience,” an experience that by its very eliteness does not translate to the majority.

from sierra’s keynote speech at sxsw this year:

“For example, some of you may be going to the music festival [portion of sxsw]. There may be some of you who are going to get laid or for beer. Some of you may actually understand something about the kind of music, and you may have some deep appreciation for some aspects of the music. You’ll hear different notes; you’ll hear more notes; you’ll hear things the rest of us don’t hear. I’m not a music expert, but I have a little bit of experience with mixing boards, so it kinda sucks, because I’ll go to a concert, and I’ll be like, “Oh, if I could just get my hands on those faders”– so it’s a little bit of a higher-resolution experience for me.”

the funny thing is that only an expert would even TALK about the “higher resolution experience.” everyone else doesn’t have any clue that such a concept even exists or what the hell it means. so think about what that implies about the resonance of a campaign (or product) that stringently emphasizes the “higher resolution experience.” there is a whole population of people that aren’t simply “not going to get it,” but rather what they ARE going to get is the message that “this here is not for me.”

which brings us back to the subject of the wii.

before the wii, the video game industry had become mired in a sort of stagnation. newer consoles were coming out, but there was nothing actually new emerging at all (guitar-hero not withstanding for the moment). as each iteration seemed to only up the complexity (i.e “resolution”), of the same sort of staid video game experience, their appeal was becoming more and more narrowed.

from an article in TIME last may on the eve of the wii release:

“The one topic we’ve considered and debated at Nintendo for a very long time is, Why do people who don’t play video games not play them?” [Nintendo president Satoru] Iwata has been asking himself, and his employees, that question for the past five years. And what Iwata has noticed is something that most gamers have long ago forgotten: to nongamers, video games are really hard. Like hard as in homework.

not only were novice users turned off by the intimidating (read: not fun) learning curve, but this wasn’t so good even for the people who could see the hi-res stuff, as many hardcore gamers were getting bored by the substitution of complicatedness for innovativeness.

and then along comes the wii to breathe simple, accessible, fun, new life into the world of the video game console.

Nintendo has grasped [an] important notion that [has] eluded its competitors. Don’t listen to your customers. The hard-core gaming community is extremely vocal–they blog a lot–but if Nintendo kept listening to them, hard-core gamers would be the only audience it ever had. “[Wii] was unimaginable for them,” Iwata says. “And because it was unimaginable, they could not say that they wanted it. If you are simply listening to requests from the customer, you can satisfy their needs, but you can never surprise them.”

and you also can’t necessarily rely on them to show you how to appeal to new KINDS of customers. particularly, customers at a different point on the adoption curve. a year after that time article came out, advertising age reports that the wii’s popularity is “part of a growing phenomenon that’s overhauling the video-gaming industry…. Video gaming is beginning to transcend the solitary boy-in-the-basement stereotype with a new generation of gamers including women, older people and younger children who want to play in a more social atmosphere.” (like, who knew, right?)

by deliberately pursuing a strategy to appeal to the majority, nintendo not only managed to bypass the bottleneck at the left elbow of the gamer bell-curve, but, in fact, to actually expand the very scope of what is a “gamer” identity.

another great example of this is what lexus did in the process of developing the strategy for their certified pre-owned (CPO) car program. CPO cars offer an array of late model, low-mileage vehicles, passing or meeting stringent manufacturer’s inspections, and backed by manufacturers’ warranties.

initially the auto industry lumped CPO customers in with the used car buyers, until a whole lot of research revealed that CPO vehicles actually appeal to their own unique kind of luxury car consumer, a demo that exists in a distinct category between “new” and “used.”

from the book Using Market Research to Create Effective Advertising:
(das what the man said)

The auto industry approach to marketing CPO vehicles was completely discordant with the consumers’ real needs and shopping patterns…..

People interested in a CPO vehicle begin with a consideration of what brands and models are right for them. Status, image, and the more emotional elements of a car purchase are at play. Pricing and budgeting decisions, which drive the used-car buyers’ purchase process from the beginning, do not factor into the CPO car buyers’ process until much later.

These findings were critical in leading Lexus and Team-One to the conclusion that CPO buyers actually mirror new car buyers’ shopping patterns and behaviors, rather than used car ones.

much like nintendo’s strategy with the wii, by focusing on the particular needs of consumers that exist beyond the early adopters Lexus’s CPO strategy expanded not only their understanding of their own brand’s adoption, but the scope of the entire class of luxury car consumers.

an interesting thing to also mention here is that while the wii has gained huge popularity in the majority, it has likewise engaged the curiosity and the desire for something new and fresh from seasoned gamers. likewise the success of lexus’s CPO campaign is no doubt an added incentive to the new car purchasers’ in the sense of increased security about the car’s resale value.

rather than a strategy developed to appeal to early adopters with the expectation that it will eventually transcend to everyone else, these are two examples that represent an approach that appeals directly to groups situated further along the adoption curve. distinct and viable markets do indeed exist beyond the early adopter, and not every strategy can or needs to be designed to specifically suit that one first group. understanding the differing needs and tastes of consumers along the various stages of the adoption curve, and developing strategies to address these groups’ expectations in targeted, relevant ways is key.