Experience+Expertise=An Interesting Mix

The chapter from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink entitled, “Kenna’s Dilemma: The Right-and Wrong-Way to Ask People What They Want” definitely contained some extremely useful marketing material, especially in the interest of customer insights. Malcolm Gladwell once again provided incredible insights into how people and all of the mysteries surrounding how we as consumers make our purchase decisions. And while I found all of his lessons to be highly intriguing, I especially noticed some important marketing implications in the lessons entitled “The Blind Leading the Blind” and “The Gift of Expertise”

In the lesson, “The Blind Leading the Blind,” Malcolm Gladwell discusses why even though consumers seemed to prefer Pepsi’s taste to that of Coke’s after just a couple of sips, Coke has still remained the market leader after all of these years. Initially, these results may shock people, but the fact is that our purchase decisions are determined by more than just one sip. The fact is, our purchase decisions center around the entire experience, not just the actual product itself. We want a product that we associate as being something bigger, and consumers just seem to love the packaging of Coke. For these consumers, it’s about what that cola represents, and how it makes you feel to consumer it. This exact lesson was also demonstrated in a book I read entitled “Chasing Cool.” This experiment also involved a taste test, but among vodkas with very different pricing strategies. The experiment had consumers taste Grey Goose’s vodka and Smirnoff’s vodka, and then consumers were asked which one they preferred. Interestingly enough, consumers preferred Smirnoff’s taste equally as often as they preferred Grey Goose’s. However, Grey Goose vodka is a lot more expensive than Smirnoff and was also the market leader in terms of sales. This experiment initially left marketers baffled. Vodka can only be distilled in one way, making all vodkas virtually equal, and yet the most expensive vodka was eating up most of the market share. It didn’t make any sense, until you took in the experience as a whole. Grey Goose vodka is made in France and shipped in wooden crates. Its bottle features frosted glass, suggesting elegance and luxury. So while although they may taste very similarly, Grey Goose’s creator has worked to create a different sort of experience for vodka drinkers, one of an exquisite and exclusive experience. This validates the idea that it’s not enough just to have a good product. You have to create the whole experience. It’s about going the full 9-yards and not coming up even an inch short. Every marketer would be smart to keep this in mind while designing marketing programs and working to promote products and services. Without the experience, you end up coming up generic.

The second lesson that I found to be very insightful was “The Gift of Expertise.” This lesson talked about how we have to be careful not just to rely on how consumers react to a new product or service. The reason is that consumer often cannot articulate why they feel a certain way. As such, their “feelings” can be of limited usefulness to them if we are not careful. However, experts can easily identify their reactions to a new offering and can easily articulate why they feel the way that they do. This is why Kenna’s music was such a hit with industry experts while consumers found it unappealing in the least. Occasionally then, it becomes necessary that experts embrace their expertise and ignore the research. For instance, the movie Titianic was expected to be one of the biggest flops of all time. In fact, it was estimated that by the time the cast and crew were paid that the film would actually take on a loss. However, James Cameron knew that his film was brilliant. His expertise was enough to encourage him to take a chance, and as a result, he released one of the top grossing films of all time. This is why we have to be careful to not fully rely on marketing research results in deciding what will be big. Sometimes in taking a chance and trusting our expertise we really manage to strike it bit. However, by the same token this sort of groomed insightfulness may also lead experts to become too enthusiastic about offerings and forget to think like a consumer. For example, when Apple released the first ever PDA, it flopped big time. Industry experts were shocked because to them this was an incredible technological offering. However, what they were forgetting is that consumers are often hasty to take on a new offering, especially when that new offering is radically different and will require them to acquire new skills. As such, there became a discrepancy between the values experts placed on such an offering and the perceived value consumers associated with that same offering. This necessitates a certain degree of marketing research to gain insights. However, we have to be careful to really evaluate that research and to work harder to help consumers articulate their reactions in a more meaningful way.

While Malcolm Gladwell may not have directly intended for this chapter to relate so eloquently to marketing, he definitely did manage to incorporate a lot of deep insights into marketing’s most important aspect: people. Without a thorough knowledge of consumers and how they really think, feel and act, we cannot possibly expect to be able to successfully market anything from chewing gum to brand new high-tech electronics. It’s important to have insights enough to understand that often as consumers we cannot articulate why we feel the way that we do and that sometimes rapid change scares us. This necessitates us sometimes taking “baby steps” with consumers, especially when introducing rapidly different products and services. This also creates the necessity for further research into way consumers behave in the manner that they do and to always keep in mind that for consumers it is all about the EXPERIENCE. However, it is additionally important to remember that as consumers we are the driving forces for new products, ideas and industries. As such, it becomes increasingly important to sometimes be willing to take a chance, just like CBS did with The Mary Tyler Moore Show because it might just be that we have hit at a time when, as Bob Dylan would say, “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” and we don’t want to miss our shot.