The Idiot Factor in Marketing?
Here's a thought from Pip Coburn a blogger on the Always On Network on marketing. He uses the example of satellite radio. We've all heard of terms such as "early adopters" and so forth. Here's the "idiot avoidance" demographic. Those are the people who don't want to appear to be an idiot by not adopting the technology everyone else is using.
By the way, I had XM radio in my rental car last week while we were touring northern Arizona following the Profibus event. It's as good as I'd heard. Wish I had it in my car, but I'm not going to buy a new car to get it.
Thinking about this column leads me to two thoughts. First, are we at the idiot-avoidance stage for most of the automation market? I think so. The cutting edges seem to be better sensor-control connectivity and better plant-enterprise information communication.
Second thing relates to my profession of trade journalism. We publish a magazine dependent upon advertising for income. The other point Coburn made was about getting radio without ads. Personally, I can take the ads, it's the standardized playlists and lack of diversity in programming I don't like in "regular" radio. But would you buy a subscription to a trade publication to avoid ads? Are you more like I was when I was a reader rather than writer, that is, I looked at the ads to see who was doing what? Would you pay for some custom content that was ad-free, maybe delivered over the Internet? What's a good model for trade journals?
Send your thoughts. I'm interested.
2:15:14 PM 
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