Monday, January 29, 2007
Eighty-nine Dollars
I wrote a diatribe today. In fact, I started it with "Welcome to my diatribe." I'm very tempted to print the whole thing here on the blog, but I'm afraid most of my readers (that means You!) will get upset at the length of it. I know that when I'm blog coasting, I don't always have time to read a long post, so I dare not do that to you. Suffice it to say, my diatribe is about a couple of field trips that the school has planned for two of our children. The total cost of both field trips is $89, a sum that we can't really afford at the moment, and on principle, don't want to afford. Let's just say that it's pretty shameful for a public school to divide children into separate classes based on income and that we didn't have any say in whether this field trip was necessary to our children's cultural development. If you want to read the whole essay, send me an email at sootch@gmail.com and I'll send you a copy. 'nuf said. Now, I'm gonna spend a little time working on my current story.
Labels: blog, children, class, culture, diatribe, essay, field trip, income, school, writing
Thursday, October 12, 2006
The Long Tail of Consumers
I've finished reading Chris Anderson's book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. The book explains how the shift in retail sales from physical stores to the internet has caused consumption to move away from cultural hits to cultural niches. The hits cause a spike on one end of the retail sales chart. The niche sales cause a long tail along the rest of the sales chart, hence the title. With the internet driving niche sales, it turns out that the combined sales along the tail are greater than sales occurring on the hill of hits. Chris posits that retailers better get their act together and start paying more attention to the customers purchasing on the long tail.
Whenever I read a book that puts forth a new theory, I inevitably end up with questions. So it goes with this book. Marketers have broken customers up into groups based on age. You've heard of these groups, I'm sure. There's the Greatest Generation (those who lived through the Depression & World War II), the Baby Boomers (a.k.a. Boomers), the Gen Xers (a.k.a. Slackers), and the Millenials (a.k.a. Gen Y). The coveted demographic for marketers is the group comprised of 18-34 year-old males. (See pages 166 & 194 of The Long Tail) Even though this group is at forefront of using digital technology (the internet et. al.), and presumably driving the demand for niche culture, could this same group also be considered the "cultural hit" of demographics? Could it be that all the rest of us are considered the long tail and thus are niche consumers? The long tail isn't just about the products; it's also about the customers. Are you paying attention, marketers?
Whenever I read a book that puts forth a new theory, I inevitably end up with questions. So it goes with this book. Marketers have broken customers up into groups based on age. You've heard of these groups, I'm sure. There's the Greatest Generation (those who lived through the Depression & World War II), the Baby Boomers (a.k.a. Boomers), the Gen Xers (a.k.a. Slackers), and the Millenials (a.k.a. Gen Y). The coveted demographic for marketers is the group comprised of 18-34 year-old males. (See pages 166 & 194 of The Long Tail) Even though this group is at forefront of using digital technology (the internet et. al.), and presumably driving the demand for niche culture, could this same group also be considered the "cultural hit" of demographics? Could it be that all the rest of us are considered the long tail and thus are niche consumers? The long tail isn't just about the products; it's also about the customers. Are you paying attention, marketers?
Labels: chris anderson, culture, demographics, the long tail, trends
Sunday, October 01, 2006
The Ultimate Filter
I'm half-way through reading Chris Anderson's The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. I don't know about you, but I want to discuss books as I read them. I find that I'm asking questions of the authors as I go and then discovering the answers a few pages after I anticipated them - a little literary ESP, if you will.
Chapter 7 is called "The New Tastemakers" and discusses how anyone, with the help of the internet, can propel a long tail product to popularity, not just our typical cultural critics, A&R folks, and giant media corporations.
There's a section in this chapter called "Filters Rule." With so many more songs, books, movies, products & etc. to choose from via the internet, there has to be someone or something out there willing to help us sort through all of it and find what we want. According to Anderson, "The job of filters is to screen out that noise." (pg. 115) Google is one such filter. Amazon's book rankings are another such filter.
The Ultimate Filter, however, is a human being. Not just me. Not just you. But every single one of us is a filter. Of course, not all of us share the opinions and tastes we acquire through our filtering activities. Some keep them quietly to themselves. Some, the tastemakers and cultural mavens, boldly broadcast their tastes and opinions.
I'd never thought of myself as a tastemaker, still don't really. My interests are too scattershot to have much impact. In fact, if you look at my profile, you'll see some pretty disparate topics. How could they possibly hang together in a coherent fashion? Yet, what gives them an affinity is that they filter through me, a single individual, just like your disparate interests filter through you, and your neighbor's interests filter through him and on and on and on. The cohesiveness and eventual creativity (the splicing) comes from the uniqueness of each of us Ultimate Filters.
Chapter 7 is called "The New Tastemakers" and discusses how anyone, with the help of the internet, can propel a long tail product to popularity, not just our typical cultural critics, A&R folks, and giant media corporations.
There's a section in this chapter called "Filters Rule." With so many more songs, books, movies, products & etc. to choose from via the internet, there has to be someone or something out there willing to help us sort through all of it and find what we want. According to Anderson, "The job of filters is to screen out that noise." (pg. 115) Google is one such filter. Amazon's book rankings are another such filter.
The Ultimate Filter, however, is a human being. Not just me. Not just you. But every single one of us is a filter. Of course, not all of us share the opinions and tastes we acquire through our filtering activities. Some keep them quietly to themselves. Some, the tastemakers and cultural mavens, boldly broadcast their tastes and opinions.
I'd never thought of myself as a tastemaker, still don't really. My interests are too scattershot to have much impact. In fact, if you look at my profile, you'll see some pretty disparate topics. How could they possibly hang together in a coherent fashion? Yet, what gives them an affinity is that they filter through me, a single individual, just like your disparate interests filter through you, and your neighbor's interests filter through him and on and on and on. The cohesiveness and eventual creativity (the splicing) comes from the uniqueness of each of us Ultimate Filters.
Labels: chris anderson, culture, esp, filter, taste, the long tail
