Notes

[MUSIC].
So welcome again, everyone.
Now we're getting into module two.
Module two, I think, is going to be really
fascinating.
It's all about how to try and find those
lead users,
those special people, who are really
going to engage with our brand.
It's going to be about how they connect
with each other in various
networks, how influence spreads, and all
those good and kind of interesting things.
But just to establish our platform, I want
to share with you one
of the most, I think, fundamental things
that we think about in a
in a marketing course or in a marketing
sense.
This is the notion of the product life
cycle.
So the product life cycle says that every
product goes through at least.
Four stages.
First of all, the product is introduced.
Then, it goes into a growth phase.
Then, it matures.
And then, eventually, the product
declines.
And, of course, at the very beginning,
there has to be
some research and development done to
bring the product to life.
So as you can see on the screen, the sales
kind of take off.
Peak.
And then they peter out at the end.
Now of course, underlying that, that's the
result for the
product, are the people themselves who are
driving the process.
And what we want to do is to try and
figure out how
to get that process going as quickly as
possible and to identify the
people on the left of the curve, who are
really the innovative ones
who are going to spread word of mouth and
bring other people into the fold.
So, again this is an old idea from Everett
Rogers
who was a professor who came up with this
theory of diffusion of innovation.
And he said, you know, there are kind of
five sorts of people out there.
Maybe you can think about what group you
fit into for what kinds of products.
So there, first of all, there are
innovators.
Those people are the people who just run
out and buy new products on their own
without
any need to talk to other people, and that
thought to account for about 2.5% of the
population.
The next group the so-called Early
Adopters,
they account for about 13.5% of the
population.
Going on from those people are The Early
Majority, they're another 34%.
So now we're at 50% of the curve.
Now we're going to move over to the right
side.
The next 34% are the so-called late
majority.
And then finally, this is probably my
favorite group are the leggards.
These are the people who come to the party
last.
Now it's quite possible that you could be
an early adopter.
When it comes to cell phone technology,
you're one of the first people to get the
Samsung or the iPhone.
Put your leg out in some other area,
you're a leg out when it comes to
televisions.
You don't really care about having the
latest TV.
So what we're going to be talking about
over the next few
sessions are how do we really focus on
those innovative people?
How do we understand their networks?
And how do we understand how information
flows?
This is a also a very foundational concept
for part number three, or
week three.
Because when we think about doing
advertising, or
setting prices, or sending products
through a channel,
in many ways, we need to think about
the stage of development that the product
is in.
So we may price differently at the
beginning of the product life cycle.
Compared to the end.
We might use different kinds of
advertising messages, and certainly
we will have different sorts of
distribution channels for the product.
So again this is a good one to
internalize, and
somewhat controversial sometimes but I
think it's still a great way to get
our minds around how products pick up,
take off, and eventually go into decline.
[MUSIC]