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Quick Summary: Read my list of the ten unthinkable futures of marketing, scenarios that seem too far-fetched to be true today, but may seem obvious in retrospect tomorrow.
Yes you read it right. This is not a post about the future of marketing. This is a post about the ten unthinkable futures of marketing.
Unthinkable futures are probabilities we tend to dismiss without thinking, scenarios that seem too far-fetched to be true today, but may seem obvious in retrospect tomorrow.
Inspired by the unthinkable futures game between Kevin Kelly and Brian Eno from fifteen years back, here’s my own list of the ten unthinkable futures of marketing —
1. No products will have price tags anymore. People will pick up products from the mall, or order them online and have them delivered home, and pay only what they want to pay.
(Update: I was aware of the numerous examples of authors and musicians giving away their books and music for free, but I discovered two examples of restaurants giving away food for free, and allowing the patrons to decide what they want to pay for it.)
2. Since all products will have the same lowest possible price — zero — even the concept of competing on low price won’t exist anymore.
3. Similarly, the concept of using a high price as a signaling mechanism (for quality or exclusivity) won’t exist anymore.
4. Since there will be no price to signal product quality, people will (correctly) assume that all products have the same quality.
5. Since there will be no price to signal exclusivity, brand labels will no longer signal exclusivity either.
6. Free from the weight of product and price, brands will operate purely in the realm of ideas.
7. Each brand will be the embodiment of a narrowly defined idea that each person will relate to or not relate to.
8. People will organize themselves into close knit tribes around the brands they really relate to.
9. People will pay less or more for the products they pick up on the basis of their affinity with the brand’s tribe.
10. Therefore, brands will be like entertainers and their chief concern will be the management of their tribes, or fan bases.
What do you think? How unthinkable are these ten futures of marketing?
What about you? What are your own ten unthinkable futures of marketing?
Comments (18)
In other words, products will be like TV shows:
Free
Of (relatively) equal quality
Branded by “the idea of the person you want to be;” people who watch CNN vs PBS vs ESPN, etc.
The rapid development of “tribes” or fanbases
People having the option to pay more for brand-related material, but being able to enjoy the brand w/o paying anything
No exclusivity (anyone can watch any show, any time)
Etc.
What do you think? ^__^
m fine with most of them ..but dont 2 ,3 4,5 are the same …
as in they smell like same point.
@Blue: Yes, you are right. In my unthinkable future, brands will be like entertainers and their chief concern will be the management of their tribes, or fan bases.
@Vivek: Well, if you are fine with them, I’ll have to delete this post. They are supposed to be unthinkable after all.
“4. Since there will be no price to signal product quality, people will (correctly) assume that all products have the same quality.”
Gaurav, are you saying the price is the premise on which quality is based today? and not the other way round?
I find this logic flawed.
@Rajesh: I think pricing is often done on the basis of “what can be charged” (based on brand equity and competitive benchmarks etc.) instead of “what should be charged” (based on cost and quality etc.). So, yes, I do think that price is more often used to signal quality that the other way round.
“4. Since there will be no price to signal product quality, people will (correctly) assume that all products have the same quality.” Do not agree on this point, do you mean to say that a Nokia Arte phone will be priced equal to a Nokia 1209? The price is of the end product includes the price for the materials that are used. And certain materials will always cost more and affect the end price.
@Danesh: Since there will be no price to begin with –
– price will be independent of cost.
By the way, this is not a “this-will-be-so” prediction post, this is a “what-if-this-is-so” thought experiment post.
All right, then, here’s the kicker:
If the products have no price, how do the companies drum up the money to pay the factory workers, etc. who have sold them their lives so that the product may be created?
Never mind the creative-capital types; they’ll all be working in ROWES which will be pleasurable to them because of their commitment to brand, e.g. the way people come together online (for no pay) to chat about and promote certain items. (In other words, in your unthinkable future, Gaurav, your job won’t exist. It will be performed by the brand’s fanbase, for free, out of sheer joy.)
But there are still the actual builders of the product. How do they get compensated?
@Blue: Well, in my unthinkable future, the products won’t have a price tag, but people will still pay (donate) money for it (#1). So, companies will only manufacture products until there are enough people donating enough money for them. So, in the basic scenario, the viable companies will always have enough money to pay salaries and the unviable companies will shut down, just like now.
In any case, if the workers are underpaid, they can choose to use the products they want for free. If there are too many underpaid workers who can’t pay for the products they need, more companies will become inviable and shut down, so there will be economic boom and bust cycles, just like now.
I hadn’t really thought through how wages and salaries are structured, but here’s an interesting twist to my original scenario. The companies will pay both workers and managers a percentage of the profits, instead of a salary based on a per day or per unit wage rate, so all your pay will be performance linked.
If people love the brand I work for, I’ll become rich, except that I’ll have no real need for money because I can already own whatever products I want to, for free. So, I’ll donate part of my wealth to charity and donate the rest to the brands I like myself, including (hopefully) the brand I work for.
It is all very confusing…micro economically it doesn’t make sense.. i mean an individual will not pay if he can get it for free…if we are looking at an auctioning system here for the smallest of products(bcos some product wud have a huge demand) Auctioning marketplcaes will come into place.. and therefore the free concept will not exist ?
@Aakriti: We are not talking about an auctioning system here. We are talking about a honor system.
Yeah…i kinda agree with this unthinkable situation. This is something like a creation of social value.
@blue - loss making PSUs do exist. Raising money for a venture is not an impossibility - even with potentially zero revenue.
For example - if a fantastic NGO is going bust, it can raise money. A situation where a NGO gets listed on a stock market and is seen as a peddler of social value is a sort of extension of Gaurav’s concept. Basically - people want it to exist. And will ensure that it does. The power of the consumer.
So is everything going to be lovingly handcrafted by artisans? Because ultimately, what it breaks down to is:
If no one needs money to buy things, then…
No one needs money.
Which means no matter how much you pay your factory workers, it won’t matter because they, like everyone else, won’t need the money.
(”Money,” which you can give to a brand but which neither the brand nor its consumers actually need, will be the equivalent of a 5-star rating on Amazon.)
And, because no one would voluntarily work at a factory assembly line if they didn’t need the money, it follows that all of your products will have to be lovingly handcrafted by artisans.
Which, in the end, will probably only improve the quality. ^__^
@Sandeep: I’m not sure how many of us love the typical PSU, but, yes, the basic idea is that a brand will exist only because we will want it to exist.
@Blue: Precisely! Basically, since none of us will need money anymore, we will work only for the love of work.
I think we should get together and write a sci-fi story about this unthinkable price-less future.
Or maybe go a step ahead and create a free market, price-less product??
Just as an aside - this talk reminds of the nascent email providers. They tried to lock in users with free service and then charge a fee for continued usage. Although there is no “free market pricing”, it was probably an attempt to gauge value.
This is not really 10 futures, just one future with its spinoffs. However, as others have said, a lot of these behaviours don’t hold economic water.
The reason that so many products are free on the Internet is that they are subsidised in different ways, the most visible of which is advertising. This is not completely portable into the offline realm, where the costs of production are not only much higher, but also cover a much broader range. Cars will never be as mobile a product as cellphones, and neither product is as mobile as shampoo. This lack of mobility places extreme pressure on the business that makes them to recover their costs very close to the unit level, breaking down any opportunity to cover volumes. Your argument that people will pay through the honour system is flawed; even in the case of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails (both released pay-at-will albums), neither band made much money through album sales. The albums were eventually released on CD at the regular $12 market price.
This scenario is quite imaginable when economics becomes redundant. Unfortunately, the only situation where that is possible is one global nation and government that decides that everybody gets what everybody else has. This scenario ensures balanced mobility of goods which negates the need for money to be used as an intermediate in transactions.
Maybe I’m not too clear about what I’ve just said, but I’m up for a discussion on the topic.
how about the revival of the Barter System.
The web is already into it ..maybe by the time these rules start ruling ..we can have the bartering too..
@Sandeep: It’s amazing what happens when something becomes free. Free e-mail is used fundamentally differently from $1 a year e-mail. It’s a mind-boggling exercise to imagine how a free laptop will be used differently from a $1000 laptop.
@Vivek: It’s an equally mind-boggling exercise to imagine what happens when the transaction cost involved in bartering (including certification for both products and parties), let’s say a 2 year old $1250 home theater system with a 1 year old $1000 laptop, drop to zero. Actually, with “social shopping” around the bend, that’s about to happen, in any case.
@Sumant: Yes, you are right. This are basically ten manifestations of one unthinkable future. You are also right that, given the socio-economic context we operate in, it’s almost impossible to imagine how an entire economy can work on a pay-what-you-want honor system. I’m not predicting that it will happen. I’m only trying to imagine what if it happens.
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