No Spotify this week. Running late for a plane, I discovered my podcast distribution platform got bought by Spotify. While I was away all the access settings changed and I haven’t time to fuck around with it right now. So we’re back to my classic original audio format from 2018, enjoy!

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Dominance beyond the dreams of Microsoft and Coke

We all fantasise about our product being the only choice customers want.

Aperol has achieved that. After a couple of weeks in the excellent bars of Italy – city rooftops, piazzas, lanes and lakesides – the Aperol Spritz dominates its field to a level that would make Microsoft or Coke weep with envy.

This is the level of rigorous research I’m prepared to do on your behalf.

As the sun sets, in front of everyone, at every table, it’s the big distinctive orbs of orange. Like the government had passed an Aperitivo Act making Aperol compulsory. It’s the same in the warm months in bars in Australia and I’m guessing around the world.

Aperol is the Usain Bolt of first-drink-of-the-night, cruising through the finish line with a winning smile, while its competitors are still in a different postcode.

Good times on George and Amal’s back lawn

Why? Is the Aperol Spritz that good a drink? Does it taste so great that everyone just has to have one? Of course not.

It’s herd behaviour at its finest, the same as every other product category on earth. People just want to do what everyone else does.

The win for Aperol comes from its distinctive appearance. It looks great, in real life and social posts. Even at a range of several hundred metres, it’s crystal clear what everyone’s having. The Spritz has become the visual shorthand for Italian la dolce vita. You might not be drinking it on George and Amal’s back lawn on Lake Como, but you can imagine.

Choice is over-rated

Optimistic business people speak of choice like it’s unambiguously good. More choice! More options! Sometimes it is, an exciting tingle of anticipation as you think through that feel-good purchase.

But mostly choice is just a hassle. Another time-consuming thing to research, consider, and reach a decision.

You know when you don’t feel like the burden of choice? At the end of a hard day’s work or travel, when you sit down for a drink. Do you really want to be flicking through a leather-bound hipster drinks encyclopedia wondering what pisco, arrack or génépi are?

It’s like “what will we have for dinner?”. The initial grown-up thrill of being able to choose anything you please from a million options wears thin fast. Even if you care deeply about food, you just want someone else to make the damn decision.

It’s the same with almost every purchase evaluation, from a snack to a multi-million dollar B2B services contract.

Markets are ruled by suppliers who might not be that great, but everyone seems to use them so they keep winning. Because changing is risky and herd behaviour says no.

Every so often, a buyer will go: hang on, maybe Big Supply Corp isn’t as great as their customer base implies. Maybe we’ll be brave and choose someone new and relatively untested.

It’s a slow process, but it happens just often enough to keep free-market capitalism going. And to keep your plucky underdog hopes up that a win is at least possible.

A travel tip side-note

We had one of those herd behaviour moments with the Renaissance art of Florence.

We’d been walking around cities for days, just hanging out and taking in the atmosphere. We had looked at no art or galleries. To be honest, we felt the pressure of how we’d explain this to the folks back home.

“So which galleries did you visit in all those beautiful art-filled cities?”

“Uh … we were very busy eating a lot of food.”

“… oh.”

So we felt we should give the art a go. All those people in the giant queue had to be onto something. People come from around the world to marvel at these works. So you know that art must be sensational.

The big-name gallery had been sold out for months, so we went to the next tier down. Twenty minutes in, we both realised: viewed in bulk, Renaissance art just sucks.

Admit you’re only pretending to like it

Endless grim, black-background paintings of generic noble-guys in the jaunty Renaissance pose: one hand on hip, the other leg forward. They all look the same, drawn from the same chinless gene pool. Mothers nurturing weird-looking babies the size of a four-year-old. An army of identical carved marble folk just like the ones you can see for free on the outside of every cathedral.

Repeat that through fifty-odd chambers full of them. You don’t want to skate through at high speed like a total ignorant tourist, so you have to stop and look like you’re giving it some thought. It is a stifling experience.

I’m not saying I’m right here. I support your right to love that art. I admit I’m a Philistine re old oil paintings, or at least all the ones we saw.

But I’m a fully-grown adult and I will no longer pretend to like things I don’t. I look at those paintings and feel none of the things I love about art in other forms. Not a blip of emotion, learning, story, fresh perspective or viewpoint, nothing.

It’s really liberating to go: you know what, we’re out of here. It’s like being a kid, just standing up and walking out of your school classroom.

You don’t have to look at that art just because the herd says you must.

There, I saved you at least a day of wasted time and sore feet if you’re ever over that way. Now back to business.

If you’re a keen smaller brand, there are two reasons to understand this herd conformity.

1. Getting there will be harder than you think

If you think you can just come in and take on the Big Spritz brand in your category, just by coming up with a product you reckon is better, it’s going to be a thousand times harder than you thought.

Customers will tell you they love your new product. Then, when it’s time to vote with their money, they’ll be having an Aperol Spritz like you never existed.

We had that exact experience with our own brand. Endless disgruntled customers from other places told us they’d totally use us. We borrowed all we could, set up offices in four cities in a year, and all those customers went: “On this occasion, better the devil you know, maybe another time.”

Like when successful Australian custom shoes brand Shoes Of Prey asked people in focus groups what they wanted. They already had a wonderful product and strong, proven revenues in the Australian market. Now it was time to scale.

“I want unique shoes to express my own special uniqueness. I love those shoes and I would buy them,” was the general focus group message.

Based on that Shoes Of Prey raised a bunch of equity and spent it on creating a world-class supply chain to deliver those custom shoes at high speed.

And how did all those customers respond when it was time to open their wallets?

They bought other brands.

The same shoes everyone else was buying.

Which was what their choice of social influencer was wearing.

It killed a great business.

In terms of potential market, a tiny percentage of them want to express their individuality. The rest, and all their money, go with the safest option, the lowest risk, the choice that makes them feel safe and warm in the herd with no chance of social ridicule.

Don’t bank on any customer going out on a limb for your new product.

Aperol started 105 years ago so be patient for your global success.

2. Find micro-herds

After that ominous warning, how do you get it going? How does any new product get going?

Find micro-herds. Separate them out from the main herd, and be the visible one there. There will be a far smaller number of people who wear their non-membership of the main herd as a badge of pride. It’s a small herd, easier for you to break into.

Then ask yourself: how can you make using your product as Aperol-orange-obvious as possible? Big topic, it’s a book in itself and the approaches vary wildly between products. Is there some little colour or sound you can add that has nothing to do with the functionality but makes it stand out? How do you

Our brand tends to work behind the scenes in the dark so visibility is tricky. We started with very distinctive A-Team-style vans and trucks that stood out from the industry-standard white. And giving away hundreds of distinctive t-shirts at conferences, along with contests that encouraged people to post shots in unusual places.

If you’re in B2B, which are the most visible brands you can be seen to be working with?

In plenty of sectors, you’ll be offered the exciting opportunity to do free work in exchange for “exposure”. It’s epidemic in ours.

As someone who’s had thousands of requests for this, I’ve developed Whitworth’s Law Of Inverse Exposure Value:

The sort of clients who you would benefit most from being associated with are the ones least likely to ask you to do free exposure work. Those clients pay.

The ones who are always on the scrounge for free services are the ones that deliver no benefit through association.

Don’t discount the exposure strategy entirely, just be wary.

If you can land a big-name client, judicious name-dropping through your socials and PR is the best way to convey that reassurance to others. A couple of notes:

1. Get permission. I’ve seen plenty of eager social teams post work without getting it cleared by the big clients, and it will burn you
2. Don’t exaggerate. Businesses show a page of client logos, claiming they work with Apple and so on. When the reality is they were a sub-contractor of a subcontractor for a regional Apple reseller. Clients can see right through this childish ploy.

And remember, look for something you can deliver consistently for a long time. If not 105 years, then at least longer than the standard two years, where most brands get reshuffled by the new marketing boss.

Be patient, like Luigi and Silvio Barberi back in 1919. They messed around with ingredients for seven years before Aperol came out.

There’s probably an oil painting of them doing it, but I don’t want to know.

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