Becoming One with Your Consumer

Earlier this week, our product team at Pandora was discussing the importance of looking at your competitive landscape. The big thread that emerged was that the key to winning among your product space isn’t to go shot for shot with your competitors on features, but rather win by knowing the needs of your target consumer better than anyone else and executing against them.

The humbling thing about building products is that you quickly learn that the way that you consume media and interact with the world is often not in line with how the larger population is going about their business. If you’re trying to get in the mindset of the mainstream, think about working your way into better understanding them. Some ways (among many) to think about it:

TV is For Real Not Cool Anymore

If you watch a lot of TV… you’re not following the trends. As you move down the spectrum of people aged younger than 50, consumers are precipitously watching less and less TV… but still a whole ton of video. Be part of the new trends. If you don’t have a Netflix account… get one and watch it. People care about it a whole lot more about it than broadcast TV. Look at the top 2 TV shows (Sunday Night Football & NCIS) compared to the top 2 Netflix shows. No contest. Clear trends.

YouTube Shows are Bigger Than TV

It’s not even TV that’s shifting… YouTube is the number one source for teens not only to watch sporadic videos, but for programmed content. The top 100 list is fascinating… and reveals things like PewDiePie is the largest show in the US right now. Subscribe to YouTube shows, take note of how people engage with them… it’s pretty amazing to see how much of it is in fact music content. Some of these “programs” have over 5 billion views. That’s a lot of attention.

Also, there are always some hidden gems in there. One of my colleagues recently pointed out a really neat app yesterday: Pop Messenger. Who knows if it’ll take off, but it was #11 in the app store yesterday. Playing around with new apps breeds insight into consumer behavior. Spend a day or two each week kicking around in the iOS or Android app stores and try out some new apps?—?especially ones that are consistently showing up in the top 10 or 25.

Some trends that emerge are weird… like Snapchat and ephemeral sharing. It’s not natural (to me, at least) but it’s clearly working for a large swath of the population. Don’t dismiss these as weird trends… get intimately familiar with them (Snapchat pun certainly not intended).

Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

Many of you are likely already doing most of these things. If you’re not, please do try to step outside your comfort zone and use a service that may not necessarily be intuitive to you from the get go. These are the products that are shaping consumers’ expectations of how communication and media work in this new world.

It’s your job to be a champion for the consumer. At Pandora, we’ve nailed the core consumer need for simplicity so far… because we’ve mirrored an existing trait of terrestrial radio: we just start playing music when you come to our service. That’s not always going to be the case or familiarity.

It’s time to get hip to the times.