Bob Marley & Embracing a Niche | Chapter 3

Marketing Insights from the book: Brand like a Rockstar

Great Rockstars don’t appeal to everybody, especially when starting out. Every band starts out small, playing their music for just a few people in a small bar or coffeeshop. Over time, hopefully, the buzz grows and the fan base builds, eventually evolving into a stadium full of cheering fans.

Even when a band develops into the next big thing, they still don’t appeal to everybody.

If you try to appeal to everybody you’ll end up appealing to nobody.

If you build a brand trying to appeal to everybody you’ll never be the brand that people fall in love with.

Great Brands are Niche Oriented

Try to remember, the last time you went to a local restaurant that had every imaginable item on their menu. Now, try to remember south Indian place that you went to recently for some lip-smacking dosas.

Both the places might be good but that dosa place is the real winner here. You would go to the South Indian Restaurant if you crave for dosa the next time but if you crave for something else, its not necessary that you would go to the local restaurant.

The South Indian restaurant runs a niche market and it serves it well.

In Ries &Trout’s 1994 classic, The 22 immutable laws of Marketing, If you can’t be first in a product category, set up a new category you can be first in.

We all know Bob Marley as a Reggae singer. But, when he started the word “reggae” dint even appear in the Jamaican English Dictionary until 1967.

Marley said Regi — meaning “to the king” in Latin. So reggae is the king’s music. However the word came to be, it is clear the music was being made before it had a formal name.

It took a few years for the people to take notice of this new kind of music and it the numbers grew when legends like Johnny Nash, The Beatles, and Eric Clapton incorporated reggae sounds to their music of created covers of Marley's songs

Marley, however, stayed true to his reggae music niche and that’s part of the reason he became so iconic.

You become iconic by appealing passionately to a small group of people for very specific reasons.

Find something that nobody else is doing, and do it well. Resist the temptation to change what you do so you can appeal to more people. Embrace the fact that if you are doing something interesting some people will not like you.

The risk of insult is the price of clarity — Roy Williams, the author of the popular trilogy, “The Wizard of Ads”

Celebrate your Niche

Kentucky Fried Chicken had captured the fried chicken market brilliantly. However, as diners of this lip-smacking chicken based food chain, started to become more health conscious, KFC couldn’t resist the chance to appeal to health nuts by offering grilled chicken and an extensive menu of salads.

To help get away from the stigma of fried chicken , Kentucky Fried Chicken even changed its name to KFC. They still have grilled chicken and salads but they now have shifted focus from health-conscious salad to a DOUBLE DOWN, a calorie-rich burger made from two pieces of fried chicken, cheese and bacon.

This allowed KFC to embrace their niche and not hide behind healthy foods. In a healthy world, an unhealthy treat is a niche worth exploiting.

What kind of state is a brand in when it is ashamed of what it makes?

Jones Soda Case Study

Can you imagine running a cola company in a market where Coke and Pepsi are fighting it out? Jones soda did exactly that.

Jones Soda was introduced in 1996, and in a few years, it established a reputation for quirky and interesting flavors with just a quirky artwork on its bottles.

Jones soda wasn’t like Coke or Pepsi. It was different with black and white photographs and catchy phrases on the bottles.

But instead of attempting to sell their products on convenience and grocery stores they placed their products in music stores, clothing stores, and tattoo shops. These ventures attracted a set of young consumers that they knew would become their fans.

Unusuality was their niche. They created unusual flavors, created customized labels and even customized bottles and that’s how they got into the market with the big guys.

So why did Jonas Soda need to lay off 40 percent of its workforce in 2008?

This was because they attempted to compete directly with Coke and Pepsi by straying from glass bottles into cans. They stopped playing like a niche player and started playing by big guy’s rules and became less successful

Few more examples of category creators

1. Quizno — instead of taking on the subway, the dominant leader in sandwich shops, Quizno’s created the toasted subcategory and instantly became the leader in that. Positioning statement: “Mmmm, Toasty”
2. Redbull — competing with Pepsi and Coke in the cola category is suicidal. Neither is fighting Gatorade in the sports drink category. So Redbull created the energy drink category.
3. Southwest Airlines — They created the low-cost carrier category and now they are the number one passenger airlines in the United States.

Lesson Learnt

Bob Marley didn’t become the world’s top-selling musician for no reason. He became the worlds top selling Reggae Musician just by finding a niché and sticking to it. Hence, it’s important to have a niche and that too one that you can own.

This article first appeared on MadAboutMarketing at Bob Marley & Embracing a Niche | Chapter 3