Check The Rhyme: Niche

Check it!

“Started off local, but thanks to all the haters

I know G-IV pilots on a first name basis”

Drake’s line comes from “Forever,” another posse cut alongside Kanye West, Lil Wayne, and Eminem. I love this lyric because it's rich with marketing implications, particularly as it pertains to niche markets. Let's provide a little foundation here.

Keegan and his collaborators refer to a niche as a small market that is not served by competing products. While Stanton and his collaborators refer to a niche as a method to meet consumer needs with tailored products and services for a small market. What this essentially boils down to is that a niche is used to describe specialized products for a small market or a small group of people—both of which don't seem to be all that compelling for a marketer or a business or a politician or a musician. Like who wants a small customer base or a small audience? Not many.

But here's the thing; all big things start off small. Every artist started with one fan. Every Instagram celebrity with millions of followers started with just one follower. The same thing goes for brands. They start off small before they grow to be big.

Everett Rogers illustrated this idea in the 1950s with his theory on the diffusion of innovation. He saw that new products spread throughout a population based on the Gaussian curve formation, what we refer to as the bell curve or the normal curve. He saw that product spread follows along this formation. It starts off with a small section of the population and spreads out to the masses over time, diffusing within the population as more people adopt.

Later, research shows that not only do new products diffuse throughout the population like this, but so do beliefs, norms, language, and other cultural characteristics. That's why we refer to it as the “normal curve,” because most things in nature follow this normal distribution organically. In the case of new products, it's this early niche that catalyzes what becomes popular.

The sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, refers to this as the avant-gardes, where new products or novel ideas start with very few people and spread throughout the masses to become normal and cool.

Hip hop is a perfect example of this. It started off small within a niche market and grew to become the most popular music genre in this country. Furthermore, hip hop is quintessentially cool with its music, stylings, fashion, attitude, and body language. What started off small and subcultural grew to be massive. The same thing goes with brands. Brands become cool within a specific niche before being adopted by the broader audience.

My colleague and friend, Rajeev Bartra, and his collaborators looked at how “cool” applies to brands. What they found is that brands that are original, authentic, subcultural, and rebellious are considered to be cool, small and specialized...a.k.a. niche. So by its very nature, niche will always have haters. People who push against those who challenge the status quo. And this is exactly what Drake is getting at here.

“Started off local, but thanks to all the haters

I know G-IV pilots on a first name basis”

He appealed to a niche market before becoming the reigning dominant voice in hip hop music, which is a super powerful concept for marketers to consider. Instead of trying to appeal to a mass market, perhaps we should focus on the niche. The small, specialized group of people will act as a propeller to drive adoption within the broader market.

Thank you Drake... Professor Drake.