And I don't care what business you are in, some of the advice he offers up to multiplex theaters is just priceless. Take, for example, this bit on knowing your audience:
| First of all, I dont think they know what business they are in any longer. It appears they believe they are in the business of showing the movies Hollywood gives them and praying that Hollywood makes good movies and spends enough money to drive people through the doors so they make some money on the boxoffice and concessions. They arent.
But thats not the biggest of their problems. Their biggest problem is that they dont care who their customer is, as long as a lot of people come. Which in turn makes it almost impossible to determine what business they are in. I will explain. The experience that a 16 year old expects is going to be completely different than what a 35 or 55 year old expects. They are probably already pissed because the stereos were blasting in the parking lot, the lines to the concession stands were filled with kids chit chattering and taking their good old time, while you wanted to get into the movie so you could talk to your wife or date. The whole reason you left the house to see a movie in the first place was to get away from kids. |
The philosophy behind his critique applies to just about every business in the world. Know what business you are in by knowing who your customer is. Give them what they want, and if possible, give them something they didn't know they want too. And then, accept the fact that by catering to your demographic you might lose potential customers in other demographics, because in the end if you are true to what you do they weren't really potential customers anyway.
But it doesn't surprise me that an Internet billionaire would understand that. Back in my days at AOL, as we rocketed from 1 million to 35 million members in just a few short years, that was a philosophy we lived and breathed. Sure, the hard core Internet geeks hated us, and virtually every industry magazine was filled with attacks on what we were doing. But did we care? Not at all. They weren't our audience. We weren't building a product for Silicone Valley, we were building one for Middle America. And as the numbers showed, Middle America responded to what we were doing.
Do one thing and do it well. Stay focused. So simple, yet so rare. I've been meaning to add Cubes blog to my roster of daily reads for a long time. Consider that done!
Hat tip to Atrios.
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