If you’re in marketing and you’re like me, you receive a daily onslaught of email proclaiming advice about everything from how to generate more leads with social media to how to write better emails (one can’t help but feel a little irony here). Most of it, of course, is not particularly insightful or new. If you didn’t happen to find time to read one particular message from one particular expert, no great loss. There will be more tomorrow.
Today was different. Today I read an exceptionally good article that I would highly recommend to anyone who thinks very deeply about marketing. At a time in which it’s difficult to find anyone saying anything truly interesting about marketing, this article is a standout.
The article is about an experiment that the Washington Post did in January 2007, four years ago. I imagine that the experiment was discussed quite a bit back then, but it’s new to me. As part of the experiment, violinist Joshua Bell played a 1713 Stradivarius (worth about $3.5 million dollars) in a Washington DC subway station, incognito. The Post conducted the experiment, according to the article, to determine “the influence of context on people’s perceptions and priorities—and their ability to ‘recognize beauty.'” Needless to say, the response of passersby was tepid.
The article concludes the following:
- Value is never “timeless” or “transcendent.” It is a product of time, place, social context, and mental attitudes. Sharp fluctuations in stock and real estate values, premium commanded by name brands over generics, and mini-bar vs. supermarket prices are all examples of identical products having different values.
In the wrong context, at the wrong time, a product that, under other circumstances people would pay a premium for, becomes nearly worthless. In Boston two nights earlier, Bell played before an audience that gladly paid $100 a ticket. In the DC subway station, a similar performance earned a grand total of $32.17.
In the remainder of this article, which covers a lot of marketing theory in a very short amount of space, the authors demonstrate convincingly why product has no intrinsic value, and why context is so important.
I was reminded after reading it of one of the fundamental ideas in marketing: the four Ps (product, place, price, and promotion). Much is made these days of how the Internet and social media are changing the way marketing works. But the principles of marketing haven’t changed.