A small company with passionate customers has different branding goals than a company trying to become a significant market competitor. Seth Godin writes that companies can either be loved by a small but vocal group of people, or they can be “less annoying” to reach a larger share of the market. This is an interesting perspective, and I want to take the idea one step further.
If you want to succeed beyond just “making it” as a small company, you have to have a great brand story and a strong group of raving fans. Having a group of people that love everything about your company and talk about it to their peers is the mark of a successful brand story and provides invaluable free marketing. However, every successful company reaches the point where it starts to reach the limits of its fan base. This isn’t the sign of trouble, the opposite in fact, but if you want to expand that customer base, you have to make your products a little more accessible, more mundane, and more predictable. The story of your brand must become something that is slightly less remarkable because everyone’s heard it before. This is part of a natural progression for businesses as they try to reach more people.
I can think of no company that embraces this concept greater than Apple. For the last ten-plus years, they have been the David to the Goliaths Microsoft and Dell. They thumbed their noses at Windows. But over the last few years, they started allowing Windows on their machines. They switched to the Intel-based chipsets. They now develop some of their software to run on Windows. They are becoming less annoying in order to gain market share. They still make great products, but they are toning down the “Apple or Bust” brand story, and they are becoming a less lovable company to those who once evangelized their products.
So, where is your company at right now? Are people talking about your business with passion? Are customers banging down your door (or your web server) to get the product they heard about from six different friends? If not, perhaps you need some love (or a guest spot on Oprah). But if you do have vocal, adoring customers, you have a choice to make. In order to grow your customer base, you may need to make some tradeoffs in your products and your story. You may have to lose the “if people want that they can go somewhere else” attitude.
It all depends on what you want. Do you want to be the lovable little guy, or do you want to be the predictable giant?
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