The Otaku Diffusion Model
Find the obsessives first and let them spread your idea to the mainstream
Ideas spread through obsessives, not through the masses. Seth Godin introduces the Japanese concept of otaku -- an obsessive, all-consuming interest that drives someone to extraordinary effort, like driving across Tokyo to try a new ramen shop. The key insight is that to make a product, market an idea, or solve a problem, you need a constituency with otaku. Without obsessed early adopters who will seek out your offering and evangelize it to others, your idea will die regardless of quality. The strategy is to find the group that desperately cares, talk to them, make it easy for them to tell their friends, and let the idea diffuse outward from the passionate edges to the indifferent center.
- Ideas spread from obsessed edges to indifferent centers, not the other way around.
- Without a constituency that deeply cares, even a high-quality idea will die from lack of energy.
- Find the people who will drive across town to try your thing, and make it easy for them to tell others.
- Mass marketing to the indifferent is expensive; activating obsessives is cheap and self-sustaining.
- The presence or absence of otaku predicts the spread of an idea more reliably than the quality of the idea itself.
- Identify the otaku constituencyFind the group of people who are obsessively passionate about the category your idea lives in. There is a hot sauce otaku but no mustard otaku, which is why there are hundreds of hot sauces but few interesting mustards. It is not about the product quality -- you could make interesting mustard -- but without a constituency that desperately cares and will spread the word, the product dies. The otaku are the ignition source for idea diffusion.
- Ensure otaku-product alignmentGodin's SACD record label failed because he targeted audiophiles (stereo otaku) with new music, when he needed music otaku who happened to care about sound quality. The obsession must match the product category exactly. Pearl Jam sells 96 albums exclusively through their website because their fans have music otaku -- they buy every release and tell friends. Misaligned otaku guarantees failure regardless of product quality.
- Make it easy for obsessives to evangelizeSteve Jobs speaks to 50,000 people at keynotes watched from 130 countries -- people who care enough to watch a two-hour commercial and then tell their friends. Pearl Jam fans buy directly from the website and spread the word. The mechanism of diffusion is not advertising but making it effortless for obsessives to share. The product must be easy to talk about and easy to demonstrate.
- Let the idea diffuse from edges to centerKrispy Kreme enters new cities by talking to the donut otaku first, then lets them spread the word through the rest of the city. The strategy is never to target everyone simultaneously but to ignite the passionate edge and let the fire spread. The adopter curve moves from obsessives to enthusiasts to mainstream, and each group is influenced primarily by the group to its left, not by advertising.
Godin contrasts the old mass-marketing approach (target the center of the bell curve with average products for average people) with the new reality where that strategy is the riskiest possible choice. He tells the cautionary tale of his own biggest marketing failure: a record label that released albums in SACD, a remarkable new audio format, marketed directly to people with 20,000-dollar stereos. The problem was that people with expensive stereos do not have otaku for new music -- they are audiophiles, not music obsessives. He marketed a remarkable product to the wrong otaku, proving that identifying the right constituency is as important as having a remarkable product.