"Getting" Market Segmentation

By Jack B. Rochester, Managing Editor

Tuesday night, June 9, Boston: cold, spitting rain, the Red Sox playing the Yankees at Fenway. Instead, I went to see a band called The Decemberists at the Bank of American Pavilion. A tent, really, dry but not warm. Robyn Hitchcock and his mates tried to warm up the audience, but it took the poofs of smoky mist and the appearance of 34-year-old Colin Meloy and his band to do the trick.

It did. The crowd of about 5,000 was on their feet about fifteen minutes into the performance and remained standing throughout.

I looked around: lots of young people, of course, most of whom wore jeans and short haircuts but no nose rings or colored Mohawks. Quite a few older people, making this 64-year-old feel not so out of place.

What amazed me was the power of this album to draw these people out. We sat next to a thirty-something marketing guy named Ken, whose doctor-wife was otherwise busy and, on a whim, mostly because he really loves this album and this band, decided to attend.

Released in April, "The Hazards of Love" debuted at the South By Southwest music festival in March. This extraordinary piece of music: a rock opera, a novel set to music, a concept album - whatever tag you may wish to hang about its neck - is by any measure an extraordinary artistic creation. It tells the story of a maiden named Margaret and her lover, William, who navigate the shoals and breakers of life in the era of Middle English, the land and times of Sir Lancelot and Guinevere, and Romantic Love.

It is also a brilliant feat of marketing. I would never have guessed that so many people in Boston would attend this concert, much less even know of this relatively obscure band from Portland, Oregon, and its brilliant leader and composer, Colin Meloy. The music itself harkens back to the heyday of folk rock - think Fairport Convention - and Elizabethan era social mores, music, and poetry.

Meloy tells the story of writing "The Hazards of Love" here, but the real story is in how he put the act together. Meloy and his band wear suits and ties onstage, although the coats soon come off and there he stands, a somewhat pudgy guy with a flop of hair hanging over his glasses, surely obscuring his vision, long sideburns-cum-muttonchops on his cheeks, his tie knotted, shirtsleeves rolled up, button suspenders holding his trousers up as he plays his acoustic guitar and sings his heart out. It is utterly captivating.

I first heard "The Hazards of Love"  broadcast over NPR  - you still can -  when The Decemberists first performed it live at SXSW. And yes, I was captivated. I bought the CD, and as I began talking about the album and the group, I learned that I was not alone in not having heard of them. However, since then, their notoriety has spread far and wide: witness filling the BofA Pavilion last night. I stood among people who danced and and sang the lyrics, not just of "Hazards," but many other songs from their repertoire the band played in their second set.

It's somewhat difficult to peg The Decemberists. They clearly have roots in folk music - more Shawn Colvin than Pete Seeger - but they really rock as well (and are referred to in the rock genre) as witnessed in their cover of Heart's "Crazy on You," which drove the crowd nuts. But the point is, they break the rules and conventions with "Hazards."

So here's Takeaway One: As marketers, we should never assume - presume? - we understand the who and what of our market. The unfolding popularity of The Decemberists is a case study in how one performance or venue - can morph a single market into many others - SXSW to NPR to a nationwide concert tour still going on months later and far into the future.

It is also an example of how an operatic suite, made up of seventeen interconnected songs, nearly an hour in length, can fly in the face of a market where everyone thinks buyers only want to purchase single tunes. And Takeaway Two: Don't let your mindset too closely define your the segmentation or differentiation product or service - otherwise, you might not "get it."

Cheers,
Jack

Jack B. Rochester is a professional writer and editor who has worked in nearly every aspect of publishing since 1974. He heads Joshua Tree Interactive, and is Managing Editor of The Business Insider blog.

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Market Segmentation

there are three major steps in target marketing are:

1). Market segmentation

2). Market targeting

and

3).Market positioning — setting the competitive positioning for the product and creating a detailed marketing mix.