Trendsetters and Beer Drinkers

Interesting column in Ad Age on marketing to hipsters. The author likes the current Miller campaign (see why i disagree) because it appeals to the trendy consumers without seeming to target them. That sounds like marketing nirvana.

The column hits on one major problem with marketing to the hip.

Until recently, my drinking crony Dan -- a just-hip-enough Brooklynite who knew trucker caps were trendy before anyone else (but had the decency never to wear one) -- was a Pabst Blue Ribbon drinker. When I last saw him he had switched. Why the new brew, Dan? "I knew Pabst was over when I saw it in the [New York] Times," he half-joked.

This is tough on the Times. And it's unfair to Pabst, which has sustained a sales resurgence based on working-man brand values, scarcity and price. But it shows how easily an influencer can be turned off a brand by the knowledge that the masses are being turned on to it. Patrick Meyer, founder of marketing consultancy Fusion 5, is passionate on this. "Brands get hot and respond by turning up the volume with huge media buys," he says. "But blasting the public just switches the core consumer off."

It is a looking-glass kind of world where marketing success ("we're trendy") can immediately lead to failure ("that's so yesterday, everyone drinks it"). If the goal is to win over a lot of average consumers by being hip, what happens when the mass popularity drives away the "trend-setters"?

This type of marketing just seems self-defeating, not to mention overly complex. It depends on influencing a market segment with a veiled message so that they will create the main message that will drive purchases by the profitable segments.