Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Deep Lessons from the World of Pasta Sauce

When it comes to human behavior and human preferences, there is no one best way to do things.  Taylorism is fine and dandy for automatic production in factories, but as a framework for thinking about the world, “the one best way” is a sure way to business disaster (or at least sub-par performance) and an inability to truly please people (yes, your customers are people).

Here is an interesting presentation by Malcolm Gladwell, of Tipping Point, Outliers and Blink! fame, about the change in thinking that took place in the North American food industry since the 1970s.  The food industry went from looking for the one “best” product to serve the market to finding the “best products, plural” to serve the various distinctive subgroups in the market.

The best points from this presentation:

1. People are not all the same, so don’t treat the market as one homogeneous mass
2. People don’t always consciously know what they want, so don’t keep asking them verbally
3. It’s not better or worse, it’s just different – a continuum, not a hierarchy

I think these key points are helpful for marketers and communicators across the board, and this presentation makes these points wrapped in a very memorable framework.

Enjoy!  Buon appetito!