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So, it's interesting because influencers are can be a leader segment or not. So,
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if someone is clearly paid to endorse or use a product or they're really representing just themselves, they
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usually don't represent a full leader segment, but when it feels like a segment of celebrities or athletes or
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wealthy people use a a brand. So, Beats headphones is a good example. Yes, some of the athletes are paid to use Beats,
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but it also is a whole segment of professional athletes that love Beats, which makes people like me who want to
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feel like Tom Brady before I go into teach want to use Beats headphones. Um, and so it does have to feel like a true
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segment. It can't just be, oh, Tom Brady was paid to tell me he likes these.
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How does a company then deal with the scenario you also lay out where you have incompatible segments? That I would
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think that would be the that would be the largest challenge for them. Yes, always better, you know, an ounce
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of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Um, that's true in marketing, too. I
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think, yeah, in that case, you have to find ways to separate them, create that hierarchy, or potentially fire a
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customer segment, which can feel scary, but sometimes the best thing to do is say, "We have to choose the segment
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we're for and the segment we're not for." A big mistake I see brands make
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over and over again is they find themselves in conflict, and so they try to just serve both. You saw this with
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Bud Light a couple years ago. You see this with Target right now where they uh got themselves in a political conflict
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between segments and they responded with a court sort of we don't know which side
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we're going to pick. So then both segments said okay well you're not for
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us and then they're they're leaving in droves. Usually you have to pick one.
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Seemingly this is a new norm than larger scale for a lot of companies as we move
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forward. This is not something that is kind of in this moment in time. this is kind of here. Companies are going to
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have to continue to work with it in order to find that growth. We're not going to go back uh you know maybe
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several decades to before we saw a lot of these uh segments coming uh coming to the forefront.
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Absolutely. And that's driven by a few things. I mean first is um the information channels we use are more
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porous than ever. So you can't put something in a special interest magazine and assume no other segment will see it.
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If you put it on social media, it could surface in anyone's algorithm and then
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it can be reposted and shared um and you know made into a bigger deal much more easily. We use brands and products more
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as identity signals than ever before whether it's to reflect my skater identity or my you know cool athlete
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identity or my political affiliation. So that's going to increase the risk of
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incompatibilities. Um, and as I said, the barriers to entry are pretty low across a lot of
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industries now, which means one brand's conflict could be another brand's
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opportunity. I see you're ignoring a segment or you've done something that's
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bothering one. Well, I'm going to then pick them off because I can actually serve them better and more clearly.
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