The Case For Brand Scarcity In An Era Of Abundance And Accessibility
By: Deacon Webster
Tags: Netflix, Television, Marketing Strategy, Brand Strategy, Marketing

We live in a time of abundance. Advances in technology have torn down barriers of acquisition and made it possible to receive most any good or piece of media with the simple click of a button. In terms of convenience, this returns an unprecedented amount of hours back to our everyday lives as we no longer are required to go on time-consuming hunts for goods. But, now that we can have anything we want with very little effort, people seem to want less and less of it. Millennials have long been pegged as non-materialists, preferring experiences to stuff. The super rich are all-in on “access” — a.k.a. experiences money can’t buy. For the first time ever people are spending more at restaurants than at grocery stores. What gives? It could be that going to the trouble of obtaining something is half the fun of having it.

Scarcity might be what propelled Noma, a restaurant in Denmark that acquires many of its ingredients through local foraging, to the “best restaurant in the world” slot in 2014 (an appellation whose existence itself was only deemed necessary in the past few years). Noma is hard to get to and impossible to replicate. This might also explain why there is now a race called the Quintuple Anvil in which contestants run five Ironman length triathlons one after another. Just achieving one Ironman has become too easy (216,000 people entered the race last year). On the other hand, very few people can say they’ve completed five Ironmans back-to-back. The explosion of interest in unique experiences points to a new shift in the way we define ourselves in this new social age where everyone can know what you’re doing at all times. The Instagram feed has now become the barometer for a well-curated life. And while posting pictures of new expensive things could be seen as gauche, the images of your children learning to surf in Costa Rica just mean that you are #blessed.

Self-definition, for some, used to revolve around a well-appointed music collection — a curated wall of music was a window into the collector’s soul. I have a great set of rare 1970s African Funk recordings that were given to me by a friend who found them in a indie-record store in Portland. I used to love bringing them out when people came over. Last month the label put their entire library on Spotify. Selfishly, I was a little disappointed by this. This cool thing that only I had was now easily accessible to everyone. It’s good for the label, but not good for my curatorial sense of self. Recorded music, just like everything on Amazon.com, is no longer scarce. It’s completely 100% available. With less scarce things in the world, the ones that are still hard to acquire have taken on even more significance. This is why some East Coasters land at LAX and go directly to the nearest In ’N’ Out burger.

Snap Inc. is well aware of the scarcity effect. The ephemeral nature of Snapchat snaps and stories have contributed largely the success of the platform, with its custom “here-now, gone in a moment” media as the primary currency. Snapchat’s understanding of the power of scarcity is no doubt why Spectacles, their new custom sunglasses that enable wearers to record whatever they’re seeing instantly (another vehicle for sharing experiences) are available in extremely limited quantities in only a few locations, such as a vending machine at the base of the Grand Canyon. And it’s worked. People took a helicopter down to the river bed to get their hands on a product that in the hands of another marketer (ahem Google) could have easily been denounced as dorky and uncool. Snap Spectacles may ultimately suffer the same fate, but for now, their scarcity has turned them into a must have.

On the opposite end of the spectrum sits the NFL, the darling of the professional sports world. A good part of the NFL’s success has relied on the scarcity of viewing opportunities. With a season comprised of only 16 games airing locally on Sundays, this was appointment viewing at its finest. Lately, though, the NFL has added a lot more coverage. Now there’s the RedZone channel, which airs all the exciting parts of every game in real time, ad-free. There are now national games every Sunday, Monday and Thursday night. At the same time ratings for the NFL are as low as they’ve ever been — down an average 11% over last year, with Thursday night games down 21.8%. Suddenly football has become less compelling. Nobody knows for sure why, but one possibility is that there’s too much of it. People don’t feel the need to be parked in front of the TV all day on Sunday when they can watch three nights a week. Or maybe just wait until next week. When we can have all of something, we sometimes don’t feel the need to have any of it.

Fans of high-quality scripted television have been experiencing a bonanza of riches of late, with the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Hulu releasing hundreds of new shows, entire seasons at a time. One has to wonder if shows like Game of Thrones that still trickle out one episode a week may be benefiting from their ability to provide a bit of weekly water-cooler fodder. It’s highly possible that the inconvenience of having to be on the couch at 9 p.m. on a Sunday night is exactly what people crave. What would happen if, for example, Netflix released the next season of House of Cards the old-school way? Would it garner more tune in? More chatter? More urgency? It’s a notion worth considering for marketers — are you making your brand too available? Maybe you need to play a little hard to get.