The Durian Story

Seth Godin has an interesting parable  (he has lots of interesting stories so you might want to check his blog from time to time).

This article in the Seattle Times tells the tale of Songpol Somsri, who has spent the better part of the last twenty years trying to come up with an odourless Durian. As some of you may know, this Asian delicacy has a smell that could be used to drug animals before slaughter, but the fruit itself is rather tasty.

What the article recounts is that most of the people in Asia, and I'm willing to bet a lot Europeans (possibly even Americans) as well, don't believe in a Durian that doesn' smell. It just wouldn't be a durian fruit anymore. And that's the fault a lot of marketeers make, as Seth put is so succinctly:

This is what most marketers do. They listen to complaints from non-customers ("why don't you buy from us?") address them and wait for the market to grow. After all, if the people who don't eat Durian don't eat it because of the smell, then removing the smell ought to dramatically increase the size of your market.

Except this almost never works.

Non-durian eaters don't have a 'durian problem'. They aren't standing by, fruitless, impatiently waiting for Songpol Somsri to figure out how to make a stinkless one. Nope. They've got cantaloupes and kiwis and all manner of other fruits to keep them busy.

The feedback you get from non-consumers is rarely useful, because the objection they give is the reason they don't buy from you, not the thing that will cause them to affirmatively choose you.

Will stinkless durian revolutionize the marketplace? Possibly. I've been wrong before. But if I were a durian farmer, I'd work hard to make durian stinkier.

Ask yourselves, are you trying to make yourself stinkier, and do you need any help to get the smell on?