The Physics of Marketing — Absloute Zero

At just about –273 degrees Cel­sius, you reach the point at which all mol­e­c­u­lar motion ceases.  There is no heat.  None.  This is known as Absolute Zero, and it was devel­oped in large part by Lord Kelvin.  In his honor, the Kelvin Scale, in which 0 degrees equals –273 C,  was named.  While sci­en­tists have some close to reach­ing absolute zero in lab­o­ra­to­ries, it may be impos­si­ble to accom­plish because the act of mea­sur­ing would require some level of heat be intro­duced.  Still, sci­en­tists have got­ten really, really close to this tem­per­a­ture that is really, really, really cold.

There are some really “cool” things that hap­pen to cer­tain ele­ments when you approach absolute zero, such as con­den­sates — super cold liq­uids that can over­come adhe­sion and grav­ity to spon­ta­neously flow out of their con­tain­ers.  Need­less to say, funny things hap­pen near absolute zero.

So, from a Mar­ket­ing Per­spec­tive, what is anal­o­gous to absolute zero?

I am inclined to say that the con­cept of the Long Tail, intro­duced by Chris Ander­son, is anal­o­gous to this con­cept in some way.  The Long Tail states that, among other things, the inter­net empow­ers infi­nite con­sumer niches, and thus in a dig­i­tal world where inven­tory is not much of an issue, there is a demand for just about every­thing.  So, that record you and your bud­dies made in the garage in 1976 might have one per­son out there some­where, besides you, who is inter­ested in it.  That record — once thought to be com­pletely void of heat — now pos­sesses a minus­cule amount of movement.

Mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als are paid to move prod­ucts and ser­vices away from absolute zero — as far away as pos­si­ble.  Mar­ket­ing is some sense is about using resources for gen­er­at­ing heat around a prod­uct or ser­vice, cap­i­tal­iz­ing on the Sec­ond Law of Ther­mo­dy­nam­ics (Thanks Geoff) to max­i­mize the return on invest­ment.   As the prod­uct life cycle would dic­tate, noth­ing lasts for­ever and today’s hot prod­uct becomes yesterday’s news pretty quickly.  Mar­ket­ing moves on, and the prod­uct or ser­vice often loses heat until it finally dies — the­o­ret­i­cal absolute mar­ket­ing zero.

Still, the long tail being what it is, absolute zero for a prod­uct may never actu­ally be reached.  As prod­ucts or ser­vices approach this tem­per­a­ture, weird things hap­pen.  Small groups of peo­ple may decide that they don’t want to let go of a prod­uct or ser­vice, and demand comes from seem­ingly out of nowhere to defy con­ven­tional wis­dom.  That is why some­one will pay $27.00 for the Shirt Tales lunch box on ebay.  Some­times this remains iso­lated and some­times the prod­uct begins to gen­er­ate heat again and moves away from Absolute Zero.  Pabst Blue Rib­bon comes to mind as a brand that was once near death, and then, some­how got to be trendy.  Now, bars in Colum­bus, Ohio can’t keep enough of it in stock to meet demand.  While this def­i­nitely dif­fers from the absolute laws of physics, the ideas seem to be similar.

I am curi­ous to hear from you on Absolute Zero.  How can you apply this to Mar­ket­ing?  Please share your thoughts and join the dis­cus­sion with your comments.