Smaller Markets & Purple Cows

I’m going to directly steal from Seth Goodin’s entry today about marketing to the majority.

He first quotes this:

PRESS BRIEFING BY LARRY SPEAKES (Press Secretary for Ronald Reagan)

October 15, 1982

The Briefing Room

12:45pm EDT

Q: Larry, does the President have any reaction to the announcement ≠ the
Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that AIDS is now an epidemic and
have over 600 cases?

MR. SPEAKES: What’s AIDS?

Q: Over a third of them have died. It’s known as “gay plague.”
(Laughter.) No, it is. I mean it’s a pretty serious thing that one in
every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the
President is aware of it?

MR. SPEAKES: I don’t have it. Do you? (Laughter.)

And then says: “Before deciding that a market (left-handed people, Mac users, people who speak Spanish) isn’t worth the effort, it might be worth a moment’s reflection. Sometimes, a purple cow is just purple because it’s best at serving a nascent market.”

The power markets and the issues faced in the Visayas are wholly different from those in Luzon. And Mindanao is facing yet uniquely different issues from either; and so is Palawan. Unlike the government which has to look at the general public good of the economy as a whole, if you’re operating solely in these regions, you couldn’t care less about how restructuring will play out in Luzon.

In the early 90s, the World Bank laid out a structure for the “Philipine power sector” that would be applied somehow across the different grids. California is still struggling to define a market structure that addresses all the local area issues throughout the State and yet the challenges here are an order of magnitude more difficult than California’s.

I live in MIndanao for a reason that transcends the welcome byproduct of family convenience. I expect it to enhance my understanding of the non-Luzon markets, and my usefulness as an advisor.

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