Drop of a Hat

I landed in SF yesterday. I love this city; its food, its energy, the plethora of whippy-cool single speeds cruisin the blacktop. I passed about a dozen panhandlers. I noticed the intense creativity of these people compared to my fair city. For example, the sign of one gentleman with a dropped hat was simply "conducting an experiment on human generosity, please give." I also noticed that there was less aggression in the approach. Then I searched my embedded intelligence for why such creative marketing tactics exists within San Francisco. I looked to basic economics and the concept of supply and demand.

SUPPLY
There is an over supply of panhandlers in SF; weather is nice year round and city officials are tolerant to their presence. Further it costs a but-load of cash to live in SF, so it throws more people on the street who are at a different psychographic level. With an increase in panhandler supply (and maybe even better educated supply) and no corresponding change in demand (people desiring to give) requires unique marketing and positioning tactics.

DEMAND
The population in San Francisco is well educated and very sophisticated. Although Seattle can boast it is smarter than SF, clearly SF is up a few notches on the sophistication scale. Just looking at the single speeds here affirmed it for me. So with a sophisticated pop, ONLY new and rather avant-garde marketing tactics are effective. Therefore, tactics that shout at or confront the consumer don't work. Only those tactics that allow the consumers to speak about your product (or unique positioning) are MOST effective.

I told several people about this gentleman and his sign. Heck I'm blogging about it right here. Clearly the most effective marketing is the one people do for you.