Digital Doobies

I just stumbled across a report on Wired.com, "Teens Using Digital Drugs to Get High" and was naturally curious as to what this could be referring to. I read the story and watched the video clips in disbelief. Apparently i-dosing, or digital drugs, involves listening to specific music (largely a droning noise) through headphones.

Wait, I listen to loud, weird music through headphones all the time, is that why I am so out of it lately (no, I think that is actually because of too much work and not enough sleep, unfortunately)?

According to the report, this music uses binaural technology to alter your brain waves and mental functioning, mimicing the feeling of being high on drugs.



Of course, teens are going to have interest in trying this. I'm even mildly tempted, but decided I'm much too old to get hooked on drugs, even of the digital persuasion.

To pose the question that I pretty much do at the end of every blog post, is it worth my while? It depends on how you're looking at it. Digital drugs are free and legal, so what do you have to lose, besides your sanity. I can't imagine that there could be too many adverse effects, certainly not worse than actually doing drugs, but who knows? The digital age is so crazy. I'm not really willing to find out, but if someone else is, let me know how it goes.

Apparently, you can find i-dosing music and videos on YouTube, but I'm not going to link you right to it. I'm not a drug dealer, I'm a blogger!

Leapfroggers

Traditionally, marketers for tech gadgets ignore late adopters such as me. The standard practice is to lure the early adopters who in turn create buzz, eventually persuading the masses. The recent Wired article, Clive Thompson on Why Gadget Makers Should Target Late Adopters, makes a case for why marketers may want to rethink this strategy and show people like me a little love.

Marketing academic Jacob Goldenberg’s recent work suggests that laggards, which make up about 16% of the population, are a crucial high tech demographic for marketers because of their “leapfrogging” tendencies. Laggards may hold out on buying every new product on the market, but when they get around to buying they often skip several generations of products and end up leapfrogging ahead to the latest and greatest version.

According to Goldenberg, the economic impact of converting leapfrogging laggards is huge and can really drive profits. Also, word-of-mouth endorsements from these late adopters are especially powerful (i.e. “If Erin is using this thing, it must be easy and accessible”)!

Thinking about this potential shift in marketing strategy, I wonder what it may take for tech marketers to effectively reach me. They would have to meet me where I am, which until recently was not tech blogs. More mainstream avenues, perhaps my favorite New York or Lucky magazines, might be more effective. The message would have to be simple, emphasizing how the new product or service would add value to my life—I won’t be sold on cool, new features, because I likely won’t understand how I benefit from them. Speak my language.

Many late adopters like me have the motto, “if it ain’t broke…” and the lens “is this worth my while?”—show us that it is worthwhile, give us a fair price and you may win us over after all.