What Yeezy, Topps Chrome, and Supreme Have Taught Us
Put simply: scarcity breeds wantedness.
- Yeezy is a sneaker collaboration between Kanye West and a handful of sneaker brands, including but not limited to Adidas and Nike.
- Topps Chrome is a type of collectible card and is one of the most sought after rookie cards for Lebron James.
- Supreme is an American skateboarding shop and clothing brand established in NYC.
Wantedness creates opportunities for the PPC framework: product, partnerships, and community, as mentioned in Operating Partner #142 (reposted here on Medium).
Have you seen the demand for Yeezy sneakers? Check out Yeezy Mafia or Yeezy Supply. What does Yeezy get right? The product. They understand that if they create multiple colorways but limited inventory per SKU, they could make it seem like there are a ton of Yeezy products. The product is comfortable but in no way is it remarkable or groundbreaking… plenty of other sneakers are comfortable too.
It was no secret that Lebron James was going to be an all-star caliber athlete. He came up through high school with more fanfare than most NBA players get in their entire career. Topps knew they had to do something special when making the Lebron James rookie card and certainly did… as of this writing, a PSA 10 (highest rated) rookie card is going for $6,122 with 25 bids (and 152 watchers), and there are plenty of others that are similar.
Supreme is one of the most interesting to me as it is limited edition clothing that gets knocked off everywhere. Their website looks like it’s from the mid-1990s with limited and wonky e-commerce functionality where almost everything seems to be sold-out at any given time.
Yeezy and Supreme have leveraged scarcity exceptionally well to play into wantedness. Topps Chrome did so as well, though they had a running start as they knew Lebron James was going to be very good.
The Internet is the perfect Medium for these products, especially in this InstaTok world we live in where we as consumers radiate some of the seven deadly sins daily. People see these products on Instagram, TikTok, in real-life, and know exactly what they are. It’s only a matter of time until Yeezy’s show up as a virtual good in Fortnite.
In a world where everything is a photo or video, these brands hold real wantedness value. Whether this is good or bad for society is an argument to be made for another day.
I wonder what Prada and Hermes would have been like in their early rise in popularity had the Internet been around. There are roughly 5M+ posts of the Birkin… not bad for one of the most prized handbags of all-time.
I believe that the PPC model works exceptionally well with scarce products: whether natural or artificial scarcity.
So how do you think about building scarcity into YOUR products?
This is a function of product planning and customer experience. An intertwined team of product + CX will most likely get you there. CX will cover off on partnerships and community too. Kanye was not able to create his own sneaker… he had to partner with a few other major sneaker manufacturers to trade off each other’s equity. Had he tried himself, he would have had the Starbury on his hands.
If you are building a product without partnerships or community in mind… stop. If you are in the consumer space, or b2b, scarcity helps as evident above.
While you may be reading this and saying “well, I’m a b2b marketer, this does not make sense for me”…
This absolutely should make sense for you. Do you have a community around your product or service? Think Slack community. The Notion community. The Trade Desk’s Edge Academy for programmatic advertising skills. The list goes on.
As for scarcity for b2b; why not build a feature that gets greenlit on a very limited basis based on customer value or longevity? Just an idea…
This post originally appeared in The Operating Partner, a weekly newsletter that is written by Darren Herman. If you are interested in subscribing, you can subscribe here.
