Want to grow your audiences? Embrace the haters.

Figure 1

September 7, 2021

During World War II, researchers were enlisted to study the damage found on aircraft after bombing missions. The researchers identified the areas that showed the most damage from anti-aircraft fire (signified by the red dots on Figure 1) and recommended adding armor to these areas to minimize losses.

Makes sense, right?

But Hungarian mathematician Abraham Wald vehemently disagreed. He pointed out that this damage was found on planes that had actually returned safely, and that the Allies should instead armor the areas where there was no damage noted. Why? Because those were likely the places where anti-aircraft fire had caused such irreparable damage that the bombers didn’t return at all.

Survivorship bias, aptly depicted by this World War II story, is a phenomenon that distorts one's understanding of the world; an error in logic where one focuses on successes and ignores past failures, and thereby comes to false conclusions.

In the cultural sector, as we work to grow our audiences, are we trying to "shore up" the areas that don't need it, meanwhile ignoring the areas that do? Are we mistakenly catering to our loyal audiences instead of trying to understand how to best reach the outsiders? After all, as the Allied forces discovered, there's much more to learn from the failures than from the successes.

We all love to be liked. But “if you ignore the haters,” says innovation consultant and entrepreneur Mike Maddock, “You are ignoring your biggest Achilles' heel.” While your loyal audiences can be counted on to tell you what you want to hear, the haters (or outsiders) will tell you what you need to hear. And that’s where the opportunities for innovation abound.

Translation? Unpacking why you failed to attract certain consumers could be the key to discovering a much greater potential for success than you ever imagined. As the great innovator Henry Ford put it, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.”

Sure, it’s easier to get answers from the folks who are already on your CRM lists. But if you ignore the ones who aren’t, or fail to follow up with first-timers who never returned, you’re taking a big risk. “Someone who can deliver a better solution will steal away your customers as soon as they do,” says Mike Maddock.

Clayton Christensen would agree. “Unless you understand the full context in which your customers are making a choice to ‘hire’ your product or service,” he wrote, “you will be unlikely to create the right offering for them. You’ll just be treading water with them until they ‘fire’ your product and hire one that understands them better.”

Take Nintendo, for example. In the early 2000s, Nintendo set out to retake its former “top dog” status by deploying classic disruption strategy: instead of vying for the same hardcore gamers that were devoted to the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, they decided to design a product that was more accessible and more affordable to the “non consumers”—a whole new segment of customers who were not buying video game consoles. What informed their design process? Researchers at Nintendo interviewed people who hated playing video games.

Two themes emerged: the haters found most games to be too complicated and most controllers too difficult to maneuver. So, in 2006, Nintendo launched Wii, a gaming system that incorporated simplified graphics and a controller that imitated real-life motions. The result? Not only did the Wii outsell the the Xbox 360 before the year was out, but there were nearly three years of shortages due to high demand. By January 2010 the Wii had reached 67 million units sold, becoming Nintendo’s best-selling home video-game console. Ever.

Source: Wikipedia

The Wii was so revolutionary that it changed the industry, expanding the market by forcing its competitors to adapt their own products. In an interview with USA Today, the President of Nintendo of America explained their strategy: “If you…expand the market…you'll also dramatically increase your market share…Our competitors…believe that more and more performance with a higher and higher price tag are their keys to success…I think our two competitors will trade share between them, while we go off and grab share in a completely different way.”

And who can forget this commercial (viewed more than 27 million times) for another innovative idea born from founder Michael Durbin’s frustration with the cost of name-brand razor blades, their unnecessary features, and the hassle of buying new razor blades every month?

Michael Durbin knew there were other haters out there. He created Dollar Shave Club for them, launching it in 2012, and boy did it pay off. By 2015, Dollar Shave had claimed 48.6% of the online razor market, racking up more than 4 million subscribers. Gillette, which had long dominated the razor business following a simple strategy of “add features and charge more,” saw a drop in its market share from more than 70% in 2010 to 59%. The following year, Unilever acquired Dollar Shave Club for $1 billion. Cue the mic drop.

Haters gonna hate. It’s natural to want to avoid them. But being aware of survivorship bias and embracing the perspectives of your “haters” like the California Symphony’s Aubrey Bergauer did (nearly doubling her audiences in the process), could save you from wasting valuable resources on the wrong initiatives, or losing customers to more innovative competitors—and might just unlock your greatest innovations yet.