Archetype 1: The Star
The Star, our first archetype, is a product that does something better than its competitors. Nobody cares how well a star baseball pitcher fields, drives, or sings as long has he can throw the ball better than anyone else.
Here are some star products and services:
- RAZR mobile phone
- Verizon Wireless mobiile phone service
- Pay-per-view tv
- Design Within Reach home furnishings
- Walmart
- Any gas station
- Starbucks
- Google search engine
Each of these trades on one major ability. The RAZR was (in its time) the coolest looking phone. It was an ergonomic nightmare, hard to hold and use, but that wasn’t the point. Verizon’s “Can you hear me now?” ad campaign stressed the service’s coverage. Pay-per-view gives you its (limited) selection of content when you want it. Being a Star is an easy story to tell. The product leads with the thing it does better than its competitors–what could be clearer than that?
The Star’s career may be lucrative, but it may also be brief. When someone throws a faster fastball, the star pitcher is no longer the star. As soon as thinner, cooler looking phones came out, the RAZR was just another phone. As soon as someone has better coverage than Verizon, “Can you hear me now?” doesn’t mean anything. And though gas station A may have the lowest price in town, when gas station B across the street lowers its price by $.01, station A is out of luck.
But as long as a Star can keep its advantage, it has a clear, simple story.
[...] I don’t think that the Genius model must necessarily fade - or switch to the Star model, competing on one feature like price or capacity. But retaining the Genius edge requires the [...]