Produce Yourself

Posted by Suna on
Saturday, October 18th, 2008 at 12:35 am

Virginia Hefferman, who writes for The New York Times Magazine column “The Medium”, makes an interesting point in her Oct. 13, 2008 article about New York City’s online grocer FreshDirect. She notes that it’s now not enough for an online business to sell their products; they need to also sell their online presence. “E-commerce sites — once little more than billboards, brochures or order forms — are now goods and services themselves.”  All of that enriched content — blogs, videos, podcasts, social networks, relevant articles – that a company works so hard to create to promote the product can instead become the main attraction.  The company ends up selling a lifestyle. In some cases, companies may give away what they are supposed to sell and end up selling the promotional item. (She also makes the point that the Grateful Dead did this years ago by letting anyone bootleg their music, but selling their own branded merchandise.)

Read the article in full here:  http://tinyurl.com/4dxxnd