In general, the infrastructure is most critical when the confusion in the marketplace is the greatest. If people are totally secure, they won’t ask questions. They will simply buy the best-known brand or the lowest-priced product. But when insecurity is in the air, the company most skilled at lining up the infrastructure will win in the marketplace.
As a result, infrastructure is probably more important for computers than for stereos, and more important for stereos than for cereal. The supporting infrastructure in Silicon Valley is the most sophisticated outside of Wall Street. Analysts, consultants, lawyers, distributors, bankers, and software suppliers all play key roles. Pundits and analysts don’t talk nearly as much about new cereals as they do about new computers.
So how can a company line up a supporting infrastructure? I recently talked with a group of junior marketing people at a successful personal-computer company. They told me about their plans to use public relations to create consumer demand for their product. I told them that their plans were bound to fail. Traditional public relations is not enough. Public relations can get your product mentioned in Time magazine once a year-if you are lucky. That won’t create much demand for a product.
Instead, marketing people must work at identifying and lining up the key members of the infrastructure-and keeping track of how the infrastructure is changing. In the computer business, they must identify the luminaries, the key people in the trade press, the independent software people, then get all of them committed to the new product. They might try starting a newsletter for dealers, or running conferences for industry luminaries. They might give special demonstrations and technical support to independent software companies.
All the time, marketing managers should pay attention to the hierarchies of influence that exist within the infrastructure. Some luminaries are more “luminous” than others. When Intel introduced its first 32-bit microprocessor, it gave an extensive briefing to Gordon Bell, a well-known technology guru, then at Digital Equipment Corporation. When Fortune ran an article about the new chip, it ran a quote from Bell to back up Intel’s claims about the chip’s likelihood of success.
Certain distributors and dealers are more influential than others. K mart is an effective mass distributor, but it will not build credibility for a business computer the way Sears will. So companies would rather that Sears carry the computer, at least initially. Higher up the hierarchy are specialized retail chains such as ComputerLand and Businessland.
In the computer business, lining up the right software companies is even more important. The major “system software” companies can make it easier for the smaller software companies to develop application programs for the computer. And once the software companies commit themselves, manufacturers of add-on hardware, such as plug-in boards and disk drives, are sure to follow.
When a company is able to develop the infrastructure fully, it is almost impossible for its product to fail. The product is a certain success even before it reaches the market. Perhaps the best example is 1-2-3, the integrated software product from Lotus Corporation. Once again, Ben Rosen played an influential role. Rosen, who now heads a venture-capital fund, was the primary investor in Lotus. He began talking about the product months before its introduction. Lots of people had early prototypes. ! had one. Many magazine editors had them. We talked to each other about it and the excitement grew. We could hardly wait for the final product to hit the market. By the time of introduction, 1-2-3 was the industry’s worst-kept secret, butalso its most sure-fire success.
