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May 03, 2005

The Fourth Place?

laptop-man-full.jpg (not me by the way)

What the heck do I mean? Let’s look at each element:

A. Clue-/Hugh-Train and how they make us think differently about providing our stuff

Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, David Weinberger shook things but at the height of the internet bubble by challenging us to think differently about what the internet made possible. The Cluetrain Manefesto challenged business people to think of markets as conversations, between buyers and sellers, where there is real give and take and the opportunity for things to be two way. In markets like this accountability, openness and speed force a whole new level of interaction.

More recently the inimitable Hugh MacLeod, inciting us to take this intimate, accountable, participatory attitude down into the product and brand itself. The Hughtrain manifesto challenges us to think of products as conversations, that they are actually the “product” of both producer and consumer interacting. This can be a great, open, mutually beneficial interaction or a one-sided one. But if the latter, things like tons of brand advertising dollars and other marketing BS are not going to save you in the long run, expectations and information and choice have empowered your customers (and in many cases yoru competitors) too much for those things to be sufficient.

Both of these ideas are great ways of thinking, both in how to create something people want and of how to audit where you really are in delivering it.

B. The third place concept of how a business can help fulfill the deep need for calm and community

Case in point for thinking differently about a business. I wrote this piece during a momentary refuge from “vacationing” my mother in law in Florida (no offense to my wonderful mother-in law or my kids, but once in a while it is nice to get away from family for a bit of peace and quiet). Where? At a Starbucks of course. Why?

Well, Howard Schultz did not turn Starbucks into a global cultural phenomenon by thinking of it as just a coffee business. He clearly thought of his product and his market as a conversation with his customers, not just about coffee but about something much deeper. He thought about it as fulfilling people’s needs for a special place, a place to find refuge, unwind, meet, chat and connect in a more and more fast paced world. A third place.

A guy named Ray Oldenburg (an urban sociologist, oddly enough from Florida) wrote a book called The Great Good Place, in it, he writes about how informal public gathering places are essential to community and public life. He argues that most people have three places in their life that they feel define them: home, work and a third place. And that bars, coffee shops, general stores, and other "third places" are central to local democracy and community vitality. Such places are also called "social condensers" -- an important way in which the community developed and retained cohesion and a sense of identity. The third-place concept has become a buzzword for retailers as a place to aspire to become.

But whether or not Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz coined this concept, he sure did pick it up and run with it. This means thinking about a lot more than the coffee provided but about all aspects of the experience and the surroundings. Thinking beyond just the product to the place where the product happens and making it a desirable place to be, being focused on keeping rather than turning tables, set Starbucks in whole different category from it’s competition and those elements have given the chain one of the highest "user frequencies" of any restaurant operation. Starbucks claims the "average customer" visits a Starbucks outlet more than a dozen times a month.

C. The Fourth Place: the internet and how it could create a different kind of refuge and community

As I sat at Starbucks jotting these ideas down, I also had a wireless internet connection and found myself going to other “places.” Places where I found what I needed or places that gave me a reliable laugh or perspective or places where I could connect with other people. Places on the internet. Some of these places were great, some were confusing and frustrating.

I know I have to go to the internet all the time to find stuff, to find people, to learn etc. But is it really up to the vision of a special, comforting, welcoming place – a la the 3rd place of Starbucks, etc.?

And it hit me. Why can’t the Internet become a 4th place. A place that we’ve never really had before, where we get many of the things that we get from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd places but without the physical limitations. A 4th place where we can feel happy, safe, relaxed and totally connected, on top of ALL the things, information and people we need, anywhere, anytime. This vision seems all the more tantalizing because we don’t quite have it yet. So many things give us a hint of this – search, blogging, shopping, media, gaming. But to what degree have of these things become “places” that we totally look forward to visiting and staying at? I think it’s a mixed bag. With the gigantic pile of stuff out there, the technical complexity, the spyware and viruses, sometimes the internet feels just as much like a place to escape from as a place to escape to.

What would happen if instead of just thinking yourself simply in terms of your product or service – no matter what product or service you offer - instead you were driven by the vision of the internet becoming this 4th place, if you saw your mission to help make the internet exactly that? What would you do, what would you need?

Well, here are a few things I guess I would take from both the Clue/Hugh-train and the Starbucks/3rd place handbook:

So why not aspire to make your business just such a refuge or place? Not a physical one (unless you are in bricks and mortar retail), but rather as a welcome but as a virtual, psychological place, where your customers feel a sense of relief at arriving, where they find exactly what they want, and where they feel a need to keep coming back.

I think we could all use a nice, cozy, 4th place to go to.

Posted by johnza at May 3, 2005 01:13 PM

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» The 4th Place - Exactly! from Dig Tank
John Zagula's post on the Marketing Playbook Blog entitled "The 4th Place" is one of the best things I have... [Read More]

Tracked on May 4, 2005 06:11 AM

» The 4th Place - Exactly! from Dig Tank
John Zagula's post on the Marketing Playbook Blog entitled "The 4th Place" is one of the best things I have... [Read More]

Tracked on December 17, 2005 09:25 AM

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