The Four Horsemen are vertical. Few brands have been able to
maintain an aspirational positioning without controlling a large
portion of their distribution. Samsung is never going to be that cool,
not if it continues to depend on AT&T, Verizon, and Best Buy stores.
Remember where you used to go get your Apple computer fixed fifteen
years ago? There was a guy who looked like he’d never kissed a girl but
was a pro at fantasy adventure games. He stood at a counter in front of
piles of gutted computer parts, next to stacks of Macworld magazine.
Apple sensed the shift and put people in blue shirts, titled them
“genius,” and set them in places that brought Apple products to life—
spaces whose materials reinforced how special and elegant Apple
products are. Apple stores today are intentionally beautiful; they
remind you that Apple, and those who purchase its products, “get it.”
6. AI
The sixth factor in the T Algorithm is a company’s access to, and
facility with, data. A trillion-dollar company must have technology that
can learn from human input and register data algorithmically—
Himalayas of data that can be fed into algorithms to improve the
offering. The technology then uses mathematical optimization that, in
a millisecond, not only calibrates the product to customers’ personal,
immediate needs but improves the product incrementally every time a
user is on the platform for other concurrent and future customers.
Marketing historically can be parsed into three major shifts
regarding how potential customers were targeted. The first era was
demographic targeting. Thus, white forty-five-year-old guys living in
the city, in theory, will all act, smell, and sound alike, so they must all
like the same products. That was the basis of most media buying.
Then, for a hot minute, it went to social targeting, in which
Facebook tried to convince advertisers if two people, regardless of
their demographics, “like” the same brand on Facebook, they are
similar and should be grouped/targeted by those advertisers. That
turned out to be total bullshit. All it meant was they all shared the
action of clicking “Like” on a Facebook brand page, and that was about