Peripheral Vision: How The Edges Pay Off Double
Bratz x Jean Paul Gaultier Limited-Edition Collector Doll
Remember Bratz dolls? They were more Kylie Jenner than Barbie. They were Instagram face eight years before instagram existed, and nearly two decades before the term was first coined.
They were everywhere. They're also back again. But mostly, they’re a perfect example of why brands that don’t scan the periphery fail.
Between 2001 and 2004, Mattel lost 20% share to entrants like Bratz, because they didn’t see the shift happening around them.
For decades, Barbie had reigned unchallenged. But as culture evolved, Mattel stood still. Pre-teen girls were maturing more quickly, and Barbie started to feel babyish as these young girls’ preferences shifted toward dolls styled after their teenaged siblings and the pop stars that dominated the airwaves.
This was the era of Britney and Xtina, and the lines were being blurred between teen pop and adult sexuality.
In response to declining share, Mattel scrambled with edgier spin-offs like My Scene and Flavas, but by then Bratz had already seized the opportunity. Mattel missed the boat, and their spin-offs flopped.
There are countless stories like this one in the storied history of brands:
Anheuser-Busch jumped on the low-carb trend early with Michelob Ultra in 2002. Coors Light never recovered, and today Ultra is the #1 selling beer in the U.S. by volume.
Gillette once held 70% of the razor market. Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s cut in from the edges. Today Gillette’s share is at least 20% lower.
Igloo and Coleman sold cheap coolers, focusing on volume. YETI built $300 tanks for hunters, and now it owns the premium end of the market and has expanded well beyond.
What these stories share is a pervasive lack of peripheral vision. Companies so focused on the middle, and optimizing for today, that they were embarrassingly unprepared for tomorrow…
… Which feels like the exact moment that so many brands are in right now. They’re deliberately sitting back, passive and noncommittal, and facing puzzling business conditions.
We live in a moment that demands movement. And companies with strong peripheral vision will win. Not because they can predict the future, but because they’re willing to explore what others ignore, and to chase more than the most immediate of incremental gains.
But here’s the thing: The peripheral vision payoff multiplies quickly.
When it comes to research at the edges, you actually gain TWICE the insight because you’re doing double duty:
Yes, you see the future sooner. But you also learn more about the present. This kind of exploration always uncovers motivations, unmet needs, and learning you might have otherwise missed, allowing you to learn from the edges and apply back to the middle.
This second part comes up on our intro calls all the time: How do you extrapolate from the edges back to the middle?
Here are a couple of recent examples from our world:
Friction Over Frequency
Outlier behaviour surfaces around friction - where needs go unmet, or norms are rejected. That tension always simmers quietly in the middle too.
→ We learned lots in some recent client work, for example, about the unmet emotional needs of younger athletes by speaking to older athletes with outlier profiles.
Revealing Thresholds
Outliers push boundaries and see what average people don’t. They can help you map the edges of possibility, giving you a read on the next horizon. Is this a forward-looking idea, or are we out to lunch?
→ A proposal we recently shared with a prospective client explored brand stretch by comparing how everyday snackers versus outliers generated and responded to provocative brand extensions.
Stress-Testing For The Real World
Every brand or area of interest has a loud minority at the periphery - people with outsized opinions, intense loyalty, or pointed critique. They’re not representative, but they’re not irrelevant either.
→ We’ve been having conversations with all sorts of brands that are frustrated with messaging that tests well in controlled settings, but winds up not working as planned because of how messages travel and opinions are formed in today’s media landscape.
Research at the edges isn’t really about the outlier characters themselves. It has more to do with the tensions, thresholds and truths that average people can’t quite articulate yet.
When you understand the edges, the middle starts to make a whole lot more sense. Ignore the edges at your peril. Nobody wants to be the next brand that was blind to obvious signals of change.