Equal Does Not Result In Better

I'll show how this relates to commerce in a moment.

Ok - NASCAR - last Sunday, they raced at Martinsville. A fun track. A half mile. Too many cars for the track. Normally cars are passing, and more importantly, cars are being lapped all over the place. Action. But on Sunday, nobody wrecked, nobody passed, and consequently nothing happened. Fans are fed up. NASCAR created a new car a few years ago where most of the car cannot be adjusted and the parts are the same for every car. In other words, the cars are the same. And if the cars are the same, they go the same speed, which means nobody can pass. Boring.

An analytics person simulated where the 15 fastest cars would have finished if they all ran their median lap time over the final 50 laps.

Yeah, they're all running the same speed.

Three years ago the spring race was loved by the fans. Here's where the fastest 15 cars would have finished if they all ran their median lap over the final 50 laps.

See what you can do when you simulate results? It's a shame that the e-commerce world chooses to not embrace simulation environments.

Anyway, if everything is the same, then everything is boring. Nothing happens.

Which brings us to e-commerce.

Is there anything more boring than the mis-guided vendor-fueled thought-leader-promoted consultant-driven research-endorsed omnichannel thesis? Same price / same experience / same promos / same merchandise / same presentation / same everything in all channels.

BORING!

When things got really boring (mid-2010s), customers revolted ... they walked away from retail, killing malls ... they migrated from e-commerce to Amazon and have not looked back.

Omnichannel!

Sameness plagues my industry. You use PLAs and Paid Social to find new customers, paying third parties for the same handful of customers who are gullible when reached by those platforms. When I ask you to think outside of PLAs / Search / Paid Social, you look at me like I am an alien. Then you go back to the same analytics tools and look at the data the same way and wonder why you can't break out of the muck?

You're all the same. It's an industry-wide plague.

Results are tepid.

Customers are bored.

Amazon / Target / Walmart / Apple benefit as a consequence.

There's a reason Kaitlyn Clark was so compelling in Women's College Basketball this season. She was different. She played the game like an NBA point guard, she shot like Steph Curry.

Different.

Different is good!