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Guy Kawasaki has an interesting post on an experiment by the Washington Post. (original article) It seems that they took a world class violin prodigy playing a $3.5 million dollar violin and plunked him down in a subway station acting like a street musician. Dressed in regular clothes and a baseball cap with the open violin case at his feet he played some of the worlds most challenging violin pieces. So what was the result? So how much did he earn? Keep in mind that he usually sells out concert halls for $100 bucks a seat for the good ones? He made a staggering $32… (chech out the video on the Washington Post site)

Besides being a pretty good experiment on how context affects people’s perception, it is a good learning experience for marketers. You can have a world class service of product, but if you are selling it in the wrong place to the wrong crowd, you will be sorely dissapointed. How many times have we heard “Why isn’t this selling, it is the best performance product on the market?” Maybe you are trying to sell it to the wrong crowd or in the wrong context. Maybe your prospective customers are like the subway patrons that have no use for entertainment as their sole objective when they encounter the service  is getting to work.

A second take on this is to consider the fact that there was probably a subway musician in the same subway system that morning that cleared more than $32. Why was he more sucessfully financially while our virtuoso would be hard pressed to pay for a day of parking  in the downtown area?  Was it the tailoring of his music and “act” to the audience at hand? Did he play music that was recognizable to his audience? Did he “ham it up” for the audience to provide a laugh on the usually stressful trip to work?

• Where in your business or industry does context and experience affect the profitability or sucess of your product or service?
• Are you unsuccessfully trying to sell a product or service designed for one geography or context into one that isn’t as receptive?
• How do you use context or experience to increase your profit on a product or service?

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