Minimum Viable Audience is More Than a Strategy, It’s a Commitment
It's turning the traditional model of business on its head — it’s saying, “It’s not about the money, it’s about art.”
Seth Godin coined the term Minimum Viable Audience (MVA). He asks us, if we sought to serve the minimum audience necessary to sustain our business how would that transform our approach? On the other hand, if we seek to serve a mainstream audience, or even just a large audience, how would we design our product or service?
The answer is that pursuing the MVA compels us to create something unique and compelling, perhaps even meaningful. While pursuing a wider audience requires us to produce an average product for an average audience.
More deeply than the innovative nature of what we create, the minimum viable audience approach is a commitment. While mass marketing is about the numbers — how many units can we sell and how much margin can we generate — MVA is more about craftsmanship, artistry, and service. MVA is the beginning of a cultural revolution in business where we let go of the relentless pursuit of profit, to creating things for an audience who cares about what we care about.
It's not about profit. It’s not even about an egoistic desire of running a successful business. It’s ultimately about meaning and purpose.
Steve Jobs famously said, “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”
Market research is valuable to a point because it doesn’t tell us where we need to go so much as it gives us a read on the past. In other words, how have people responded to things and how do they feel based on what we’ve provided. But it doesn’t tell us what completely new direction they will desire once they see it.
Mostly business strategy is about predictability. It’s about following existing trends that lead us to a predictable finish line. MVA is about charting a new course. More deeply still, it’s about searching for what seeks to emerge from within us and following our passion. It means creating truly unique products and services, or completely new approaches that no one has thought of in quite the same way before.
It's turning the traditional model of business on its head. It’s saying, “It’s not about the money, it’s about art.”
MVA is authentic because it comes from deep within us. It’s not listening to the naysayers. It’s not worrying about whether it will work. It’s about living life as a constantly unfolding adventure that will include many ups and downs, fits and starts, successes and failures. In other words, a wild and exhilarating ride that leads us somewhere.
Where will it lead us? It’s impossible to know, and that’s precisely the point. The only thing we do know is that we’ll learn something and most likely grow individually and collectively.
Our small boutique brand strategy firm limped along for a while until barely perceptible shifts in culture began to emerge and a small number of people began to see the value in our unique approach. We just kept going because we believed in what we were doing. Many times, we would share our approach with people, and it was as if the lights were on but nobody was home. They would smile and be polite, but they had no idea what we were talking about.
Today it’s different. Sure, there are those who don’t get it. Most people don’t really understand what we do, but a small (MVA) does. It took us a while to find them. We just had to trust that they were out there somewhere and that one day we would find our audience, our tribe of fellow travelers who have made the conscious decision to jettison the traditional business model and make art instead.
Our world’s environmental resources have been ravaged by mass marketing of mass products for the sake of shareholder return on investment. MVA gives us a vocabulary for a different path. It’s not just saying flowery things about what we need to do so the world is a better place. It gives us a new structure for doing business, by the mere act of going small to go big.
All it takes is a commitment. Committing ourselves to serving the minimum amount we need to get by, and then watching what happens over time as we water the seedling into a plant, a tree, a forest of positive change.