One of the most basic economic principles is supply and demand. The more you have in supply, the less the demand. Shelves stuffed with products tell a potential customer "There's plenty. I can always buy later." But the converse is also true. When supply goes down, demand goes up. Watch what happens at the cookie counter at Panera when there are just two more chocolate chip cookies. The customer doesn't want to buy two cookies…but they are the LAST two cookies and she buys them both. One for now and one for later. This is probably tied back to some small primal part of our brain that causes us to want to stockpile for later.
For a long time, Disney has created scarcity by taking their most popular titles off the shelves for a period of time. Their "Platinum Collection" made up of what Disney calls their crown jewels (movies like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Cinderella, 101 Dalmations, The Lion King and others) are only re-released one at a time, once a year. By pulling their most popular titles off the shelf, they create demand. And by rationing this out over a period of years they dramatically increase the shelflife of their movies.
Hmm. That's just counter-intuitive enough to be interesting. What if you took your most popular product or program and took it off the shelf this year? What if you took your most popular event and only made it available to half as many people? What if instead of saying "come to our special event," you said, "there are only going to be 50 spots available for this event?"
When it's all about being remarkable (people don't talk or spread ideas about boring or usual stuff) applying this kind of counter-intuitive thinking is just the ticket for your next staff meeting or board meeting. Will it work? I don't know. But these are days where you can't afford to keep doing the same thing and expect different results.
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