Innovation Knows No Bounds
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009Read any savvy business article and it will say that companies would find ways to keep innovating, because in bad times innovation is what keeps you in the game—whether legal or illegal.
Contrary to popular opinion, most drug lords are concerned about the same functions as other businesses—production, logistics and especially marketing.
In an article last year, Chris Harrison, chief illicit laboratory chemist at the Arkansas lab said, “The drug cartels operate just like any other corporation would — if they want to increase their market share, then they’re going to have to change something about it. This is just an evolution. They’ve saturated the heavy users, now they are moving onto some other people.”
Meth may be extraordinarily profitable, but it tastes horrible—bitter, not particularly enticing and it’s illegal—which makes expanding your customer base difficult.
So the crooks have turned to innovation, adding color to emulate rock candy and fine-tuning the taste to increase the market.
These are classic approaches used by consumer products companies for decades to attract new customers—prunes became dried plums and the market exploded.
Dried plums are far more consumer friendly—as is meth that is sweet and tastes like strawberries or chocolate.
The innovations started a couple of years ago in small test markets, Idaho, Nevada, Missouri, Texas, Wisconsin, California, New Mexico, Minnesota and Washington state (where I live—oh joy), but thanks to a stupid hoax email are likely to spread.
The hoax email says that bags of “Strawberry Quick,” a type of meth that looks like rock candy, are being tossed into school playgrounds to hook the kids.
No, that’s not being done—yet.
But I have to wonder if the people who created the hoax cared that today’s hoax could become tomorrow’s drug marketing phenomenon.
After all,
- consumer marketing has been using give-a-ways to introduce people to their products for decades; and
- drug dealers have email, too—and they are big on innovation.
Image credit: Live?Laugh?Love on flickr