Field of Dreams or Field of Morons? Using Ghetto Testing to Avoid Loser Products.

In the movie Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner plays a farmer living in rural Iowa, who hears a voice while walking through his cornfield; “If you build it, he will come” (ofter misquoted “If you build it, they will come”) and sees a vision of a baseball field.  Kevin’s character Ray Kinsella plows under his corn and builds the field.  We all know the story.  In the end THEY come; the ghosts of ball players past, including Shoeless Joe Jackson.  And finally in the ending you see miles of car loads of everyday people coming to the field.

The car loads of people come because (if you follow the story line) Ray’s field offers real innovative tangible value, in this case peace.  As the character Terrance Mann says in the movie, “They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack.”  Whoa; that is a marketers dream!

Read the rest of this article by Tim O’Connor, the CMO of PCDI/Ashworth.