Polyvore: A Consumer of Everything

I stumbled on another social media site this week called Polyvore.com. I love the name. You have to think about it for a second; a carnivore is an animal that eats other animals, a herbivore eats only plants and an omnivore eats both plants and animals. You get it. So, logically a POLYvore just eats anything and everything it sees...rocks, trees, people, cars, etc.

According to the site, "Polyvore is a unique web application that lets people mix and match images from anywhere." Young consumers' passion for fashion and their insatiable appetite to engage & share what they have (or want to have) makes this site a huge movement in social preference marketing. For a very long time, marketers have been trying to figure out what people are thinking when they buy things...and what things they buy along with other things. Remember the Jetta Trek? Seemed logical at the time, but I wonder how much research money was spent deciding how many people would actually be more likely to buy a car if it had a bike attached to it. In my own experience, I have helped spend a ton of company money conducting studies and focus groups to figure out how our product fits into the lives of consumers. A popular tactic among researchers is to place a blank piece of paper in front of a consumer, along with a fashion magazine, and ask them to create a collage. (This particular exercise might cost you about $30,000 for the moderator's time.) "You have 10 minutes...go." Then the researcher shows it to you (weeks later) and says, "isn't this an interesting collage that Sally put together?"

This trend is apparently so prevalent in business today that I've even been asked to create a collage at work to show what I think a particular consumer group looks like. But now I don't need to guess. I have about a bazillion collages to choose from on this crazy site called Polyvore. It isn't a little focus group with a few moms and a stack of fashion magazines on the table to tear apart. It's a pool of global consumers (in an age bracket with the largest buying power ever seen in human history) with a virtually unlimited amount of visual assets to choose from. The best part is, these consumers are providing researchers more information than they could ever imagine...without even thinking about it. Teens are spending hours creating these pieces of art with products and brands that have become a part of their lives. They even make contests out of them. Sadly, I imagine there are market research professionals who have no idea this information exists...or possibly write it off as a kooky bunch of kids playing digital scrapbook.

I browse these pages, I see how this technology allows consumers to grab whatever they "want" and make personal stories out of them...and I am completely amazed.

I think next year I will save a few hundred thousand dollars on market research and look to sites like Polyvore.com and the wisdom of crowds.