There’s no other industry like ours.

Consumer electronics manufacturers are blessed to have a wide pool of analysts, media, and early adopters to spread the word about new products. There’s a built-in structure — including blogs, message boards, even Twitter — with which most of the industry introduces products. We’re extremely luck that this is so.

What other consumer industry enjoys such a deep infrastructure filled with passionate fans?  Not the food industry. Not the finance industry. (A new loan product, for example, doesn’t generate much consumer passion.) Perhaps the fashion and auto industries enjoy some built-in buzz creators, but on a MUCH smaller scale.

Many consumers are enthusiastically interested in technology. Some follow the tech industry with the same passion that they follow their local sports team. This is a big deal, and we’re very lucky to be in this position.

Thing is, while most manufacturers are excellent at reaching the early adopters — they’re the people reading the gadget blogs and message boards — you’re far less effective at reaching mainstream consumers. It’s easy to get to the early adopters. The moms and dads, with jobs and mortgages and soccer games, they’re much harder to talk to.

It’s a different process to reach them. They’re harder.

They consume different medias. They read, watch and listen to mainstream medias.

Which is why so many new products — the majority! — fizzle out after reaching the early adopters. After taking advantage of the built-in “new product enthusiast” infrastructure, most manufacturers are not successful at reaching mainstream consumers.

Most manufacturers don’t know what consumers actually want from their products. (That’s a stunning sentence, actually.)

Early adopters are easy.

But mainstream consumers are the key to success in our industry.

The mainstream is where you money is. Reach them.