Harbingers

Jason Kottke has a fascinating post about harbingers, "people who are out of sync with the rest of society." Since the paper is from B-school professors, it is focused on people who are out of sync with their purchases. There is a predictability in the people who embrace new products that will eventually fail. When marketers find out that these people like the new product, it is a bad harbinger for that product.

The part that really caught my attention was the geographic phenomenon of harbinger zip codes. These are places where doomed products (like Crystal Pepsi) thrive. What else could could harbinger zip codes tell us? What made them that way? Could they help us identify development patterns to avoid?

While the research paper does not single out Harbinger, NC, but it would be amazing if it were in a harbinger zip code.