We don’t always get the memes we deserve. When a good thing gets a bad label, you invest in a better one. The used car market has a ‘lemon’ problem (Akerlof). Lemons are cars that are found to be defective after being sold. Buyers have to factor in that risk, which drags down the price of all used cars – even those in good condition. The solution is attaching a better meme – the brand name of a dealership. They invest in advertising, rent a prime location lot, and have full time employees: all things that wouldn’t make sense if they planned on selling one dud car before disappearing. They’re signalling willingness to be held to a higher standard, reducing risk and earning a higher price.
We see this in the job market whenever a profession develops a ‘lemon’ problem. After marketers wasted millions on billboards in the first dotcom bubble, marketers in Silicon Valley rebranded as ‘growth hackers’. This was a signal that they were willing to be held to measurable short-term results. This only works if the label is costly, and can’t be easily faked. A job with ‘hacker’ in the title isn’t a feasible option for a ‘serious’ marketer with a track record driving long term value for Fortune 500 brands. Which works perfectly, because these are precisely the people Start-ups want to avoid. These semantic schisms occur in every discipline breaking ties with the past: Business Analysts become Data Scientists, Software Engineers become Full-Stack Developers and Sales Reps become Customer Success. If your meme gets polluted, it’s time to rebrand.
| Name | Link | Type |
|---|---|---|
Growth hacking was invented with a mint julep and two beers | Blog | |
How Are Job Titles Changing Over Time? | Blog | |
Information Economics - The Market for Lemons | Reference | |
The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism | Paper |