A Wormhole To The Consumer
For those of you who remember the 90’s era horror film Event Horizon, the concept of a wormhole should be familiar. Space and time are bent between two distant points and a tunnel is created as a shortcut, like a worm boring a hole through the center of Newton’s apple.
In the movie, the Event Horizon is the first spaceship capable of punching such a hole between far-flung locations in the universe, taking its maiden voyage to the Proxima Centauri system—a journey that wouldn’t be possible without the wormhole.
In the new age of marketing, information is a wormhole bridging entities that have historically been separated by barriers. When I left the booze business back in 2018 and went to work for a health-tech start-up, we referred to patients as the wormhole between data and the cure for rare diseases. If patients were in control of their own health records, rather than hospitals and other bureaucratic entities, they could openly share their data to get faster access to treatment, cutting out the unnecessary middlemen.
When it comes to the booze business, product information and digital content have become a direct wormhole between the producer and the end consumer. For as long as alcohol has been legally sold, there have been countless middlemen taking their cut along the way in exchange for their role in the ecosystem. Importers, distributors, rectifiers, brokers, sales teams, marketing teams, delivery drivers, bartenders, and retailers have long played their part in the branding exercise.
But since the advent of the internet and the flow of direct information to the consumer, countless companies, industries, and enterprises that have traditionally relied on wholesalers and mediators to sell their products have begun to eschew these services. With a direct line to their customers, a wormhole has been established and the demand for intermediates is decreasing. With more and more consumers making buying decisions on their phones rather than in person, the need for a go-between has become far more logistical than transactional.
If you need an example, Sazerac’s recent move to Reyes Holdings in California is a clear sign of this phenomenon in action. While I won’t pretend to be privy to the ins and outs of that decision, two things are crystal clear:
Sazerac products have been selling themselves for years based entirely off consumer demand.
Given that demand, Sazerac could save a lot of money by hiring a logistical team rather than a highly-commissioned sales team.
Whether those are the exact reasons for Sazerac’s move, I can’t say for sure. But what I do know is that Sazerac found the consumer wormhole years ago, went through it, and emerged a stronger company as a result.
Wormholes may be theoretically dangerous, but conceptually they’re a shorter, more efficient way to a goal. While things didn’t work out too well for the crew of the Event Horizon, I see a more positive future for brands that can establish a direct contact to their customers and continue to erode the middle ground.
-David Driscoll