Less Is More

‘3 Feet High and Rising’ by De La Soul is one of the most influential hip-hop albums ever created.

It’s also an album that was essentially impossible to stream until about 2023, as it was tied up in a sampling lawsuit that kept it off digital platforms for almost 30 years. And yet its reputation only grew stronger…

People sought it out on vinyl, paying $170 or more for the original vinyl. Used CDs and cassettes were hard to find, and people talked about the album as if it were a secret. The algorithm couldn’t possibly surface it, so the people who knew it became the distribution.

It got me thinking about scarcity in marketing. We’re so conditioned to maximize reach and availability that we rarely consider what absence can do for a brand. The thing you can’t easily get often becomes the thing people most want. I’ve seen it with this release, with many other albums, toys, and, of course, video game consoles.

De La Soul didn’t choose to have their album unavailable for streaming, but the lesson holds anyway. Sometimes, the most powerful thing a brand can do is make people work a little to find it. (They can also thank The Turtles)

Are you making something worth seeking out?