The Case For Brand Scarcity In An Era Of Abundance And Accessibility

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By: Forbes

We live in a time of abundance. Advances in technology have torn down barriers of acquisition and made it possible to receive most any good or piece of media with the simple click of a button. In terms of convenience, this returns an unprecedented amount of hours back to our everyday lives as we no longer are required to go on time-consuming hunts for goods. But, now that we can have anything we want with very little effort, people seem to want less and less of it. Millennials have long been pegged as non-materialists, preferring experiences to stuff. The super rich are all-in on "access" – a.k.a. experiences money can't buy. For the first time ever people are spending more at restaurants than at grocery stores. What gives? It could be that going to the trouble of obtaining something is half the fun of having it.

Scarcity might be what propelled Noma, a restaurant in Denmark that acquires many of its ingredients through local foraging, to the "best restaurant in the world" slot in 2014 (an appellation whose existence itself was only deemed necessary in the past few years). Noma is hard to get to and impossible to replicate. This might also explain why there is now a race called the Quintuple Anvil in which contestants run five Ironman length triathlons one after another. Just achieving one Ironman has become too easy (216,000 people entered the race last year). On the other hand, very few people can say they've completed five Ironmans back-to-back. The explosion of interest in unique experiences points to a new shift in the way we define ourselves in this new social age where everyone can know what you're doing at all times. The Instagram feed has now become the barometer for a well-curated life. And while posting pictures of new expensive things could be seen as gauche, the images of your children learning to surf in Costa Rica just mean that you are #blessed.

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