By Jim McCarthy Jan 30, 2009 0 comments

The Future is a Niche Market, Cirque-Comes-To-Santa-Monica edition

There’s official word today that Cirque Du Soleil is coming to the Santa Monica Pier next year!  I’ve heard rumblings of this for a while, but it’s great to have it confirmed.

Cirque Du Soleil is a great example of building a niche.  You might know that the organization started as street performers in Montreal and grew to a truly impressive performing arts organization.  I visited their World Headquarters in Montreal back in February, and it’s a site to behold.

First of all, it’s like a city.  It goes on for acres and acres.  They put it in one of the most rundown parts of Montreal with the specific intent of improving the neighborhood with jobs and parks and more.  They’ve planted fruit orchards and vegetable gardens on the property, so a lot of the food that fuels this army of weird, wonderful creative types is grown right there.

The parking lot is paved not with tar, but with some kind of vegetable oil based substance, so I’m told that in summer when it’s hot (it’s Montreal, so “hot” means something different than it does in Pasadena, let me tell you), the parking lot supposedly smells like French Fries.  Or perhaps since it’s in Quebec, they just say it smells like Fries.

I say all that to say that any organization that’s got something valuable to express and good leadership behind it is an acorn with the potential to be as grand as Cirque is.

But it starts with a niche.  Cirque Du Soleil seems like a mass appeal product now, but that’s because they did such a good job building a powerful niche around the non-traditional circus.  It seems like blockbuster, crowd-pleasing stuff now, but in 1984, an animal-free circus featuring mainly lithe French-Canadian men contorting themselves in interesting ways while festively costumed was not nearly as obvious a winner.

The future is a niche audience, but some niches grow bigger than others.  You might not think of the National Football League as having a niche audience, but you’re wrong.  It’s just a really, really big one they’ve grown successfully over 75 years.

If you’re thinking niche, what does that mean to you?  How can you be even more meaningful to your niche?

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