What Comes After Success?

For more than a decade, Jim Taylor and Watts Wacker have been traveling companions on a journey into the future. They are alike in many ways: insatiably curious, perpetually mobile, consciously provocative. But Taylor, 49, has always been the more "executive" of the two. Over the last 20 years, he's held senior positions with E.F. Hutton, Ernst & Young, Yankelovich Partners, and Hill & Knowlton.

Last March, Taylor entered the world of high technology, taking a position as senior vice president for global marketing at Gateway 2000, the fast growing computer manufacturer based in North Sioux City, South Dakota. Gateway is a classic story of the Digital Age. Chairman and CEO Ted Waitt started the company in 1985, when he was just 22, and sold his first computers literally out of a barn. Today it is one of the world's leading computer suppliers, with annual revenues of roughly $5 billion and 9,000 employees. Founder Waitt, now a ripe old 33, is worth $1.7 billion.

Gateway differentiates itself by its strategic model and brand identity. The company sells nearly all its products directly to consumers -- a distribution channel it dominates along with arch rival Dell. But Gateway has also nurtured a distinct public image -- an emotional connection with customers that reflects its offbeat marketing and Midwestern sensibilities.

Gateway's ads, which often star the company's employees, are famous for their self-deprecating humor. The boxes in which the company ships its computers, like the walls of the factories where it makes them, are covered with black-and- white spots borrowed from Holstein cows.

Jim Taylor joined Gateway to help it prepare for the future -- to apply the blue-sky ideas he's developed with Watts Wacker to the in-the-trenches realities of digital competition. Fast Company visited Taylor in South Dakota to explore how his idea agenda is shaping Gateway's future marketing agenda.

Communities of Strangers

You've come to Gateway to help position the company for the next round of competition. What will it take to win in the future?

The future of the personal computer is as a tool to connect what Watts and I call "communities of strangers." These are people linked together based on common ideas and values -- shared identity -- rather than social proximity. This is an absolutely revolutionary change. By using the computer to find people who share your views, you can live in whatever kind of world you want. Reality is no longer a defined constant. It is a choice.

How does that translate into how people live?

There are lots of kids today whose best friends are people they've never met. They spend 20 hours a week in chat rooms with other kids. Over time, as they share their interests and lives, they develop a shared identity -- a real sense of community that has nothing to do with where they live.

It's a difficult adjustment for parents. A father sits down with his kid and says, Who's your best friend?" And the kid says, "Sabbir from Bangladesh." The father says, "But what about Jake next door?" And the kid says, "I don't have anything in common with him." The father is mystified, "How can you have something in common with a kid in Bangladesh and nothing in common with the kid next door?"

But that's exactly the point. Politically, the world is still organized around geographic entities called countries. Socially, it's reorganizing itself around shared collective interests -- communities of strangers with their own language, rituals, heroes, icons. We want to create relationships that make us a partner with these communities. We want to help manage their sense of connectedness.

What does that mean for marketing?

It means that how you characterize communities of strangers becomes one of your most important strategic insights. It also means that if you want to reach these communities, you'd better speak their language.

Let me give you an example. One of our most important market segments is what we call the "enthusiast" population. But there are several different enthusiast populations, and they each relate in a different way to their computers. For "avant garde hackers," the PC is a tool. But for "scientistic enthusiasts," the PC is an intimate reference point for life experience itself. Both of these communities are intense Web users. Both believe you can't be part of the future unless you believe in the power of technology. But we have to talk to them each differently. Our job is to identify distinct communities, figure out where they gather and what they care about, and talk to them using messages that address their specific needs.