In April 2016, Beyoncé released Lemonade as an exclusive on Tidal, and the platform reported 1.2 million sign-ups in its first week against a base of 3 million users disclosed the previous month, at a time when Spotify held 30 million paying subscribers and Apple Music held 13 million.
One album had moved more people into Tidal in seven days than the service had managed in its entire first year.
Tidal sat in a category that had reached the limits of meaningful engineering differentiation, since Spotify and Apple Music already performed the core function of streaming music and any improvement Tidal made to its service would have been copied within a season. No new story remained to be told about music streaming either, which left the company with no reason of its own to give a listener for choosing it, so the reason had to arrive from outside the product in the form of a Beyoncé.
Nike in 1984 needed a Beyoncé too, and the reason was different. Nike had a shoe with genuine engineering differentiation, and it had believers in the serious runners and athletes who cared about the difference in the shoe because they could feel it, and who validated the claim before it was widely known. That audience existed before any major figure was involved, and it was the moat. What Nike needed was a way to take a position already earned with the people who mattered and put it in front of the mainstream, and it got its Beyoncé: Michael Jordan.
A company entering a market holds no market share, so no consumer has a reason to choose it yet, and that reason has to come from somewhere, with the type of product determining where and when the attention will come from.
A differentiated product is one where a genuine difference between it and other product in the same category in the marketplace exists, and that differentiation can come from many places. Engineering is one, and it describes a real capability competitors cannot match. Story is another, and it describes a narrative that operates independently of the physical product and carries weight in a consumer’s decision. Either frontier standing open is sufficient to give a company a position to defend, and because the two close independently of each other, one can remain available after the other has been exhausted.
Canada Goose illustrates the engineering frontier while it was genuinely open, because the company built jackets for people going to the Arctic and the North Pole, competitors could not produce the same article, and the credibility was earned with the people who needed that jacket in conditions that would kill them, which meant those people were the believers and they existed before any major figure was involved.
An undifferentiated product sits in a category that has reached the limits of meaningful engineering differentiation, where a competitor cannot add much and anything added gets copied, so no capability introduced becomes a durable reason to choose the company. No new story remains to be told either, so repeating an existing one separates the company from nobody.
This is not the same as generic, because an undifferentiated product can be excellent and quality that competitors can match gives a consumer no reason to prefer one supplier over another. The category has run out of reasons to be chosen, and it reached that state because the frontiers closed rather than because the product failed. Water is the clearest case, since the product is water and the narratives around purity, health, and hydration have been used many times, no new engineering can make water more water. Similarly, electric vehicles show the closure of engineering and story at once, there is no meaningful difference between EVs (that is why people can choose by brand), and there is no new reason why EVs exist.
This is where a Beyoncé comes in
A Beyoncé is any external agent that arrives carrying an audience, whether an individual, an event, a cultural moment, or a structural shift. COVID was a Beyoncé for Zoom, the purchase of Twitter was a Beyoncé for Threads and Mastodon, and Ronaldo’s move to the Saudi league was a Beyoncé for that league, because in each case something outside the business carried an audience and a business positioned to receive it obtained attention it could not have generated alone. The function does one of two jobs, amplifying where differentiation exists and becoming the differentiation itself where none does.
And this is where Michael Jordan comes in
Nike had the shoe and it had the believers, since serious runners and athletes were the organic audience and they cared about the difference in the shoe because they could feel it, which meant that audience was the moat and it existed before any major figure was involved. What the company needed was a Beyoncé to carry that position to the mainstream, and Michael Jordan was that Beyoncé. He took a position Nike had already earned with the people who mattered and placed it in front of a mass audience, and because the believers existed first, the mainstream audience landed on ground that held. A differentiated product builds the organic audience of people who value the differentiation before it goes wide, the Beyoncé arrives after that foundation exists, and the audience the figure brings converts into an asset the company keeps, which is why the growth compounds.
Tidal had no engineering frontier left and no story to tell, so it had no believers to cultivate because there was no difference for them to value, and there was nothing to wait for because time cannot produce what the category does not contain. The company had to reach everyone, which meant the Beyoncé had to arrive immediately. The Lemonade exclusive gave Beyoncé’s existing audience a direct reason to enter the platform and 1.2 million sign-ups followed in a week.
Going back to water, Liquid Death, a bottled water company, operates in a category with no engineering frontier, since there is no meaningful change to the product one can do, and an exhausted primary story. The company built a secondary story through distinctive identity around an antithetical disruptive story, creating relevance and recognition through culture, identity, and attention, and constructing a layer around the water that carries a position the product itself cannot. A company facing a closed category can build its own attention-generating asset when no external one is available, and the culture surrounding a product can hold a position as firmly as any engineering advantage, with the difference from Tidal lying in ownership, since Liquid Death built the asset and keeps it while Tidal rented one.
Recently, On, the Swiss athletic shoe company, has moved into football, a category where there is no meaningful engineering or story gains left. So On got a Beyonce: Kylian Mbappe.
When a company needs a Beyoncé
A company entering a category where it holds nothing at all needs a Beyoncé for recognition, because without one it is invisible in a category where the incumbents already occupy every position worth occupying. On is this. The category has no meaningful engineering or story gains left, and the company arriving has no position, no believers, and no history with the customer. Recognition is what the Beyoncé supplies, and whether anything more comes of it depends on whether On can build something around the product before the attention it bought runs out.
Nike before 1984 shows the case where a Beyoncé is not required immediately. The company had real revenue, a defensible position, and believers who were enough to sustain the business.
Market entry begins from the absence of any reason for a consumer to choose a company, and the product determines where that reason comes from and when a major figure is deployed. A differentiated product supplies the reason from within itself, through engineering or through story, and either frontier standing open is enough, so that reason can be established with an organic audience of the people who value the differentiation before it is broadcast more widely. An undifferentiated product supplies no reason of its own, because the category has reached the limits of meaningful engineering differentiation so any capability introduced will be copied, and no new story remains to be told, which means the company has no foundation for an organic audience to form around and no amount of time will produce one. External attention becomes the entry mechanism itself and has to be acquired immediately, which means the Beyoncé cannot wait. Attention is obtained from outside the business and directed towards a product in both cases, and what determines the outcome is what that attention lands on, since where it lands on differentiation the audience becomes an asset the company retains and where it lands on nothing the audience becomes a spike that must be repurchased indefinitely.
The question is never whether a company needs a Beyoncé but when.
