Nobody drags a crowd

There are a few ways to get a product moving, and most launches rely on the first two.

You can push it. Load the distributor, give the shop a better margin, make sure the carton is on the shelf whether anyone asked for it or not. Pushing is efficient. The force goes where you point it.

You can pull it. A discount, a coupon, a prize under the cap. Pulling works too, but the line between you and the shopper keeps going slack and tight. Stop paying and it stops moving.

Both move one thing at a time, and both are tiring, because the effort is all on your side.

Some mornings in New Cairo a group of walkers sets out before the traffic, thirty or forty of them, along the same route. One woman is usually at the front. She is not carrying anyone and she is not hauling anyone behind her. If she stopped to tie a lace, they would not stop. They are there because they want to go where she is going.

That is the third way, and it is a different kind of thing altogether. Leading only works when the people behind you have decided to come. You cannot force that decision, and you do not need to. Once it is made, they bring themselves, and often they bring a friend.

A brand that leads is one that heads somewhere a group of people already wanted to go, and goes first. The shelf and the coupon still matter.

But no amount of pushing or pulling would get forty people out of bed before sunrise.