The Art of Marketing: Social Media and Word of Mouth
Seth Godin on "Leadership and Creativity"
Advertising is about interrupting as often as possible average people with our average product. As long as we make more than we spent on production, media, etc., the cycle continues: ads -----> distribution -----> profit (and back around again). If you are going to interrupt everybody, then you better sell something everybody wants.
Now there are 30K products in a supermarket and 17K new ones introduced each year. Previously, there were four television channels. Now there is satellite radio, Comcast, Facebook (where everybody is their own channel), etc.
In the past, ads didn't have to be good. You just needed to buy a lot of them.
Remarkable means worth making a remark about. Creating something that somebody wants to talk about it the toughest adjustment for people to make.
Rather than mass-market, you have to make something for a specific sub-segment. Permission is the only asset that you can build now. You won't get opt-ins for an average product.
Anticipated, personal, relevant. Somebody has to pick you.
There have been four revolutions in recent history.
- Cheap energy (175 years ago)
- Cheap output from factories
- Cheap media
- Cheap connections
Think about what is more scarce? Who's willing to listen?
This leads to tribes. We like being in common, in synch and aligned with the group. In politics, people often vote for the winner versus the candidate we wanted.
Do you have to invent something or just show up to lead? Ask yourself, who is my tribe? Freaks and weirdos are better markets because normal doesn't want to hear from you. Instead, you have to go to the edge.
Here's an exercise: hold your hand up as high as you can. Now reach a little higher. Hey, what's up with that? The reality is that we have been taught to hold back a little because our experience is that someone is just going to raise the bar on us.
