Seth's Blog

Quality, scale and the regular kind

When we talk about quality, it's easy to get confused.

That's because there are two kinds of quality being discussed. The most common way it's talked about in business is "meeting specifications." An item has quality if it's built the way it was designed to be built.

There's another sort of quality, though. This is the quality of, "is it worth doing?". The quality of specialness and humanity, of passion and remarkability.

Hence the conflict. The first sort of quality is easy to mandate, reasonably easy to scale and it fits into a spreadsheet very nicely. I wonder if we're getting past that.

Consider two eggs:

If I go the local diner, I can get a high quality diner egg, over easy. The egg is a standard manufactured egg, created in quantity by drugged chickens in prison. It retails (raw) for about 14 cents. The egg is cooked on a griddle the way it always is, a grill neither spotless nor filthy, covered with a sheen of slightly old oil. It's cooked on one side until set, flipped for a few seconds, put on a plate, given a shake of iodized salt and served, usually with a piece of generic white bread toast.

This is the regular kind. The kind most people grew up with. Easy to produce on demand, reliable and expected.

If I make an egg at home, I'll use a free range egg from the farmer's market, which I'll happily pay 39 cents for. This egg tastes like an egg, and the extra money pays for a local farmer and a (slightly) happier chicken. I'd cook it in a very hot cast iron skillet with really tasty olive oil, and I'd leave it in longer until it gets crisp around the edges, then I'd put some David's salt on it (which, due to its pointy edges, in fact does taste better). All told, it costs about thirty one cents more altogether.

This is the undependable kind. You might not be able to get the eggs. Cleaning the pan is more work too. But this is a remarkable egg, an egg worth talking about, an egg worth crossing the street for, an egg worth writing about.

If you can do this to an egg for thirty cents, imagine what happens when you bring the same approach to quality to your job.

Best new way to make an internal sale

How do you get your boss to approve something, the customer service people to understand the pain a system is causing or the folks in engineering to see things your way?

Powerpoint was invented for this precise function, and we all know what's become of that.

Here's a new way that's extraordinarily effective: Make a video.

Take a Flip or cheap video camera and interview your customers. Ask them questions and show the answers to your team. Ji Lee at Google masterminded this man on the street interview:


Invest an hour and suddenly, it's not you who's talking, asking, complaining or being ignorant. It's your customers.

The fan chasm

How big is the gap between customer and die-hard fan? In other words, between engaging and loving, between attending and craving?

For World of Warcraft, it's huge. It's very difficult to spend just an hour or two. There's a chasm between encounter and enjoyable experience. Tetris was oriented in precisely the other way--everyone who tried it instantly became almost as smart as an expert.

If you want to be an insider at the Four Seasons restaurant, you might have to go thirty times and spend $3,000 over time. There's a barrier to becoming an insider.

For Star Trek, not so much. After one TV episode, you might not know a Tribble from a Romulan, but you've probably figured out the whole Vulcan thing. Much more approachable, much easier to fake your fanhood.

There are very few products, services or organizations that are simultaneously easily approachable and quite deep. That's an opportunity for you if you can figure out how to be both, but choosing just one is a more likely scenario. So, which are you?

Taking the leap

The best businesses and the best projects are a quantum leap above the competition. This gulf represents competitive insulation, because others can't figure out how to get up there with you.

Amazon, for example, has a leap between it and other online retailers. Sure, you might be able to mimic part of what they've got, but the gulf is so huge, it's hard to imagine displacing them any time soon.

Nike has spent billions on advertising, sponsorship, manufacturing, technology and distribution. It's a quantum leap between them and some start-up that wants to compete.

I think going for the leap is essential for creating a business for the ages, and I want to speculate that there are three ways to make it:

1. BUY IT--you can raise a lot of money or spend a lot of the company's R&D or marketing money and just buy yourself a huge head start and this provides insulation. (This is my least favorite, because spending like a drunken sailor often leads to other drunken behaviors, including remorse the next day).
2. SNEAK UP THE CURVE--you can quietly develop your business fairly cheaply and then, by the time the competition notices you, it's too late. Build a Bear Workshop is a great example of this. One store at a time they built a brand, a cash flow and a nationwide footprint that makes it awfully difficult for others to compete. McDonald's did the same thing.
3. THE NETWORK EFFECT--some markets are ready for one (and usually only one) intermediary to show up and be the default winner. Twitter and Comdex and Alexander Graham Bell are great examples of this.

There are probably some others (like make a genius innovation in your basement and then patent it) but these three are good ones to start with.

The confusion

We frequently confuse internal biochemistry (caused by habits and genetics) with external events. If we didn't, marketing wouldn't work nearly as well.

Our brains are busy processing chemicals that internally change our moods, but find a way to rationalize those mood changes based on events and purchases in the outside world. We often act as though money can buy joy, but of course, it works better when we're joyful in the first place.

We don't say, "I'm genetically pre-disposed to mild depression," or "I haven't exercised in a while and I spend a lot of time watching TV," instead, we say, "I'm disappointed because I don't make enough money and my boss is mean to me." And yet, someone in the very same circumstances seems much happier than we are. And somehow, nothing ever happens in our career that makes everything all right forever.

We don't say, "I'm grouchy because of hormones." Instead, we say, "He deserved that outburst. He was being a jerk." Of course, he was the same guy last week and you sort of liked him.

We don't say, "When I dress and act like the people around me, I can feel safe as a member of their tribe." Instead, we think, "I feel good when I'm with my friends."

We don't say, "I have a very complex relationship with money because my parents spoiled me." Instead, we say, "Hey, the bank gave me a credit card so it's okay to buy things that I deserve."

We don't say, "I eat to drown out the way I feel about my mom," instead we say, "Hey, if it's on a salad bar, it must be good for me. And anyway, next month is my birthday."

The external world is remarkably consistent, and yet we blame it for what's going on inside of us. People who think the world is going to end always manage to find a new thing that's going to cause it to end. People itching to be bummed out all day long will certainly find an external event that give their emotion some causal cover. The thinking happens long before the event that we blame the thinking on.

Products are remarkably similar, yet we use their marketing stories as an extension of our self-image and self-esteem. Should a new phone really make you that happy?

Colleagues are almost always trying to work with us, yet it's easy to blame them when anxiety about other events triggers time-honored patterns in our behavior.

Hang out at the mall two weeks before the prom. Can those items on the rack really pacify the raging anxieties of the teenagers waiting to buy them (or is the social triggers that do it)? Watch McKinsey doing a multimillion dollar consulting gig for a Fortune 500 company. Are they really telling the board something that couldn't have been discovered by a few talented folks in the finance department? Or are they paying for peace of mind?

Marketers spend billions of dollars identifying common biochemical events, and then they launch products and services with stories that align with those events. As a result, we spend money on external forces in an attempt to heal internal pain. Marketers want the equation to be, "if you buy this, everything will be all right."

I wish it were so easy.

Everyone else reads it

The reason the New York Times matters isn't about the delivery of news (it's old by the time it arrives) or even the analysis (which is often spotty or wrong or banal or biased or boring). No, the reason it matters is because everyone else reads it.

That's the reason certain trade shows matter.

Or industry journals or blogs.

You can change the definition of "everyone" and customize it for your industry or passion, but the fact is, we need to read what everyone else is reading in order to have a sense of being in sync. If it's in there, it matters, because everyone else read it.

If a publication like this doesn't exist, go ahead and create it, because you'll profit.

The internet eliminates the friction and the barriers that made it natural for there to be just a few media outlets per sector. This change led to an explosion in choices. But as things settle down, we're busy searching for the thing that 'everyone else' who matters reads.

The moment 'everyone else' stops reading Conde Nast magazines or Publishers Weekly or other trade journals, they fold. It'll happen almost overnight, because reading them in isolation, without a connection to the community just isn't worth it.

What should I do on your birthday?

On July 4, birthday of the USA, we're supposed to blow off fireworks, eat hot dogs and buy a Chevrolet.

On Columbus Day, birthday of an early imperialist, we're supposed to shop and march in a parade.

On Martin Luther King Jr. day, marvelously, we're supposed to participate in a national day of service.

So, what should we do on your birthday?

With all due respect to Hallmark, the idea of sending people cards and presents on their birthday seems both selfish and small-minded. It seems to me that we could think bigger.

On the birthday of your company or brand, what would you like your customers to do?

On your birthday, what should your friends do? Let's say you have a shoe buying fetish. Perhaps on your birthday, your friends could buy shoes--for themselves, not for you. Share the joy, right? Or perhaps buy shoes for their friends?

On my birthday, it would make me really happy if people started a project, launched an idea or engaged in a difficult interaction that made something good happen. Make a difference day.

What's your story?

What to do with special requests

The bike shop is busy in June. If you bring your bike in for a tune up, it will cost $39 and take a week.

A week!

What if someone says, "I have a bike trip coming up in three days, can you do it by then?"

At most bike shops, the answer is a shrug, followed by, "I'm sorry, we're swamped."

The problem with telling people to go away is that they go away. And the problem with treating all customers the same is that customers aren't the same. They're different and they demand to be treated (and are often willing to pay) differently.

So, why not smile and say, "Oh, wow, that's a rush. We can do it, but it's expensive. It'll cost you $90. I know that's a lot, but there you go."

Outcome: Maybe they'll still leave. But maybe they'll happily pay you for the privilege of doing business with you. Why should this be your choice, not theirs?

If you do tax accounting for mid-size businesses, why not offer a special last-minute service? A service in which you process shoeboxes filled with unsorted papers? A service that costs less but happens during your slow season?

There are two really good reasons to turn down special requests:

1. because you're marketing yourself as extremely busy and perfectly willing to turn down good work.

2. because you want to market yourself as someone who is a rigid artist, a stick in the mud or a crotchety perfectionist. This works great for pizza places.

The purpose of a book cover

(and I think it works for lots of products)

Is the purpose of the cover to sell books, to accurately describe what's in the book, or to tee up the reader so the book has maximum impact?

The third.

It's the third because if the book has maximum impact, then word of mouth is created, and word of mouth is what sells your product, not the cover.

Tactically, the cover sells the back cover, the back cover sells the flap and by then you've sold the book. If those steps end up selling a book that the purchaser doesn't like, game over. So you have to be consistent all the way through and end up creating a conversation after the purchase. Books are better at creating conversations than most products (when was the last time you talked about a pool cue), but there's lots of opportunity here, no matter what you make.

Some ways that a book cover can accomplish its mission:

• Iconic (because iconic items tend to signal 'important')
• Noticeable across the room (you see that lots of other people own it, thus making it likely that you'll want to know why)
• Sophisticated (because this helps reinforce that the ideas inside are worthy of your time)
• Original (why bother reading a book you already know)
• Clever
• Funny
• Generic (reminding you of a genre or another book you liked, not generic as in boring)

I don't know about you, but I judge books by their cover every day.

The risk/reward confusion

It's easy to to adopt the policy of avoiding risk at all costs, that whenever possible, the products you launch or the engagements you have should be flawless and without downside.

Here's the problem: in most endeavors, a small increase in risk can double the reward. It's the second doubling of reward that brings serious risk with it. But the first leap is relatively painless.

In the chart above, notice that going from point A to point B brings almost no incremental risk. It might feel scary, but rationally, it's not. Doubling reward again from B to C, though, brings significant incremental risk. It's this second doubling that gets you through the Dip, that leads to a breakthrough, that makes you remarkable.

But I'm not even talking about that. I'm just hoping you'll warm up by making the tiny leap of avoiding all risk. Riskless is hardly worth your effort.

Malcolm is wrong

I've never written those three words before, but he's never disagreed with Chris Anderson before, so there you go.

Free is the name of Chris's new book, and it's going to be wildly misunderstood and widely argued about.

The first argument that makes no sense is, "should we want free to be the future?"

Who cares if we want it? It is.

The second argument that makes no sense is, "how will this new business model support the world as we know it today?"

Who cares if it does? It is. It's happening. The world will change around it, because the world has no choice. I'm sorry if that's inconvenient, but it's true.

As I see 'free', there are two forces at work:

In an attention economy (like this one), marketers struggle for attention and if you don't have it, you lose. Free is a relatively cheap way to get attention (both at the start and then through viral techniques).

Second, in a digital economy with lots of players and lower barriers to entry, it's quite natural that the price will be lowered until it meets the incremental cost of making one more unit. If a brand can gain share by charging less, a rational player will.

Conde Nast (publisher of the Wired (Chris's magazine) and yes, the New Yorker (Malcolm's magazine)),  is going to go out of business long before you get sick, never mind die. So will newspapers printed on paper. They're going to disappear before you do. I'm not wishing for this to happen, but by refusing to build new digital assets that matter, traditional publishers are forfeiting their future.

Magazines and newspapers were perfect businesses for a moment of time, but they wouldn't have worked in 1784, and they're not going to work very soon in the future either.

We're always going to need writers, but the business model of their platform is going to change.

People will pay for content if it is so unique they can't get it anywhere else, so fast they benefit from getting it before anyone else, or so related to their tribe that paying for it brings them closer to other people. We'll always be willing to pay for souvenirs of news, as well, things to go on a shelf or badges of honor to share.

People will not pay for by-the-book rewrites of news that belongs to all of us. People will not pay for yesterday's news, driven to our house, delivered a day late, static, without connection or comments or relevance. Why should we? A good book review on Amazon is more reliable and easier to find than a paid-for professional review that used to run in your local newspaper, isn't it?

Like all dying industries, the old perfect businesses will whine, criticize, demonize and most of all, lobby for relief. It won't work. The big reason is simple:

In a world of free, everyone can play.

This is huge. When there are thousands of people writing about something, many will be willing to do it for free (like poets) and some of them might even be really good (like some poets). There is no poetry shortage.

The reason that we needed paid contributors before was that there was only economic room for a few magazines, a few TV channels, a few pottery stores, a few of everything. In world where there is room for anyone to present their work, anyone will present their work. Editors become ever more powerful and valued, while the need for attention grows so acute that free may even be considered expensive.

Of course, it's ironic that sometimes people pay money for my books (I view them as souvenirs of content you could get less conveniently and less organized for free online if you chose to). And it's ironic that I read Malcolm's review for free. And ironic that you can read Chris's arguments the most cogently by paying for them. [Update: you can chime in here and see what's being said around the web as well.]

Neatness is for historians. For a long time, all the markets for attention-based goods are going to be messy, which means that there are going to be huge opportunities for people (like you?) able to get that most precisous asset (our attention) for free. At least for a while.

There's always room for Jello

This is one of the great cultural touchstone slogans of our era. A culture where there's so much to eat we need to try to find a food that we can eat even if we're stuffed.

Often, we'll decide that something is full, stuffed, untouchable but then some Jello shows up, and suddenly there's room.

Think about your schedule... is there room for an emergency, an SEC investigation, a server crash? If you took a day off because of the flu, is your business going to go bankrupt? Probably not.

So, if there's time for an emergency (Jello), why isn't there time for brilliance, generosity or learning?

How to be a packager

For fifteen years, I was a book packager. It has nothing to do with packaging and a bit more to do with books, but it's a great gig and there are useful lessons, because there are dozens of industries just waiting for you to do something like this. Let me explain:

A book packager is like a movie producer, but for books. You invent an idea, find the content and the authors, find the publisher and manage the process. Book packagers make almanacs, illustrated books, series books for kids and the goofy one-off books you find at the cash register. I did everything from a line of almanacs to a book on spot and stain removal. It was terrific fun, and in a good year, a fine business. Along the way, I worked with just about every major publisher and created more than a hundred books. I packaged (with various levels of success) video games, college professors, Julia Robert's astrologer, an award-winning children's novelist, the Weekly World News, Kinko's and (almost) Craftsmen Tools.

I think there are real advantages to this model (and not just for books). Star Wars toys, for example, were created by a packager, and so are most big budget movies. Duncan Hines licensed his name to Roy Park, perhaps the most successful food packager of all time. Roy died of old age with more than half a billion dollars to his name thanks to all that cake mix.

First, the world needs packagers. Packagers that can find isolated assets and connect them in a way that creates value, at the same time that they put in the effort to actually ship the product out of the door.  Kaplan might never have gotten into the test prep book business if we hadn't done all the hard work of persuading them to enter the market (it took several years) and creating the books that launched their line. One series of books generated tens of thousands of new customers for them.

Second, in many industries there are 'publishers' who need more products to sell. Any website with a lot of traffic and a shopping cart can benefit from someone who can assemble products that they can profitably sell. Apple uses the iPhone store to publish apps. It's not a perfect analogy, because they're not taking any financial risk, but the web is now creating a new sort of middleman who can cheaply sell a product to the end user. We also see this with Bed, Bath and Beyond commissioning products for their stores, or Trader Joe's doing it with food items.

Any time you can successfully bring together people who have a reputation or skill with people who sell things, you're creating value. If you find an appropriate scale, it can become a sustainable, profitable business.

The skills you bring to the table are vision, taste and a knack for seeing what's missing. You also have to be a project manager, a salesperson and the voice of reason, the person who brings the entire thing together and to market without it falling apart. Like so many of the businesses that are working now, it doesn't take much cash, it merely takes persistence and drive.

Here are some basic rules of thumb that I learned the hard way:

1. It's much easier to sell to an industry that's used to buying. Books were a great place for me to start because book publishers are organized to buy projects from outsiders. It's hard enough to make the sale, way too hard to persuade the person that they should even consider entering the market. (PS stay away from the toy business).
2. Earning the trust of the industry is critical. The tenth sale is a thousand times easier than the second one (the first one doesn't count... beginner's luck).
3. Developing expertise or assets that are not easily copied is essential, otherwise you're just a middleman.
4. Patience in earning the confidence of your suppliers (writers, brands, factories, freelancers) pays off.
5. Don't overlook obvious connections. It may be obvious to you that Eddie Bauer should license its name and look to a car company, but it might not be to them.
6. Get it in writing. Before you package up an idea for sale to a company that can bring it to market, make sure that all the parties you're representing acknowledge your role on paper.
7. As the agent of change, you deserve the lion's share of the revenue, because you're doing most of the work and taking all of the risk. Agenting is a good gig, but that's not what I'm talking about.
8. Stick with it. There's a Dip and it's huge. Lots of people start doing things like this, and most of them give up fairly quickly. It might take three or five years before the industry starts to rely on you.
9. Work your way up. Don't start by trying to license the Transformers or Fergie. They won't trust a newbie and you wouldn't either.

The paradox of the middle of the market

The middle of the market is the juicy part, where profit meets scale.

The paradox is that it's almost impossible to make a product or service for this segment, because they want the tried, the true and the boring.

A friend writes a blog and books for this market. They need his writing. He delivers a lot of value. And yet, it's going to take years (if ever) before he reaches them. That's because this market doesn't seek out new ideas, doesn't leave comments on blogs, doesn't spend a lot of time urging others to check out this new thing. He's spending all his focus on this market, and they're not repaying his focus with their attention.

The middle of the market is the home of Sinatra, Diamond, and Streisand. There's an endless list of others that would like to break in, but it rarely happens. The leading edge of the market is a lot smaller, but far easier to cater to, because those folks are looking and listening and talking. The middle will catch up, eventually, but that doesn't mean you have to bet on them.

In my post yesterday, I talked about the temptation to merely pander to the geeks. It's not that difficult to write a blog, for example, that repeatedly shows up on Digg or Reddit. The thing is, this audience is fickle and they don't often convert into paying customers or long-term fans. It's not that difficult to be haute couture, to be fashionable, cutting edge or fickle. What's difficult is figuring out how to make it pay.

I'm not talking about compromising or dumbing down your product. A very hot hot sauce is remarkable. A sort of hot one is boring, and no one, not even the geeks will talk about it. I'm talking about designing products that are simultaneously remarkable and palatable to people in the middle of the market.

The middle of the market is a paradox because of the inherent contradiction between the ease of reaching the nerds and the geeks and the need to reach the middle. The solution, if there is one, is to enter a market to the enthusiastic cheers of those in search of the new, but to build a product/service that appeals to those in the middle. After the initial wave of enthusiasm, you hunker down and ignore those that first embraced you, obsessing instead on the needs and networks of the middle. It's a difficult balancing act, but it's the only one that works.

Ultimately, you end up disappointing the hard core that first found you, but because of their initial enthusiasm (and more important, because you designed your work for the masses in the first place), your product crosses the chasm and reaches a larger group. The formula starts with a service or product that's purple enough to spread, but not so hyper-fashionable that it merely entertains the insiders.

Fast in, fast out

Mark points us to this study of fads and trends.

It turns out that a fast-growing trend is also likely to become a fast-fading trend. My analysis: the people who jump on a fast-moving trend are fickle early adopters. This group is most likely to race on to the next thing, and is also least likely to want to sign up for something that feels tired.

Another way to look at it: if you want to stick around for a while, you need to make the difficult sales to the middle of the market or have a ready supply of new stuff ready to entertain the never-satisfied early adopters.

That sounds pretty obvious as I write it, but I wonder why marketers everywhere ignore it? We say we're eager to build a brand for the ages, but we spend all our time and money launching it to the early adopters instead of patiently earning the trust of the middle.

Can summer camp change your life?

I think it can. It did for me.

I went to the best summer camp in the world (the pictures to the right are by the now-famous but then teenaged Jill Greenberg). Most of what I know, I learned there.

This summer, you could send your kids to a video editing camp where they would learn a skill for life. Or you could find a barcamp or even be invited to a foocamp. It would make a change if you wanted it to.

Why?

It's voluntary. It's intentional (you go for a change). You become part of a tribe of fellow travelers, other people in a hurry to go where you're going to. Conferences aren't like this, and neither are meetings. School, at its best can achieve this, but it's rare.

If you can't go to a camp, maybe you should start one?

The difference between strangers and friends

Strangers are justifiably suspicious.

Friends give you the benefit of the doubt.

“Friend” is more broadly defined as someone you have a beer with or meet up with to go on a hike. A friend is someone who has interacted with you, or who knows your parents or reads your blog—someone with history. If you’ve made a promise to someone and then kept it, you’re a friend. If you’ve changed someone for the better, you’re a friend as well.

We market to friends very differently than we market to strangers. We do business differently as well.

Thanks to social networks and the amplification of stories online, we have far more friends per person than at any other time in human history. Nurturing your friends—protecting them and watching out for them—is an obligation, and it builds an asset at the same time.

(I want to distinguish friends from 'friendlies', the people you have a digital link to, but no real connection. Friendlies are basically strangers with a thumbnail of their face on your screen. They're not friends. And, while we're at it, the moment you treat a friend like a stranger (form mail, for example) they're not a friend any more, are they?)

Priming the pump of efficiency

There's always a gap between the short-term results of a well-polished system and the first results of a switch to a more efficient one.

If you stick with that thing you've worked so hard to perfect, the next few hours or weeks or months will surely outperform the results you'll get from the new thing. That's because there are switching costs, glitches and a learning curve.

When you rearrange the shop floor, switch to email, convert your interactions to a new platform or make a building more energy efficient, this always happens. That means if you have a short-term perspective, you're never going to switch.

Switching your ad campaign to digital? You'll take a hit. Better stick to what you know.

Switching from a central city cube farm to a distributed at-home workforce? That will cost you big time next quarter. Probably not worth it.

Switching from a phone reservations system to Open Table? No way it will pay off this month.

The end result is that organizations that choose to switch are usually the ones with the least to lose. The upstarts and the outliers. One reason they're always leapfrogging the market leaders.

One way to stay innovative is to understand that this gap exists and to budget for it. Denying it won't make it go away.

Magicians, sausage makers and transparency

Does everything have to become completely transparent?

One of the ideas du jour online is the rush to make things transparent. To tear down the barriers and raise the blinds on the way organizations do business and to expose as much as possible.

Does Apple become a more exciting or profitable company if they share their sketches, their plans, open source their new designs and engage the company fully? Does Steve Jobs have an obligation to tell his fanboys in advance that he’s fighting to stay healthy? One journalist says he does because it will help raise money for research, another says he does because it’s a public company, while many of his fans say he does because they demand to know.

What about the Star Trek sequel? Should we be able to read the script now, a year before they start filming?

Does a magician put on a better show if you know how his tricks are done? Do you want to see how your dinner was made, farm to plate? Really?

I look at the transparency issue not as a moral right, but as a business tactic, tool and threat.

1. If you run around acting like the things you do will never been seen in public, you’re going to get busted. Sooner or later, the marketplace is going to see the effects of your actions, and living as if this is certain makes it far more likely that you’ll find a happy ending.

2. Your job as a marketer is to tell a story, which is a lot like putting on a show. If you can use the tools of transparency to tell that story better, do it! But if your audience will enjoy the story more (and your business will be more likely to succeed) if you apply some misdirection and magic, then why not?

Radical transparency often excites people because of the radical part (it’s new! it’s scary!) than the transparent part. Playing poker with your cards face up on the table might get you some attention at first, but in the long run it’s unlikely to help you win a lot of hands.

Find your voice

Marketing (in all its forms) is unlike everything else an organization does, because it's always different. There's no manual because everyone does it differently, and what successful marketers have in common is that they are successful.

The only way your organization is going to make an impact is to market in the way only you can. Not by following some expert's rules or following the herd, but by doing it in the way that works. For you. Don't worry about someone else's invented standards for new media, invent your own. Avoid obvious mistakes, don't follow obvious successes.

Find your voice, don't copy someone else's.

Learning from Singer

At one point, the Singer Corporation had more than 12,000 people working in a single plant. They were selling more than a million sewing machines a year and had hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. By any measure, it was one of the most important manufacturers in America. It was fun while it lasted.

Back then, it was easy to believe that Singer represented everything that was right with our economy, and that our future was intrinsically attached to the company's.

When as the last time you even thought about Singer (or a sewing machine for that matter)?

The cycles are far shorter now than they were during the century that Singer was a shining light for corporate success. More now than ever, success today is no guarantee of success tomorrow.

Sometimes we spend more time than we should defending the old thing, instead of working to take advantage of the new thing. I bet you can list a dozen "critical" industries that will be as relevant to life in 2020 as Singer is to our world today.

The key difference is that back then, managers and shareholders could stall and fumble and wait out the transition until after they retired. Now, it's almost an annual event. Hiding isn't working, and neither is whining. The best marketing strategy is to destroy your industry before your competition does.

Circling the big domino

Clay taught me a good lesson about making things happen with your brand.

Envision the events that might happen to a brand (shelf space at Walmart, an appearance on Oprah, a bestseller, worldwide recognition, a new edition, worldwide rights, chosen by the Queen, whatever) as a series of dominos.

It turns out that if you start with all of them at once, you'll fail.

And if you start with the big one, you'll fail.

But if you line up all the dominos one by one, in the right order, you may just have enough energy to push over the first one. That one, of course, adds momentum so that when you crash into the second one, that one goes too. All the way to the Queen.

Wait!

Isn't this obvious? Sure it is. So why is it so often ignored?

Brands get stuck constantly. And they always get stuck circling the big domino. They try to launch worldwide and beat Google. They try to get an endorsement from the Prince of Denmark. They try to break out with a feature on a major blog. They try to act like Coca Cola from the first day. And they try and they try and they try until they get so frustrated, they quit.

A few brands pick out tiny dominos instead. And topple them. And they do it again. They do it so often they create noise, momentum and most important, a sense of inevitability. That's how you win.

Spotto!

Justine plays a game that involves finding yellow cars on the road and shouting the appropriate term as you see them.

What you discover after just a few minutes is just how many yellow cars there are. A lot.

We notice what we choose to notice.

Consider playing a version of spotto involving great customer service or organizations going the extra mile, or employees giving more than they have to. What you'll notice very quickly is that there's a lot more of it out there than you would have guessed, which will make it easier for you and your team to follow suit. Spotto.

On the road to mediocrity

Along the way, we settle.

We settle for something not quite right, or an outfit that isn't our best look, or a job that doesn't quite maximize our talents. We settle for relationships that don't give us joy, or a website that's, "good enough."

The only way to get mediocre is one step at a time.

You don't have to settle. It's a choice you get to make every day.

Spectacles

The Olympics
Kumba Mela
Times Square on midnight at New Year's
Burning Man
TED
The Super Bowl
Calcio Storico
Warren Buffet's annual meeting
The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
Your birthday

People love them. We generally agree we don't have them often enough. What if you started one? More than half of the events on the list above were started by one person or a small organization.