Seth's Blog

Packaging for retail

Item 1: My Logitech cordless remote (which I like a lot) came in plastic, non-recyclable packaging that weighed twice as much as the remote itself.* The plastic was so well sealed and so thick that I actually broke a kitchen knife trying to open it. (*this is not hyperbole. I weighed it).

This is expensive, time-consuming and positions the product as extremely ungreen.

This packaging is the result of a paranoid retail buyer (the person who orders in bulk for the store, not the buyer at retail) demanding pilfer-proof packaging combined with a lazy brand manager choosing a lousy solution to the challenge presented by getting it into a retailer. "Make it pilfer-proof or we won't carry it," he says. The brand manager doesn't want to take a risk, so she packages it the way they packaged it when the device cost $1,000. Impregnable.

When you buy it from Amazon, of course, a cardboard sleeve would be sufficient. The manufacturer, though, only wants to have one sku, so Amazon sells the wasteful one as well.

So, why not compromise and shrink wrap it to a cardboard backad? A simple piece of cardboard, 8 x 10, impossible to fit under your jacket, much lighter, easy to recycle, cheaper and easier to ship.

Item 2: Those stickers on digital cameras that say things like "8 megapixels". Why is there a sticker on the camera that you don't even see until you've already purchased it?

Because one out of 100 boxes are opened by the store to put on display. By stickering ALL the cameras, they can be sure to get that sticker on the one that gets in the case... I am just fascinated by this. It seems so clever. The mystery is why the digital photos that they provide to Amazon et. al. don't have the stickers affixed.

Lessons: Package your stuff so that it works at retail. Put stickers on things that are going to get unboxed. Create sample kits. Consider offering a second package to Amazon. Think about cutting down weight and customer angst by making pilfer-proof packaging that is lighter, easier to open and recyclable. You save money and you sell more stuff. Oh, and don't ship stuff with styrofoam peanuts. We can do better.

Lenore Godin's son

[Intentionally posted on a day that's not Mother's Day].

My mom always disliked Mother's Day. She had a few good reasons.

First, she pointed out that anytime you do something because you're supposed to, or because everyone else is doing it, it's not worth as much. Flowers the week before or a nice poem the day after were priceless compared to the trudge to the restaurant on the appointed day.

I think this is true of all marketing. Nice words to a customer the day they say they're quitting, or to an employee during an annual review aren't worth much at all, imho.

Second, she didn't understand why it was necessary to commercialize something that worked even better when it was free. Just because you can market something for a profit doesn't mean you should.

As for me, I'm amazed at all the folks who would talk about the lessons they learned from their mom and would act that way, at least for a few hours... but then would spend the rest of the year as if they'd been raised by wolves.

At the CMA conference yesterday, someone asked me about marketing ethics. I said that marketers have to act as if their mom is watching... because even if she isn't, someone else is.

Every day (except for maybe Mother's Day), I try to act like my mom's son. I'm not as good at it as I'd like to be, but it's worth the effort. I miss you, mom.

We specialize in everything

If the world is really bigger, if you can find the best in the world to do what you want, no matter what it is you want, does that change things?

If I need an animator, I can find the world's best animator. If I need a bond to insure my movie, I can find the best broker at selling completion bonds. If I need SEO help, get me the world's best SEO person. If I need braces, I can find the best orthodontist in my area. Not the second-best or someone who will try really hard or someone who is pretty good at that and also good at other things. Sure, there are occasional tasks where a diagnostician with wide-ranging experience is important (but I'd argue that that's a specialty in and of itself).

When choice is limited, I want a generalist. When selection is difficult, a jack of all trades is just fine.

But whenever possible, please bring me a brilliant specialist.

If you're shaking your head in agreement with this obvious point, then the question is: tell me again why you're a generalist?

[Forgive me, dear reader, for not being clear enough in the post above. I got a lot of mail, much of it mentioning Leonardo, etc. Here's what I failed to say,

"It's okay to specialize in being a generalist, of course. By that, I mean that there are many problems (like the diagnostic one mentioned above), where someone who can see wide and doesn't have an allegiance to a particular solution is exactly the right person to call. I rely on generalists all the time, and so do you. My point is that you never call on these people when there's a better specialist available. And in the old days, a little town could only support one generalist, so it wasn't an issue. Today, especially in high-value situations, that's just not the case. So, yes, generalize. And specialize in it!"]

Brand magic

Torley points us to brand tags.

It's a simple game where you pick one-word associations to go with major brands. The result pages are actually pretty inane, but the magical way each and every one of these brands compels you to think is fascinating.

I saw the Harley logo and I immediately typed "macho". But it's just a motorcycle. A vehicle, no more macho than any other. Yet the word just popped into my head.

And the same thing happened for the next brand and the next one as well.

Superbrands have a mystical connection with people. Odds are, you can't own one, but there's no reason you can't build a micro one, a local one, a brand that's magical for a smaller group of people.

Working with Apple Tech Support

Sixteen tips for getting your Mac or iPhone fixed:

1. The contact number is (800) 275 2273
2. While you're on hold, go to Google and type: Troubleshoot Mac xxx, where xxx represents the error message you got or the sparsest description of what won't work.
3. If those links don't help you, visit the Apple site and choose your product. Under each product is a discussion forum. Search for your problem.
4. By now, someone has answered your call. Don't tell them your entire problem. Instead, politely identify yourself, give them the short version and then say, "would you please escalate this call to a yyy specialist?" where yyy is the type of problem you have: wireless or backup or imovie or whatever. Persist.
5. When you get a specialist on the line, ask politely for her direct phone number in case you get disconnected. After you describe your problem, ask for a case number. If the person isn't being helpful, politely excuse yourself and start over with a new call.
6. Apple gets lots and lots of calls. As a result, don't expect the person you're working with to immediately be willing to skip over all the troubleshooting steps you tried before you called. They have a protocol. It's easier to just take five minutes to follow that protocol.
7. If the specialist you're working with is having trouble figuring out what to do next, politely say, "I hope you don't mind, but can you escalate this case to a specialist?" And then wait, patiently, until they do.
8. If your product is less than thirty days old, and you've gone through the protocol with no success, say, "I'd like an RMA for this product so I can return it and start with one that works. It's under the return warranty, right?"
9. If you found lots of examples of the same problem in Google, tell them. Point out that this "is not an isolated problem" and suggest that others have solved it by getting a new machine sent to them. Be ready with links, because the rep has Google too.
10. Engaging in friendly banter doesn't just help you get what you want. It makes the call better for you too. These guys aren't your enemy. In fact, right now, they're the best friend you have in the whole world.
11. This is the one I should have listed first: go to the Genius bar at your local store. The guys at the Genius bar are much more likely to just swap out your broken hardware and give you a new machine. It might seem time-consuming, but it's probably faster than waiting them out on the phone. Spending $99 on a One to One card is a brilliant investment.
12. At least once a minute, say 'thank you.' If you thought about it, you'd realize that yes, you do mean it. They're being quiet and calm and trying to help.
13. If you own a computer, back it up. If you don't, all bad things are your fault.
14. I have no personal experience in begging or sobbing, but I'm told that in some cases, this is effective.
15. If you use an email program, clean it out. Regularly. One friend of mine had 27,000 emails in her outbound mail folder, including some from 2002.
16. Trust me, it doesn't matter how big the readership of your blog is, the folks on the phone are unlikely to care.

Your interaction is a marketing event. Apple is marketing to you. The rep is marketing to you (that's a feature, not a bug). And you're marketing yourself and the problem to them. Clarity and cooperation combined with determination and persistence appear to be the best combination.

What do you know?

Three years ago, I published this list, which was very much a riff, not a carefully planned manifesto. It has held up pretty well. Feel free to reprint or otherwise use, as long as you include a credit line. I've added a few at the bottom...

What Every Good Marketer Knows:

• Anticipated, personal and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk.
• Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand.
• Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.
• Share of wallet is easier, more profitable and ultimately more effective a measure than share of market.
• Marketing begins before the product is created.
• Advertising is just a symptom, a tactic. Marketing is about far more than that.
• Low price is a great way to sell a commodity. That’s not marketing, though, that’s efficiency.
• Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.
• Products that are remarkable get talked about.
• Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your returns policy.
• You can’t fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience.
• If you are marketing from a fairly static annual budget, you’re viewing marketing as an expense. Good marketers realize that it is an investment.
• People don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want.
• You’re not in charge. And your prospects don’t care about you.
• What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.
• Business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy.
• Traditional ways of interrupting consumers (TV ads, trade show booths, junk mail) are losing their cost-effectiveness. At the same time, new ways of spreading ideas (blogs, permission-based RSS information, consumer fan clubs) are quickly proving how well they work.
• People all over the world, and of every income level, respond to marketing that promises and delivers basic human wants.
• Good marketers tell a story.
• People are selfish, lazy, uninformed and impatient. Start with that and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
• Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.
• Effective stories match the worldview of the people you are telling the story to.
• Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.
• A product for everyone rarely reaches much of anyone.
• Living and breathing an authentic story is the best way to survive in an conversation-rich world.
• Marketers are responsible for the side effects their products cause.
• Reminding the consumer of a story they know and trust is a powerful shortcut.
• Good marketers measure.
• Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re done.
• One disappointed customer is worth ten delighted ones.

• In the googleworld, the best in the world wins more often, and wins more.
• Most marketers create good enough and then quit. Greatest beats good enough every time.
• There are more rich people than ever before, and they demand to be treated differently.
• Organizations that manage to deal directly with their end users have an asset for the future.
• You can game the social media in the short run, but not for long.
• You market when you hire and when you fire. You market when you call tech support and you market every time you send a memo.
• Blogging makes you a better marketer because it teaches you humility in your writing.

Obviously, knowing what to do is very, very different than actually doing it.

The power of the interface

Here's what happens when you rearrange YouTube to make it work.

Architecture matters.

Marketing the charity auction

How much would you pay for a twenty dollar bill?

In tough times, many schools and non-profits rely on charity fundraisers, and a popular one is the auction. The method is simple: supporters donate things, and then they're auctioned off, with all proceeds going to charity.

If you have a vacation house, the thinking goes, the incremental cost of donating a week is low. And wow, I can buy a week at that house for way less than it's worth. Everyone wins.

If you have a friend who works on the Letterman show, you can get two VIP tickets for free and donate them and someone at the auction gets to go to the show for not so much money.

This bargain hunting is fine as far as it goes, but it never leads to a wildly successful auction, because the story that's told is too small.

If you're only willing to bid $19 to buy a $20 bill at this auction, you're not doing charity, you're bargain hunting. There's nothing wrong with bargain hunting, it's fun, but it's not philanthropy. I think bargain hunting for a good cause is just fine, but wouldn't it be great if the event could raise far more money and change the way people view the organization?

The Robin Hood Foundation raised more than 24 million dollars at their last auction, because people competed to overpay. And that's the secret. The story the charity must tell is: "don't pay $19 for this twenty dollar bill, don't even pay $30, we need you to pay $40!" The satisfaction of overpaying (whether you overpay anonymously or in public) is what they sell, not a bargain.

This is not the easy path. It is much easier to sell your public on bargains than it is to sell them on generosity. The good news is that once you get over the hump, it scales. Bargains scale downward... better bargains are lower-priced bargains, which means you scale to zero. Philanthropy scales upward... better overpaying is more overpaying. A public auction is always a public competition. The challenge is to create social approval for what would otherwise be bad auction skills! Enlist a few stooges in the audience in advance, then start by auctioning off that $20 bill. When it goes for $45 and the winner gets an ovation, you've set a tone.

The goal of a non-profit seeking money needs to be to create an environment in which the community congratulates itself on overpaying.

Breaking the glass

John sends us this astounding thought piece.

It's a clock, turned off, not ticking, showing no progress, encased in glass.

When you're ready to make the leap, to commit, to make something happen, you break the glass. The sculpture is ruined. All you have is shards of broken glass. And a working clock. It's alive and it's changing and moving forward.

Analogy, anyone?

Four more words

Connect like-minded people.

My previous post only captured one part of the equation... the work of the marketer marketing to (or at) the consumer. It leaves out the future, which involves finding and leading and empowering the tribe of people who surround your organization.

While the obvious successes are sites like Facebook or Flickr or Twitter, this idea of connection is far more pervasive than that. Starbucks connects people, and so does Apple. Accounting firms have the opportunity to create value by connecting their clients to each other, and so do trade shows.

So, I guess we’re up to eight words, or seven if you believe in hyphens.

The Media markets

The product they sell is drama.

When I went to business school, we spent an entire 90 minute class on how to read the Wall Street Journal. That's a rare treat... being taught how to understand and psyche out the media.

With the vast bulk of our news coming online now, it's worth taking a second to look at the way mainstream media markets drama. You know and I know that they're doing this, but maybe it'll strike a chord with someone...

Take a look at a screen shot from the front page of CNN.com today:

I put a green checkbox next to every statement on the page that might be considered 'true' but could certainly be considered irrelevant, or at least unimportant compared to the actual 'news'.

The page would have been more accurate if it had said things like, "Obama gains more than 200,000 votes over Clinton" or "Obama campaign further extends delegate lead, picking up 12 more delegates" or even "Obama pummels Clinton in the bigger state."

That's not dramatic, though, and as William Randolph Hearst taught us a long time ago, the goal is to sell newspapers, not to report the news.

There isn't media bias in favor of Hillary (my friend Jeff is the first to point that out). Nor is there media bias in favor of floods. There's media bias in favor of drama.

Most of us are inclined to believe that government officials, doctors and the media are making an effort to tell us the truth. Actually, just like all marketers, they tell us a story.

All the News That Fits (do what you're great at)

The New York Times, like all newspapers, is in big trouble.

Unlike other papers, though, they've got a shot. And we can all learn a lesson about focusing on the great (by looking at what they should be doing, anyway).

All the News That's Fit to Print used to be the motto they lived by. Of course, now, all the news that fits = the web. Unlimited space and free newsprint means the web can actually hold all the news. "Fit" is a big question mark.

So, where can the Times excel?

I'd argue they have two opportunities:
1. If it's in the Times, it's true
2. If it's in the Times, it's important

I should clarify. By 'true', I mean vetted as well as can be vetted, I mean more true than other places. They can never reach this level of course, but they can try harder than most and they can be transparent and they can admit when they're wrong and correct it. Lots of noise online, not so much truth.

By 'important', I mean 'important because everyone else is reading the same thing.' So, for example, the NY Times bestseller list is important. A half page story about the last factory making washboards is important. A glowing, thoughtful review of an overlooked opera is important. It's important because the Times becomes one of the last cultural touchstones, the thing the other smart people read.

The mistake the Times is making, over and over and over again, is that few of the stories in the paper are edited with these wins in mind. I'm just not sure that anyone there has a list of what they're great at, or want to be great at.

Monday featured TWO stories about Barbara Walters and her new book. Why? We don't need the Times for 'truth' here, and while it may be important to Knopf and to Barbara, it's not really that important to us.

Sunday, my local version of the Times featured an in-depth restaurant review of the Olive Garden! And it was for a location 30 miles from my house (they're saving money by combining regional editions). Ouch.

If I were editing the Times, I'd look at every single editorial feature, every single article and ask if it met either of the two things the Times could stand for. If not, that piece should be gone, deleted, unassigned. No sports section, for example. If you can't be the best in the world, don't bother, because someone else is going to get my attention. The Times needs 50 more bestseller lists, 20 more trusted stories about real political fact and insight, ten more cultural touchstone features... and a lot less filler, a lot less copycat stuff and nothing, nothing about Barbara Walters.

[Not because I don't like Barbara Walters. Merely because a link to the other sites that can happily review and sell me her book is far more effective than wasting time and resources flogging a book that needs no flogging. Pick 20 books a day and point to them, don't write vapid features about three every week. The Times does better when they find something we don't know about and celebrate it instead.]

These choices represent the same quandary you face. Your product line, your choices, your services... if you obsess about doing the thing you are great at and let the mediocre stuff go, you'll do far better.

What are you great at? What if you did it exclusively?

More on passion and pop

The post about the gulf between passion and pop touched a chord.

A few readers remembered Geoff Moore’s classic Crossing the Chasm. This is a super book (particularly the original (used) edition, not the updated one). Geoff has a different take on the curves, but his approach is well worth a look, especially for technology related products.

A few other readers wrote in, pointing out that they are going for both. Both passion and pop because the flexibility of the web makes it easy to do that. Of course, it doesn’t, not really. Going for both is rarely the right strategy.

Most germane: the two humps are not static. They move. Sometimes you can move them (I think Apple did) and sometimes the market moves on its own (music, for example). Most businesses don’t have the patience or the resources to move the Pop hump on their own, and I think it’s usually foolish to try. Passion, on the other hand, is always fast moving, and if you have something extraordinary and there’s a cadre of believers, the passionate will find you.

Avoiding the Passion Pop Gulf

Here's a new curve for you: I'm calling it the passion/pop curve.

That bell curve to the left represents acceptance by the focused/excited/tastemaking community. Those are the people who love microbeers and haute couture and Civil War memorabilia. Like all market curves, there's a sweet spot. Go too nutsy on us ($90,000 turntables, for example) and even the committed will flee. Go too pop, though, and we'll avoid you as well.

Simple example: Jazz. If you do atonal world jazz played in the dark underwater, few people will come. On the other hand, you won't get many jazz fans at a Spyrogyra concert either. Too pop.

The bell curve on the right, you'll notice, is bigger. This is a second market, a bigger market, the market of pop. These are the folks who go to the Olive Garden for a nice italian meal instead of the authentic place down the street. They too want something that's not too edgy and not too (in their opinion) trite.

The reason you need to care is that gap in the middle. Every day, millions of businesses get stuck in that gap. They either move to the right in search of the masses or move to the left in search of authenticity, but they compromise. And they get stuck with neither.

A delta blues guy who plays for tiny audiences in Memphis is in the sweet spot of the passionate. John Mayer is in the sweet spot of pop. Both are great guitarists, neither is too edgy or too trite. Both made a choice. But there are a thousand guitarists who are neither. They're afraid to embrace one curve or the other and end up with neither.

You can move a curve one or way or the other... the curves change all the time. Chuck Mangione was pop for a while, much to the derision of the jazz purists. Now, though, the curve of pop has moved and Chuck can't possibly chase it down.

It's not just musicians, of course. Even dentists face this quandary. Should you be the most expensive, best trained, most extreme dentist in the world, catering to the edge of the passion market, or perhaps develop a chain of $19 five-minute whitening shops for the outer edge of the pop market?

You might get lucky and end up with a sweet spot accidentally. Inevitably, you'll itch to move to the other curve (cause it's bigger or because it feels more authentic) and I worry about your ability to do that.

The best choice is to choose.

Four words

Make big promises; overdeliver.

If you can define great marketing in fewer words than that, you win.

"Big promises": treating people with respect, improving self-esteem, delivering results, contacting as often as you say you will but not more, including side effects in your planning, delivering joy, meeting spec, being on time, connecting people to one another, delivering consistency, offering value and on and on. Caring. The stories involved in your promises matter. That's often what people are buying.

This is the first place that the equation breaks down. Marketers often make big promises that appear to be unrealistic or are delivered in ways that don't match the worldview of the prospect. Marketers get carried away with themselves and focused on their greatness and forget to tell a story that people enjoy believing.

And sometimes, they make promises that are too small to get our attention. Boring promises are hardly worth making.

"Overdeliver" means doing more than you said you would, which is the secret to word of mouth.

Here, of course, the pitfall is obvious. You made too big a promise and you did your best, but no, you didn't overdeliver, not really. You didn't amaze and delight and yes, stun me with the incredible results of your offering.

Just because it's only four words doesn't mean it's easy!

The coming backlash over green marketing

Micah points us to this campaign from Tumi Luggage. Buy some nylon luggage, they'll plant some trees (one tree? A bush? It's not clear how many trees per suitcase). It's entirely possible that Tumi's campaign is nothing short of generous, but as a consumer, it's awfully difficult to tell.

The easiest marketing promise to make is to say you'll do something green if people consume what you sell. That you'll support one green cause or another. No one is in charge of checking out your story, and my guess is that 90% of the time, it leads to a net negative--more landfill, more carbon, more waste.

I can still remember a car commercial that ran when I was a teenager... during the first big energy crisis. It touted that a certain brand of car was the one to buy, not because it got better mileage, but because it had a bigger tank! "Range," the announcer intoned, "is what you need in a car."

Consumers aren't stupid (we're dumb sometimes, but not stupid.) So, when the backlash hits, when every single brand has used up some green angle, then what?

Here's what's missing: a number. When you buy a fridge, there's a big yellow sticker with a number about relative energy consumption. Now, we could argue all day long about how to figure out the right number (should the number on the fridge include data about the amount of energy needed to make the fridge in the first place?) but an imperfect number sure seems better than no number at all.

Drive to Philadelphia: 150.
Take Amtrak: 22.

Stick with the lightbulbs you have throughout your whole house until they burn out: 175.
Replace them all now with something better: 142.

Organic strawberries from California: 88
Frozen strawberries from California: 80
Apple from Dutchess County: 4

The power of a number is the effect we saw when they put a number on restaurants (Zagats) and wines (Parker) and gas mileage (the EPA). People notice a number, and they work to improve it. If every car sold in our country had a real-time gas consumption meter on the dashboard and the rear window, things would change very fast. The only change from the status quo would be the story (communicating impact) but marketing the story is our biggest challenge right now. Once we communicate the most efficient path, I think we'll be delighted at how many people take it. Right now, marketers are doing a lousy job of that, devolving into short-term, often selfish come-ons. That's not going to last and it's not going to scale.

Marketers who truly care about the green thing should be scrambling right now to find a number or an organization that can defend the green brand. If not, it's going to be worthless and a great opportunity for improvement is going to be lost.

Inhaling

Dave Pell has a brand new site.

It's pretty simple. It gives you a popurls type view of the web for any search term you can imagine. Nicely done.

Sucking all the juice out

Just got some work back from a new copyeditor hired by my publisher. She did a flawless job. She also wrecked my work. Totally wrecked it.

By sanding off every edge, removing every idiom, making each and every fact literally correct, she made it boring and dry and mechanical.

If they have licenses for copyeditors, she should have hers revoked.

I need to be really clear. She's not at fault. She did exactly what she was supposed to do. The fault lies in the job description, not the job. If the job description of your lawyer or boss or editor or client is to make sure everything is pure and perfect and proven and beyond reproach, they are making things worse, not better. (Unless you're in the vaccine business).

Almost everything you do has some sort of copyediting filter. It might be the legal eagle or the graphic supervisor or the customer service police. They're excellent at making round things fit perfectly through round holes.

Boring and ignored is fine with them, because no one complains.

Fortunately, copy editors have a remedy. It's a word called STET. Which means, "leave it alone, it was fine." Time to teach that to your editors, wherever they may be. Maybe there should be a t-shirt.

If all you want is safe, have baby food for dinner. Just leave me out of it.

Let's skip the meeting

Chris sends us this classic "ad."

Today's resolution: skip at least one meeting every day for the next two weeks. Watch what happens.

The first rule of b2b selling

If it gets to the RFP stage, you lost.

Great business to business marketers (and profitable ones) make the sale long before that happens.

The RFP is an organizational punt, it's a way of saying, "it's all a commodity, we can't decide, cheap guy wins."

The cheap guy, of course, never wins.

Self promotion

Owen Wilson starred in a really bad movie that came out a few months ago. Most notable: he didn’t go out to shill for it. No Colbert, no Daily Show, no Larry King.

Perhaps he’s nursing a bad cold, but my guess is that he didn’t want to extend his personal brand to promote a movie just because he was in it.

Here’s an interesting dichotomy:

Watch this because I’m in it
vs.
I’m in it because you’ll enjoy watching it.

Or,

I published a book so I need you to read it
vs.
There’s something you need to read, so I wrote about it.

Or

I'm fifty and I just made an album because it was time for me to make one.
vs.
These songs won't let go of me and I want to share them with you because they matter.

The first is me-centric and explains that we’re promoting something that got made because we need to sell it. What we do is make stuff and sell it, and what you do is buy it or watch it.  “I needed to make something to sell, here’s the best I could do.”

The second is you-centric. It starts with the needs and desires of the consumer and ignores the committees, the compromises and the economic realities. It says, “I found something for you, here it is.”

Most of the time, most b2b and most consumer products are sold on the basis of: Yes, there are other choices, but this is the one we make. I'm not sure that's a good enough reason.

80% of the mail and promotion I get (and 98% of the ads) fall into this category. The enthusiasm of commerce, not of belief and pride.

[Apologies if I've given Owen motivations that weren't accurate. Readers have let me know about his recent troubles, and I certainly meant no disrespect.]

Wishing and hoping

Corey found this great insight into the way people think.

Twistori looks for certain words in the Twitstream.

We're a pretty spoiled bunch (check out the 'wish' column).

The fibula and the safety pin

Walter Hunt patented the safety pin almost 160 years ago.

It looks an awful lot like a fibula, which, of course, is used to hold your toga shut.

My friend Kevin has one (not a toga, a fibula). An old one. He's very proud of it.

So, the question that Walter Hunt didn't ask is this, "Why should I bother patenting the safety pin? It's already been done. I mean, even John Belushi has a fibula."

Just about everything has a strike against it. It's either already been done or it's never been done. Ignore both conditions. Pushing an idea through the dip of acceptance is far more valuable than inventing something that's never existed... and then walking away from it.

Signal to noise

In radio operator lingo, you look for a strong signal to noise ratio. That’s the amount of good stuff (the message) that comes through the static (the noise.) You can use your squelch button to turn down the static, but if there isn’t enough signal, you don’t hear anything at all.

For a decade, the web kept delivering an ever better signal to noise ratio to me. I was able to hear more things, more clearly, in less time. Websites and email and my RSS reader were bringing me signals from everywhere, and processing them (and creating, I hope, new signal) was a joy.

Lately, I’m feeling noise creep.

Lately, the noise seems to be increasing and the signal is fading in comparison. Too much spam, too many posts, too little insight leaking through. I don’t use Twitter, but I know a lot of Twitter users are feeling this. So are folks who go to too many conferences. And don’t get me started on victims of Blackberry cc: disease.

I wish I could tell you the easy answer. I can’t. I just know that the faltering signal is a problem.

Ouch!

I just discovered that some of you recently received a piece of spam that began, "dear first name". Apparently, it was sent to people who signed up for an audio call I did several months ago.

This is obviously not my idea, and I'm really upset about it.

I have no idea who got the note, and it probably would make things worse to email everyone on the list apologizing, so instead I'm posting about it.

This is simple: Permission Marketing means delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who WANT to get them. The key word is want. Make it easy for people to sign up, but then give them exactly what you promise.

If you sign up for thing A and the fine print says you get thing B, that's not permission.

All I can do is apologize. I'll try to work harder to make sure that people I work with get this through and through. Sorry.

[Here's a note I just got from my friend who sent the ouch note:

Dear Seth and Seth Godin fans,

Even the biggest Seth fans like me and supporters of Permission Marketing screw up from time to time.  Today, that person is me.  I have egg on my face and give your readers a glaring example of what NOT to do to communicate with a permission-based list and to build relationships with customers and clients

...I accidentally sent an email to some folks who opted in JUST for the Seth teleseminar series earlier this year.  A big mistake...one that I didn't realize until it was too late.  To make matters worse, I left the standard "dear firstname" at the top of the email.  What a brilliant disaster and royal mess.  I did exactly the opposite of what I intended to do - to send a relevant message to a small group who gave me permission to send emails like the one I did.

I can't undo the damage, but I can apologize and can make sure that you and your readers know that it was not intentional.   I can only hope that you trust my integrity when I say that and trust that it won't happen again.

I have learned the hard way what can happen when you send a hasty email without double-checking whether it's going to the right people.

Moral: stuff happens. At least it wasn't on purpose...]