Ask an undecided voter who Dan Quayle is and more than half have no clue. Ask them who Zell Miller is and the number drops into the single digits. (think about this for a second… how out of the loop do you need to be to be an undecided voter anyway?)
Yet, if the pundits on television are to be believed, what Zell Miller has to say is vitally important. Same with Dick Gephardt or John Edwards’ wife.
The pundits are there to spin for the people already in the echo chamber. They stick to their talking points and they busily keep score, just like the baseball fanatics with their box scores. But it really doesn’t matter and the networks are doing us a disservice by not featuring someone who can talk about the way the ideas spread, as opposed to what the ideas themselves mean to the insiders.
Howard Dean caused millions of words to be spilled while most people still had no idea who he was. Then, the moment with the very least amount of content (his famous scream) leaked out through the chamber and reached the public. And the rest didn’t matter one bit. What mattered was the idea that ultimately spread.
So, what does this have to do with you? Well, instead of worrying about the finest details of your competiton and our offering and your media buys, what really matters is this: who’s going to talk about you? What are they going to say?
Your prospects are just like the undecided voters. They are woefully uninformed, extremely difficult to contact and very prone to quick judgments and first impressions.
We don’t need Mary Matalin. We need Malcolm Gladwell.
September 4, 2004
Have you ever been to a trade show? I’ve been to a bunch… mostly consumer electronics and books, but lately, a whole host of others. At every trade show, there’s a buzz about a few products or services. Industry scandals or breakthroughs or some new product that gets everyone excited.
What’s extraordinary is the huge disconnect about what people in the industry care about and what the public cares about.
Lots of insiders cared about the Tivo. They were astonished by some book or other. Amazed by a new pricing scheme launched by an industry leading consulting firm.
And no one in the marketplace cared.
It’s easy to get confused about what reverbates inside and what leaks out and spreads to the rest of the world. It’s easy to start cycling faster and faster on the inside the chamber It’s easy to spend a huge amount of time and money worrying about what the industry thinks or what features to add or what to charge. And then, after you’ve spent all that time, nobody notices.
Just a reminder that the second order effects (what leaks) is a lot more important than what you hear around the water cooler.
Some of you have heard about the Seminars in my office. It’s a dump, but a charming one. I have eight slots left for September 22 (click above for details). After that, I’m moving my office to a (much) smaller space, and that’s that.
September 3, 2004
This time, to my wife.
A well-meaning friend sent an “urgent” note to all 452 people in his address book. And he put them all on the CC list of the note.
A few people were irked by the note. They hit Reply All. Now we’re up to more than a thousand worthless emails floating around the ether. The echo effect will last a few more days and then it’ll fade. But multiply 2,000 wasted emails times a million people and you see the magnitude of the problem.
Wouldn’t it be great if everyone you know read ChangeThis :: How To Be a Boor ? I mean, you know this stuff and I know this stuff… it’s them that don’t know it. Maybe if we each sent 20 friends to read it… Hey, it’s free.
August 30, 2004
The police state meets the dying copyright dinosaur and superstition?
I know this is off topic, but it’s not, really. It’s about what happens when change and technology threaten to undo the way whole industries think (and what happens when those industries can make laws).
Read the amazing story and the fascinating comments: AKMA’s Random Thoughts: So Weirdly Wrong
August 26, 2004
John riffs on Ross Mayfield’s idea: John Battelle’s Searchblog: Sell Side Advertising: A New Model?
The short version: Imagine online ads that carry money and rules with them. If you’re a blogger or web publisher or even someone sending out email, and you fit the rules for a given ad, you can publish it. Every time you do, you get paid.
The ads deplete the money in their account and then vanish. If the ads are working, the advertiser refills them. If publishers find that readers like them, they publish them more often.
It’s upside down because control is now flipped from advertiser to publisher/reader.
Let’s go one step further and imagine that every ad knows who sees it (because we like the non-anonymous net). Then, of course, advertisers can pay more when their ads are seen by “better” ranked viewers.
I don’t think this works in the short run, though.
Despite the success of adwords, almost all advertising is bought regardless of its effectiveness. The bulk of ads are bought by giant companies that don’t measure and are afraid to measure. (Afraid, because if they measured, they might fail, and if they fail, they fear they might get fired…) Adwords scares them because it’s so entrepreneurial. This goes past that times 1000.
On the other hand, I can’t imagine a better scenario for the future. The question is when…
Thanks for reading.
ChangeThis :: Do Less
August 24, 2004
Chris Meadows talks about the free ipod sites, among others.That’s All I’ve Got to Say: Free iPods: Worth the Cost?
The idea is to gain trial and permission by enticing people to recruit friends to a service in exchange for a “free” $300 gift.
I don’t believe this is a template for everyone, but it’s one more reminder of how many things that we used to just guess about we can now measure, improve and bribe upon.
August 23, 2004
Readers know that it’s extremely unusual for me to plug a business. PR people have learned that the worst way to show up on my blog is to pitch me.
So, it’s with some excitement that I point you to eggplant active media workers collective | summer 2004. These are the guys who did all the technology behind ChangeThis.
On time
On a shoestring budget
With a smile.
I just want to commend them to anyone who needs great web tech and qualifies as a client. Nice work, Arthur!
August 19, 2004
