Is this your daughter?
Brian Baute points us to the most amazing Spelling Bee clip in history. Wouldn’t it be great to be friends with her? Or to be her mom and dad?
Facts that feel right
For a fact to spread, it needs to have the right structure and match our worldview. This hysterically funny site makes it obvious: Gullible.info.
Competition
In the early 1980s, these are the words you would have needed to spell in order to win the national spelling bee:
sarcophagus
psoriasis
Purim
luge
milieu
(I thought there were two "l"s in milieu, but I would have gotten the rest right.)
Here are the words that won the last five years:
succedaneum
prospicience
pococurante
autochthonous
appoggiatura
Sometimes, I think, the value of winning is dwarfed by the chances of doing so. As a market gets more competitive, winning by the traditional rules gets more and more difficult. Some choose to try even harder. Some just make up new rules or invent new markets.
Not rights, but smart stuff
Tim Baxter points me to a riff from Howard Mann, which he got from Wunderman: Consumers Communications Bill Of Rights // Dig Tank. Unlike some of the other "Bill of Rights" type riffs I’ve seen, what’s neat about this one is that morality has nothing to do with it. Here are five rules that will make you more money and increase effectiveness… by treating people with respect:
1. Tell me clearly who you are, and why you are contacting me.
2. Tell me clearly what you are, or are not, going to do with the information I give you.
3. Don’t pretend that you know me personally. You don’t know me; you know some things about me.
4. Don’t assume that we have a relationship.
5. Don’t assume that I want to have a relationship with you.
First time?
The viral nature of my talk at Google has astounded me. TV really is the influenza of idea spreading. If I had a million dollars for every single person who downloaded the video, I’d have almost as much money as Google. If you’re here for the first time, can I commend you to the RSS and MyYahoo links to your left, as well as this lens, which features some of my most notorious past posts and such. Thanks for reading.
The painless dentist
A friend complains, "I’m going to switch dentists."
Always inquisitive (on your behalf) and eager to share his tale of woe, I asked why.
Well, it turns out that the dentist was running five minutes early, only kept him in the chair for twenty minutes and had him out and on the road ahead of schedule.
Steve, it seems, doesn’t think he’s done his dental duty. He doesn’t think his teeth are as clean as they were at the old dentist. It wasn’t enough work.
Dentists are working like crazy to remarket themselves. They don’t use words like ‘drill’ or ‘pain’. They put tvs in the waiting room. They try to be on time and less painful.
Worldview matters. Steve’s worldview is that a visit to the dentist should have all that dental overhead stuff in order to count.
Is there a first mover advantage?
Some conventional wisdom says that you need to be first to win. People will point to eBay and Microsoft and Starbucks and the William Morris Agency and say, "if it’s a natural monopoly or a market where switching costs are high, the first person in, wins."
This argument has been amplified lately by the high cost of building a name for yourself (it would cost just too much to build a brand bigger than Starbucks in a post-TV world) as well as the network effects of things like eBay and Hotmail.
Skeptics scream foul. They point out that not one of the examples I gave above was actually the first mover. There were plenty of others that came first, and, they argue, the fast follower won by learning from the mistakes of the innovator. They argue that innovation is overrated and low costs and good service are the key.
I think both sides are wrong (and right) and the mistake is caused by the erroneous belief that there’s a market.
There isn’t a market.
There are a million markets. Markets of one, or markets of small groups, or markets of cohorts that communicate.
If you’re an eBay user, my guess is that eBay was the first auction site you used. If you use Windows, my guess is that you never used CPM. And if you are a Starbucks junkie, my guess is that you don’t live near a Peets.
What happens: the market often belongs to the first person who brings you the right story on the right day.
Yes, you must be first (and right) in that market or this market.
But that doesn’t mean you have to be first (and right) in the universe.
The market is splintering more than even some pundits predicted in 1998 (that would be me). Which means that the idea of monolithic marketing messages to monolithic markets makes no sense. The race is now to be the first mover in the micromarkets where attention matters.
Of course, those micromarkets are leaky. People don’t cooperate. They talk to each other. So pretty quickly, that splintered market coalesces into something bigger.
Thanks for supporting the Big Moo
A quick update on The Big Moo by The Group of 33.
Regular readers know that all royalties go to charity. Well, we’ve just
sold rights in several countries around the world, the publisher has
gone back to press (!) on the US version and the folks at
remarkabalize.com have sold thousands of customized copies as well.
This means that nearly $200,000 has been donated to JDRF, Room to Read and the Acumen Fund. Thanks for all your support.
Live at Google
Enjoy (hey, it’s free): "All Marketers are Liars" – Seth Godin speaks at Google – Google Video.
The regular kind
I’m told that in Ethiopia, even the littlest kids eat Ethiopian food.
Hard to tell if you’ve ever tried to feed a six-year-old. All she wants is the regular kind. "Why is this bread brown? I want the regular kind!"
Take a walk through Boca Raton, Florida, and you’ll see countless retired folks, all driving the regular kind of car.
And the ketchup aisle of your grocery store sells plenty of Heinz, thanks very much.
There’s a huge demand for the regular kind in industry as well. The regular kind of bizdev deal and the regular kind of ad buy. The regular kind of accounting treatment and of course, the regular annual conference.
It’s not surprising that people in search of stability demand what they’re used to. It is surprising that those in search of growth or value or even just delight are so quick to abandon that search on settle for regular whenever there is stress in their environment.