A study out today shows that obesity is contagious. If your best friend gets fat, your chances of gaining weight more than double.
Malcolm Gladwell fans will recall his reporting that suicide among teenagers can be contagious as well.
So is terrorism, of course. And spamming. And graffiti. [And becoming a millionaire, getting your company funded, not dropping out of high school and learning how to shop for bargains, too.]
The most important thing you can do is choose who you’re hanging out with. The second high-leverage thing is to put dynamics in place that reinforce the ideas you’d like to see spread. Celebrate the heroes. Make it easy for those ideas to spread…
July 26, 2007
Fifteen years ago, I used to frequent a movie theater in Yonkers, NY. It puzzled me that all the teenage girls hanging out front seemed to look alike. Similar hair, similar clothes. Who, I wondered, was their role model? If they were all going to look the same, they needed some central figure to look to for inspiration. I finally figured it out–Barbie. They were dressing like Barbie dolls.
Those same girls now dress like Paris. For now. Then it will be someone else.
You may have noticed that websites do the same thing. Here’s an optimization ‘expert’. I have no idea if the data is any good, no idea if the results are as promised–I haven’t used them. But I can tell in a heartbeat what the role model for the site designer was. The look and feel of the page don’t just influence the way I think about the offer, they completely change the way I think about it. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong, it just means that it’s not for me. This sort of graphic approach, like the layout of the spam I get all too often, is the Barbie of the Internet. For now.
Next time you put on a suit or choose a conference room or design a page, realize that you’re modeling your behavior after someone. Who? Why?
July 25, 2007
Since I wrote Permission Marketing in 1999, marketing has changed more than any of us could imagine. One of the biggest changes is the ubiquity of search.
The idea that people would seek out marketing, ads and content the same way they sought out books is radical. The bookstore is filled with hundreds of thousands of titles, most of which I have no interest in. That’s okay, though, because books mind their own business, just waiting for someone to find them. Finding what I want isn’t particularly difficult, and if you want to write a junky book, it’s fine with me, as long as you’re willing to be responsible for what you say.
That same dynamic now drives everything from radio shows to web sites to scuba tanks. Go ahead and make what you want, as long as you stand behind it and don’t bother me. If you want to sell magnetic bracelets or put risque pictures on your website, it’s your responsibility, your choice. Want to find a website featuring donkeys, naked jugglers and various illicit acts? It’s junk, sure, but it’s out there. You just have to go find it. Junk turns into spam when you show up at my doorstep, when your noise intercepts my quiet.
The result of Google and the prevalence of search means that people are far more forgiving of things that need to be sought out, and less patient than ever with selfish marketers that insist on showing up in your face.
July 24, 2007
My post on this job title got a lot of response. So I figured I’d put together a job anthology.
If you’ve got a job opening for a community organizer, write it up. Post it on your blog or your lens or your site. Send me the link. Put COJ in the subject line. I’ll post a bunch of them on Thursday.
July 23, 2007
A flurry of unsolicited questions came in on Friday, including two "please review my blog" letters, and a "please review my book" package. (For the record, I’m totally useless at reviewing your blog, sorry.)
One person was very honest and asked, "Is my blog boring?"
If you need to ask, you probably know the answer.
The mistake most blogs and books make: they are about the writer, not the reader.
Years ago, a friend (a former judge) wrote a thriller. It was based on a true story that actually happened to him. It was terrible. Why? The fact that it had actually happened was interesting to him, but the typical reader didn’t care at all. That’s because the typical reader didn’t know him.
The things that fascinate you about your life are almost always banal to strangers. Strangers want to read about their lives, not yours. And guess what? The same thing is true about prospects and customers and just about anything you can imagine marketing.
Today, in Brooklyn, I passed a woman wearing a large red t-shirt. It said, in full, "Celebrate Life with Ketchup." [Mystery solved! it’s a reference to Prairie Home Companion. Thanks, guys].
And last week, in the middle of a crosswalk (18th and 8th Ave., I think) I passed this item, embedded in the asphalt in the middle of the street. [Piet points us to the answer].
I’m as mystified as you.
The last marketing mystery is a bonus more than a mystery. The iconic Pinkberry yogurt chain is racing across America as fast as it can, open places hither and yon. The front of the store features a variety of almost illegible bits of marketing froth, accompanied by exactly one image that is clear. So clear, you can read it across the street. Of course I ignored it, but the question is, why? Is it a deliberate attempt to attract interest by forbidding people to share what they see? Or is it some security-theatre minded person run amok?
July 22, 2007
I stopped by a garage sale today. The guy had thousands of CDs, most of them in their wrappers. $3 each. I was excited.
Two boxes in, I felt like I was in a different universe. Every single artist was someone I had never heard of. After 25 years of buying CDs (a lot of CDs) I had come face to face with a huge Dip. It’s almost impossible to buy music with no frame of reference. There were no hits, no recommendations, no "if you like x, you’ll like y". I realized that the time it would take to decide if I liked an album was probably worth more than the $3 it would cost to buy one–in other words, not even worth it for ‘free.’
Musicians, bloggers, writers–if you’re toiling in the long tail, getting stuck at zero is now a real possibility. Being just like the other guys but trying harder is less of an effective strategy than ever before.
July 21, 2007
By now, the Harry Potter hype machine has told you all about the pre-shipped copies, the scanned book and the spoilers. No doubt it’ll sell a few copies, and no doubt the reported $20 million on security (not to mention fedex expense) was both useful and ineffective.
The interesting thing for me is how the Net changes what it means for something to be a secret. Five hundred year old technology (books) is just too slow for the Net. The act of printing, storing and shipping millions of books takes too long for a secret to ever be in a book again.
My solution? A hybrid. Publish the first edition of the book without the last three chapters. Take your time, save the $20 million. Every purchaser then gets access (hey, everyone gets access) to the last three chapters on launch day.
Books are souvenirs. No one is going to read Potter online, even if it’s free. Holding and owning the book, remembering when and how you got it… that’s what you’re paying for. Books are great at holding memories. They’re lousy at keeping secrets.
July 20, 2007
If you want to hire a union organizer, you probably know what to look for. Someone with resilience, passion, persistence and excellent interpersonal skills.
What if you want to hire someone to build an online community? Somebody to create and maintain a virtual world in which all the players in an industry feel like they need to be part of it? Like being the head of a big trade association, but without the bureaucracy and tedium…
It would help if that person understood technology, at least well enough to know what it could do. They would need to be able to write. But they also have to be able to seduce stragglers into joining the group in the first place, so they have to be able to understand a marketplace, do outbound selling and non-electronic communications. They have to be able to balance huge amounts of inbound correspondence without making people feel left out, and they have to be able to walk the fine line between rejecting trolls and alienating the good guys.
Since there’s no rule book, it would help to be willing to try new things, to be self-starting and obsessed with measurement as well.
If you were great at this, I’d imagine you’d never ever have trouble finding good work.
July 19, 2007
Well, most of us anyway.
This terrific article about a study of eBay buyers and sellers proves it. In some categories, more than 40% of the auctions went for more than the Buy it Now price. Hmmmm. Two tips from the end:
- Set low opening prices. When choosing between identical items, buyers
seem to favor whichever auction has the most bids. The best way to grab
early bids: Start with a cheap price. By the time a $1 DVD auction
reaches $10, it will probably attract more newcomers than a DVD that
started at $10.
- Don’t use secret reserves. A study of online auctions with and without
hidden minimum prices showed that many buyers steer clear of items with
a secret opening price. It’s like that old shopping joke, "If you have
to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it."
