[We ended up selling more than three a minute. You guys are so cool. We had a few counter problems, but it didn't effect the number we sold…they're all gone, 800 in total, and I won't be able to sell any more. Thank you for the energy and support!]
It seems as though the Apple tablet is unlikely to be ready in time for the holidays… what to get?
How about a boxed (a wooden box) set of five of my books? Very limited (only 800 will be sold, ever). Sold at a discount from retail, with cool packaging, assembled by elves, delivered by Martians, blessed by enlightened goats.
My goal was to make a rare item, even if it doesn’t make any money. More and more, I’m thinking of books as artifacts and souvenirs, as convenient and collectible packages for ideas that spread. I’m hoping that for a few hundred people, this boxed set will be an example of that.
The set includes Tribes, The Dip and Meatball Sundae. Also included is the fancy new Purple Cow (new because it includes twenty more pages of user-suggested purple cows) and the extra-fancy new All Marketers are Liars (new because it has a new cover–a better cover, actually, more on that later–and a new foreword).
If you want to buy any of the books individually (no box), use the links you can find here.
If you’ve read some or all of these before, even better! What would make a happier gift for the clueless marketer in your life?
The details are here, so be sure to read the fine print.
I’m sorry if they sell out before you get there, but first come first served seemed like a fair way to handle it. Remember, one per customer! If you pay for more than one, we'll donate extra payments to charity.
Thanks for reading and have fun!
Credits: Box, sleeve, design, elf fulfillment, goats.
November 3, 2009
The either-or world continues to decay, confronted by a shifting economy and the tools of the net.
It used to be easy to tell if someone was a journalist. Either you were or your weren't. So giving special privileges to journalists was easy. Parking permits, press badges, first amendment protections… no problem, you're a journalist. Everyone else? No way.
It used to be easy to tell if someone was an entrepreneur. Either you had a full-time job or you ran a business. So we could treat employees the same (health insurance, no moonlighting) and assume that the few that didn't have jobs were full-time freelancers or entrepreneurs.
It used to be easy to figure out who did the buying at an organization. The purchasing department did. So we knew who to call on.
Now, of course, it's all jumbled up. Everyone is a journalist, of course, but just a few do it for a living. Everyone is a freelancer, or, at the very least, always looking for the next gig. Everyone with a credit card can do the purchasing, they just expense it.
Society hates this. It means we need to make up new rules, FTC disclosures, legal principles, safety nets and more.
Marketers love this, because it means change and that means opportunity.
If the only reason you're only wearing one hat is because you've always only worn one hat, that's not a good reason.
It's interesting to see that people are much better at putting up with things that happen to them than they are at living with the consequences of a bad choice.
When you can blame someone else (or the gods of spite, chance and bad luck) it's emotionally safer than it is to acknowledge you made a lousy choice.
If the weather is freakishly bad on your vacation, you can embrace pity from your friends, and spend your angst cursing the storms.
On the other hand, if you book a trip in the middle of hurricane season, you've got no one to blame but yourself.
This is a great opportunity for marketers and others that want to engage with the public. If you can figure out how to communicate, "it's not your fault," then people will be grateful, and they'll return. It might not be right, it might not be mature and it might not be the behavior society wants to advance, but it works.
Even better, figure out how to teach your customers to enjoy taking responsibility. It's the long term solution that builds a healthy relationship between customer and vendor… you coach them on good choices and they embrace what happens after they make them.
November 2, 2009
For many organizations and individuals, attention is the most precious resource. The pursuit of attention for our ads, or our city or our careers dominates all else.
How else to explain the silly math that is used to justify Olympic hoopla? Can imagine how little patience people would have for the IOC and their internal politics if they didn't have a show that so many people wanted to watch?
Almost every city that has hosted an Olympics regrets it financially. The TV networks spend billions. The advertisers pay for it. The hoopla is vast and loud.
For what?
For the attention. It's the attention that gets cities to put up with the ridiculous system for choosing host cities and gets the TV networks to ship camera crews half way around the world. It's the attention that turns the Olympic committee into vigilant trademark and copyright police. It's easy to cut countries or companies willing to bankrupt themselves for pride or attention a little slack. After all, the Olympics is a magical event.
Except it's not. The same craving for attention happens every day in every organization in search of just one more pair of eyeballs. As marketers discover that more eyeballs does not equal better, the quixotic quest for attention will start to abate.
The formula is simple but depressing: marketers have been lousy at harvesting attention because there was just so much of it. So it was more like strip mining than careful, efficient use of a natural resource. Now that attention is harder to get, people are overpaying for it and the Olympics is just one example. The alternative is to create focused, intense networks that ignore the masses. For most marketers, that's exactly what we need.
November 1, 2009
Because everyone else does.
Why believe that people once put razor blades into apples and you should only eat wrapped candies? Because everyone else believes it (it's an urban legend).
Most of what we believe is not a result of direct experience (ever seen an electron?) but is rather part of our collection of truth because everyone (or at least the people we respect) around us seems to believe it as well.
We not only believe that some brands are better than others, we believe in social constructs, no shirt, no shoes, no service. We believe things about changing our names when we get married or what's an appropriate gift for a baby shower.
This groupthink is the soil that marketing grows in. It's frustrating for someone who is hyper-fact-based or launching a new brand to come to the conclusion that people believe what they believe, not that people are fact-centered data processing organisms.
Sure, it would be great to have an organization that enjoys the advantage of everyone believing. Getting from here, to there, though, requires stories, emotion and ideas that spread. Organizations grow when they persuade a tiny cadre to be passionate, not when they touch millions with a mediocre message.
October 31, 2009
Every year, tens of thousands of people die because organ donor status in the US is opt in. If you want to be an organ donor when you're dead, you need to go through steps now to opt in. The default is "no."
Press releases, sent by the billions, seem to have become opt out. If you don't want the barrage of nonsense, PR firms appear to believe that one by one you must alert each and every publicist in the world of your desire to not hear from them.
401 (k) plans tend to be opt in. If you do nothing, you get nothing.
Talking to the police after getting arrested is strictly opt out. Nothing to sign, you just talk.
Cheese on your pasta used to be opt out, but now it appears to be becoming opt in.
Bacon should never be opt out. Sorry, but that's just the way I feel.
I think there are a few general principles that could save us time and money and hassle:
- If there's a public good involved from a certain behavior, the default should be opt out.
- If the pressure or cost of opting out is high and it involves a civil right, then opt in is a better choice for our society. (Obviously a potential conflict to the first rule).
- If a business benefits in aggregate and the consumer is penalized on average, then it's smart public policy for it to be opt in.
- If your business is going to depend on this connection as an asset, opt in is the way to go. Opt out email is another word for spam.
So, I'd make organ donation opt out, public religious observance opt in, newsletters opt in and smart financial choices opt out. Anything that tricks a consumer into paying for something ought to be double opt in. And without a doubt, email (and commercial transactions of all kinds) are opt in. Smart for both sides.
No need to sneak around. Ask first.
October 30, 2009
are little ideas that no one killed too soon.
October 29, 2009
Hint: you don't buy a future of money.
People who win the lottery are almost always unhappy in the long run, and most of them continue to buy lottery tickets.
It's not the destination, it's the journey. Same thing with first dates, blog posts, opening presents and answering a phone call from a stranger.
The thrill of possibility, the chance for recognition, the chemical high of anticipation. That's what people pay for.
October 28, 2009
By 'better', of course I mean better customers, better prospects, better sneezers, better at spreading the word.
Here are two interesting lessons from the book industry:
- Kindle readers buy two or three times as many books as book readers. Why? I don't think it's necessarily because using a Kindle leads someone to read more books. I think it's because the kind of person who buys a lot of books is the most likely person to pony up and buy a Kindle. I know that sounds obvious, but once you see it this way, you understand why book publishers should be killing themselves to appeal to this group. After all, the group voted with their dollars to show that they're better.
- Walmart and other mass marketers are now offering top bestsellers for $9 or less each, about $5 less than their cost. Why? Why not offer toasters or socks as a loss leader to get people in the store? I think the answer is pretty clear: people who buy hardcover books buy other stuff too. A hardcover book is a luxury item, it's new and it's buzzable. This sort of person is exactly who you want in your store.
The challenge, then is to look for cues that people give you that they are better, and then cater to them. Every industry has people who are worth more, buzz more, care more and buy more than other people. Don't treat people the same, find the ones that matter more to you, and hug them.
October 27, 2009
Dunbar's number is 150.
And he's not compromising, no matter how much you whine about it.
Dunbar postulated that the typical human being can only have 150 friends. One hundred fifty people in the tribe. After that, we just aren't cognitively organized to handle and track new people easily. That's why, without external forces, human tribes tend to split in two after they reach this size. It's why WL Gore limits the size of their offices to 150 (when they grow, they build a whole new building).
Facebook and Twitter and blogs fly in the face of Dunbar's number. They put hundreds or thousands of friendlies in front of us, people we would have lost touch with (why? because of Dunbar!) except that they keep digitally reappearing.
Reunions are a great example of Dunbar's number at work. You might like a dozen people you meet at that reunion, but you can't keep up, because you're full.
Some people online are trying to flout Dunbar's number, to become connected and actual friends with tens of thousands of people at once. And guess what? It doesn't scale. You might be able to stretch to 200 or 400, but no, you can't effectively engage at a tribal level with a thousand people. You get the politician's glassy-eyed gaze or the celebrity's empty stare. And then the nature of the relationship is changed.
I can tell when this happens. I'm guessing you can too.
October 26, 2009
