Sometimes (and too often) marketers work to manipulate people. I define manipulation as working to spread an idea or generate an action that is not in a person's long-term best interest.
The easiest people to manipulate are those that don't demand a lot of information, are open to messages from authority figures and are willing to make decisions on a hunch, particularly if there's a promise of short-term gains.
If you want to focus on the short run and sell something, get a vote or gather a mob, the easiest place to start is with populations that leave themselves open to manipulation.
There are habits and activities that leave people open to manipulation. I'm not saying they are wrong or right, just pointing out that these behaviors make you open to being manipulated… Here are a few general categories of behaviors that manipulators seek out:
- Believing something because you heard someone say it on a news show on cable TV.
- Being a child (or acting like one).
- Buying penny stocks.
- Repeating a mantra heard from a figurehead or leader of a tribe without considering whether it's true.
- Trying to find a short cut to lose weight, make money or achieve some other long-term goal.
- Ignoring the scientific method and embracing unexamined traditional methods instead.
- Focusing on (and believing) easily gamed bestseller lists or crowds.
- Inability to tolerate fear and uncertainty.
- Focus on now at the expense of the long term.
- Allowing the clothes of the messenger (a uniform, a suit and tie, a hat) to influence your perception of the information he delivers (add gender, fame, age and race to this too).
- Reliance on repetition and frequency to decide what's true.
- Desire to stick with previously made decisions because cognitive dissonance is strong.
- Inability to ignore sunk costs.
- Problem saying 'no' in social situations.
Interesting to note that AM radio used to be filled with ads for second mortgages. And now? Gold.
Manipulating people using modern techniques is astonishingly easy (if the marketer has few morals). You only make it easier when you permit people and organizations that want to take advantage of you to do so by allowing them to use your good nature and your natural instincts against you. It happens every day in Washington DC, online, on TV and in your local community institutions.
May 18, 2010
It's so tempting to seek out more strangers.
More strangers to pitch your business, your candidate, your non-profit, your blog… More strangers means more upside and not so much downside. It means growth.
The problem is that strangers are difficult to convert. And the other problem is that they're expensive to reach. And the hardest problem is that we're running out of strangers.
Consider this hierarchy: Strangers, Friends, Listeners, Customers, Sneezers, Fans and True Fans. One true fan is worth perhaps 10,000 times as much as a stranger. And yet if you're in search of strangers, odds are you're going to mistreat a true fan in order to seduce yet another stranger who probably won't reward you much.
Let's say a marketer has $10,000 to spend. Is it better to acquire new customers at $2,000 each (advertising is expensive) or spend $10 a customer to absolutely delight and overwhelm 1,000 true fans?
Or consider a non-profit looking to generate more donations. Is it better to embrace the core donor base and work with them to host small parties with their friends to spread the word, or would hiring a PR firm to get a bunch of articles placed pay off more efficiently?
May 17, 2010
This is a fear and a paradox of doing work that's important.
A fear because so many of us are raised to avoid appearing arrogant. Being called arrogant is a terrible slur, it means that you're not only a failure, but a poser as well.
It's a paradox, though, because the confidence and attitude that goes with bringing a new idea into the world ("hey, listen to this,") is a hair's breadth away, or at least sometimes it feels that way, from being arrogant.
And so we keep our head down. Better, they say, to be invisible and non-contributing than risk being arrogant.
That feels like a selfish, cowardly cop out to me. Better, I think, to make a difference and run the risk of failing sometimes, of being made fun of, and yes, appearing arrogant. It's far better than the alternative.
May 16, 2010
I always took the position that my boss (when I had a job) worked for me. My job was to do the thing I was hired to do, and my boss had assets that could help me do the job better. His job, then, was to figure out how best give me access to the people, systems and resources that would allow me to do my job the best possible way.
Of course, that also means that the people I hire are in charge as well. My job isn't to tell them what to do, my job is for them to tell me what to do to allow them to keep their promise of delivering great work.
If you go into work on Monday with a list of things for your boss to do for you (she works for you, remember?) what would it say? What happens if you say to the people you hired, "I work for you, what's next on my agenda to support you and help make your numbers go up?"
May 15, 2010
Society makes heroes out of entrepreneurs and adventurers that tilt at windmills and succeed. Napster slays the music industry! Twitter comes out of nowhere!
The thing about taking on the biggest giants is that most of the time (so often as to be all of the time if you're willing to do some rounding) you fail. You don't just fail at the end, you often fail long before the end.
Yet the dreamers persist. These are usually the garage entrepreneurs, people with little market success behind them, those working without a track record or significant resources. People forget that Google was backed with millions of dollars from the biggest VCs in the world when they took on Yahoo.
I know, I know, I'm supposed to be the guy who says, "go for it!" but the fact is, most of the time the choice to take on impossible odds, to challenge the entrenched monopolist is the work of the lizard brain. After all, if you dream the impossible dream and go after the thing that can't possibly work, you don't have to worry about being criticized, you don't have to worry about the responsibility of shipping or serving your customers. After all, it was impossible.
Tangling with the largest possible opponent, when you are severely overmatched is a way of giving in to the resistance, of not actually shipping.
My best advice: win little battles. Get in the habit of winning, of shipping, of having customers that can't live without you. Once you've demonstrated you know how to do the art, then go after the windmills.
May 14, 2010
is that it's possible.
Mike sent me a great story about an ultra-lightweight backpacker:
"Wolf was carrying a super-small pack which weighed 14 pounds including food and water. When asked how he got his pack weight so low, Wolf would reply, 'All you need to know is that it’s possible.'"
One of the under-reported stories of the internet is this: it constantly reports on what's possible. Somewhere in the world, someone is doing something that you decided couldn't be done. By calling your bluff and by pointing out the possibilities, this reporting of possibility changes everything.
You can view this as a horrible burden, one that raises the bar and eliminates any sinecure of comfort and hiding you can find, or you can embrace it as a chance to stretch.
Most organizations forget to ask the question in the first place.
May 13, 2010
If you know someone who does great work, who brings passion and humanity with them instead of leaving it at the door of the factory, I’d like to help you celebrate them. Read on for three ways you can do that–fast and free.
Here are the three options, from most involved to least.
1. If you live in New York City or can get here easily
The folks at Vook want to talk to you. Vook creates augmented ebooks with video on the iPad, iPhone and other platforms. They had terrific success translating Unleashing the Ideavirus, and now they want to do it with my latest book, Linchpin as well.
It will contain video of people like you talking about Linchpins who matter to them, who have overcome the resistance and shipped their art to the world. If you know someone like that and are able to appear on camera at their New York studios, drop a line to rachel@vook.com and tell her who and what you'd like to celebrate.
2. If you’d like to submit a video but don’t live in New York
If you visit the Facebook page they’ve built, you can easily upload a video you shoot yourself. The best videos are simple, short and shot on a neutral background. Don’t merely tell them who the linchpin is, but tell everyone why–what's their art, what fear do they overcome, how do they contribute. Talk about what do they do, or why do they do it or when did they realize that they could make this dent in the universe.
[To upload videos to the Vook Facebook page, you must "Like" the page and then you will have the option to upload videos directly to the page wall.]
3. If you have a photo of your Linchpin
I’m going to be updating the inside of the cover of my book. I’m looking for pictures to include, and all you need to do is email it to this address according to these instructions. (Please read carefully before hitting send!) The new cover will be out before the end of the year.
Thanks!
May 12, 2010
Short version: snap a photo and email it to working90words@photos.flickr.com.
Complete no-hassle version: Five steps to uploading a photo to be included on the inside cover of
Linchpin:
1. Decide who you’d like to feature (you can submit more than one person, but only one at a time).
2.
Acquire a headshot of that person, one that you own the rights to. Best plan is to take it yourself.
3.
No logos, ape costumes or group photos please.
4. Email it (by
attaching it to a standard email) to working90words@photos.flickr.com. If you have trouble attaching a jpg photo to an email, here's a tutorial. Only one photo per email, only jpg photos, please!
5.
Don’t put a note to me in the email, since I won’t be able to read it. And I'm afraid there's no way for me to send a confirmation, since I'm routing the emails through a complicated, handbuilt mosaic system I've cobbled together… it's already a huge undertaking.
By sending the photo, you agree that you own the rights to do so and give me permission to include it. It's the only place I'll be using it, no ads, no billboards, etc.
I
can’t guarantee that all photos will be included. Please don’t send
duplicates or photos of famous people. Deadline is June 1, 2010 at
midnight. I'm giving priority to early submissions.
And thanks. Thanks for helping and thanks for celebrating people who deserve it.
It's laughably easy to find someone to critique a sentence, to find a missing apostrophe or worry about your noun-verb agreement.
Sometimes, you're lucky enough to find someone who can tell you that a paragraph is dull, or out of place.
But finding people to rearrange the chapters, to criticize the very arc of what you're building, to give you substantive feedback on your strategy–that's insanely valuable and rare.
Perhaps one criticism in a hundred is actually a useful and generous contribution in your quest to reorganize things for the better.
[And for those in need of subtitles, this isn't a post about your next novel. It's about your business, your career and your life.]
Four people tell you that there was a typo on the third slide in your presentation. A generous and useful editor (hard to call them a consultant), though, points out that you shouldn't be doing presentations at all, and your time would be better spent meeting in small groups with your best clients.
In the developing world, there's often a sharp dividing line between the elites and everyone else. The elites have money and/or an advanced education. It's not unusual to go to the poorest places on earth and find a small
cadre of people who aren't poor at all. Sometimes, this is an unearned position, one that's inherited or acquired in ways that take advantage of others. Regardless, you can't just announce you're an elite and become one.
In more and more societies, though (including my country and probably yours [and I'm including virtually the entire planet here, except perhaps North Korea] ), I'd argue that there's a different dividing line. This is the line between people who are actively engaged in new ideas, actively seeking out change, actively engaging–and people who accept what's given and slog along. It starts in school, of course, and then the difference accelerates as we get older. Some people make the effort to encounter new challenges or to grapple with things they disagree with. They seek out new people and new opportunities and relish the discomfort that comes from being challenged to grow (and challenging others to do the same).
Perhaps I'm flattering myself (and you) but I think almost everyone who reads blogs like this one is part of the elites. It's not because of birth or financial standing, it's because of a choice, the decision to be aware and engaged, to challenge a status quo of your choice.
The number of self-selected elites is skyrocketing. Part of this is a function of our ability to make a living without working 14 hours a day in a sweatshop, but part of it is the ease with which it's possible to find and connect with other elites.
The challenge of our time may be to build organizations and platforms that engage and coordinate the elites, wherever they are. After all, this is where change and productivity come from.
Once you identify this as your mission, you save a lot of time and frustration in your outreach. If someone doesn't choose to be part of the elites, it's unclear to me that you can persuade them to change their mind. On the other hand, the cycle of discovery and engagement and shipping the elites have started is going to accelerate over time, and you have all the tools necessary to be part of it–to lead it, in fact.
May 11, 2010
