At the dawn of the plastic age, it was a cheap substitute. The word “plasticky” is not a compliment.
Over time, the plastics industry developed new finishes, colors and most of all, cultural impact, and extra (wasted) plastic packaging was seen first as convenient, then as a sign of status.
I just got a lovely digital recorder in the mail. The thoughtfully-designed and well-constructed device weighs 6 ounces. The box it came in, on the other hand, is difficult to open and hard to re-use. It weighs 11 ounces.
The plastic in this box, and in so many other over-wrought packages, will never go away. It cannot be recycled. It will either end up burned or in the ocean or a landfill, where it will remain for more than a million years.
Gratuitous used to mean, “freely bestowed.” By overinvesting in something that’s not required, a marketer demonstrates confidence, status and power. But now, gratuitous means inefficient, grating and wasteful.
Marketers seek to tell a story of better. But better changes. Better might be more convenient, cheaper, efficiently designed, higher utility, more exclusive, mainstream, or simply fun. But better is no longer associated with wasteful.
There are a few questions where the answer is ‘plastic.’ But we’re all discovering that it comes at a real cost. Instead of raising the status of the companies that use it in marketing, it is now a lazy, shameful shortcut.
With surprisingly little effort, we can raise the bar on better.
There’s a difference between intellectual and smart. A plumber is smart, they know how to do a skilled and effective job on the task at hand. Intellectualism isn’t about practical results, it’s a passion for exploring what others have said, though this approach is sometimes misused to make others feel uninformed or to stall.
If you want to know what the scholars have written, ask an intellectual.
And if you’ve got a problem worth solving, it might pay to ask a smart person.
And yet, if the GPS is broken and we need directions, sometimes we hesitate to ask a local. And if your computer isn’t working, swearing at it might be less effective than asking an IT pro.
There are a couple of reasons we might resist help from someone who is smart:
–It exposes us to change and all the emotions that come from that. If we insulate ourselves from useful insight, we can stay put, stuck, with no changes required.
–It can make us seem dumb in comparison. It might be better to live with the problem than be seen as someone who didn’t know about it.
Access to smart is easier than ever before. But we need to seek it out.
It’s an odd way to think about your project, your job, your startup, but there’s little that matters more.
There are two key elements:
What does it take to get new customers?
The customers you have–how much authority do they have over your work, and what makes them happy?
At one extreme is the first few years of Google’s growth. The salesforce didn’t matter–the customers showed up on their own, and the revenue engine was so powerful that they were easily replaced. Beyond that, the needs of the customers were aligned with Google’s vision.
Compare this to a landscaper who sets up a new business on a small island. Getting customers is a challenge, because all the residents who want a landscaper already have one–you’ll need to do some hard work to get people to switch. And then, the customers you get might want something impossible, and are hoping to pay as little as possible for it. And worse, they may get satisfaction (inappropriately) out of mistreating a vendor they feel power over.
The goal is to have a business where the customers you have enable you to build the organization you want to build. To look forward to finding and serving new customers. And to create a tailwind so that early customer success earns you a chance for more customer success.
The first thing to do when thinking about starting a project, before you invest in systems design, infrastructure or fancy tools, is to practice getting some customers. And the second thing to do is to find out what it’s like to delight or disappoint those customers.
Customer traction is just about the only thing all successful organizations have in common.
[unrelated PS and Happy August! Today’s the official publication day for my Page A Day calendar. Like a daily blog, but on paper. And the first that I know of with video built in. They only make one batch, so when it’s gone, it’s gone.]
There’s often a choice between following the cultural dictates of a given group or seeking out demonstrable facts and the scientific method. Which do you expect most people would choose?
Which would you choose?
When we revert to a testable analysis of what works, we’re relying on the one thing that all humans share: reality. But cultural connection, peer pressure and the power of affiliation and status often short-circuit that analysis.
This happens so often that arguing about facts might not be the best way to make your point.
“Rational goodwill” is shorthand for, “If the analysis is testable, are you prepared to change your mind and accept the alternative that works?”
And yet, more often than we might expect, NASA engineers, doctors, political leaders and households would have to honestly answer that with a ‘no’.
It might be that culture isn’t something we awkwardly laid atop rational analysis. It might be the other way around.
The first is the one that we often talk about. It’s the make-believe magic of two things occurring that we didn’t expect to occur. When you and your long-lost college roommate end up randomly sharing adjacent bowling lanes when you’re 72–that’s a coincidence. When the world expert on the obscure Discs of Tron videogame finds a pristine example abandoned at the end of a driveway near his mom’s house… We invent all sorts of reasons for these events, but they’re simply random.
The other kind matters far more. This is when we get two unrelated incidents confused because they happened nearby in time. If you were drinking your first ever kombucha when you heard that your cat died, it might be that in the future, seeing a can of kombucha prompts you to be sad. The events are co-incident.
As our lives speed up and the number of inputs increases, it’s easier than ever to have events in proximity prompt instincts or expectations that are unrelated to what they actually created.
That’s one reason why marketers work so hard to have their products or ads show up in times of our lives when we’re likely to associate them with feelings that lead to consumption. It’s not a random coincidence, it’s simply an incident that was planned in advance.
Someone is going to end up with 10,000,000 followers. Someone is going to post the next viral TikTok. Someone is going to build a meme that spreads around the world.
But it probably won’t be me and it probably won’t be you.
Buying lottery tickets might be fun, but they’re a lousy investment.
It’s simple: This surgery will fix your problem and you’ll be better.
It’s complicated: Changes in lifestyle, diet and attitude will, over time, help you feel better.
Or…
Our enemies are bad, and we’re good. Vote for me.
The world is a big place that is filled with nuance, shifting alliances and constant change. It’s worth taking a minute to look for what works. Vote for me.
Perhaps…
Search is simple. Type what you want in the box and click the first match.
Information is vast. Look over our taxonomy of the world’s information and start to winnow the results in search of what you’re looking for.
The easiest thing to sell is a simple solution to a problem someone knows they have.
It’s a lot more difficult to bring nuance, understanding and resilience to a complex situation.
But not all real problems lead to good businesses.
There are problems all around us. People need housing, health care and food. They want delight, belonging and status.
When a company shows up in the marketplace with a product or service that people eagerly choose to buy, it’s possible to make a profit. If there are assets and other ways to offer something at a premium, a business can actually thrive.
But sometimes, a problem doesn’t lend itself to a private solution. Or, a private solution might simply be a low-cost commodity, something we need, but because it’s available from many sources, it might not actually be a good business for any given entity.
We are unlikely to run out of problems. And finding a business that solves a problem is a great first step. But it also helps (a lot) if it’s also a good business.
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