One of my favorite conversations goes like this.
"Oh, by the way, I read your book Purple Cow. I liked it a lot. I even underlined some paragraphs."
"Thanks!" I say. Underlining is the goal of people in my line of work.
"I can imagine that it’s really helpful to a lot of people. Unfortunately, in my [business/organization/line of work], most of what you write about doesn’t really work."
The reason it’s such a good conversation is that people in every possible line of work have managed to tell me that the ideas don’t apply to them… and that gives me a chance to ask them more details about what they do–and within a minute or two, we’re both jumping up and down, excited with the possibilities of how it does work in their line of work. Ministers, freelance photographers, real estate agents, middle managers, web site marketers–doesn’t matter, it always seems to come down to one thing:
Say no to being average.
This morning, Bradley was explaining to me that it couldn’t work in his profession as a freelance writer. It seems that almost all the clients want average stuff. Which no surprise, since average is, by definition, the stuff most people want. I asked, "Are there any writers in your field who you hate because they get paid way too much compared to your perception of the effort they put in and the talent they have?"
"Sure," he said, feeling a little sheepish about being annoyed by their success.
"And how do they get those gigs?"
It’s because they stand for something. Because they are at the edges. Because if an editor wants a ‘Bob-Jones-type’ article, she has to call Bob Jones for it… and pay Bob’s fees. Bob would fail if he did average work for average editors just to make a living. But by turning down the average stuff and insisting on standing for something on the edge, he profits. By challenging his clients to run stuff that makes them nervous (and then having them discover that it’s great), he profits.
This is scary. It’s really scary to turn down most (the average) of what comes your way and hold out for the remarkable opportunities. Scary to quit your job at an average company doing average work just because you know that if you stay, you’ll end up just like them. Scary to go way out on an edge and intentionally make what you do unattractive to some.
Which is why it’s such a great opportunity.
April 21, 2006
Cynthia reminds me of something I said to her at a seminar a while ago:
"The enemy of creativity is fear…In the long run, the enemy of fear is creativity. I’m sure of it."
April 20, 2006
If you buy an inkjet printer, odds are the manufacturer lost money on your purchase. HP sells the deskjets for as cheap as they can… because they know they’ll make a killing on the cartridges.
So, if you were HP, it would seem like the best thing to do is to be sure that people are using your printers, and keep using them for as long as possible.
Not so. I just called HP for help with a driver for my 18 month old printer. They won’t help me on the phone… it’s out of warranty.
Of course, if I buy a new one, the driver will still need help, and they will have lost money on my purchase of the machine that replaces the perfectly good machine on my desk.
Lesson 1: careful with those policies.
Lesson 2: razors should last a long time and be extremely well supported if you hope to sell more blades.
Brian Barton alerts me to this corporate easter egg.
First, go to JetBlue:Travel Info:Route Map.
Then, hold down the shift key while hitting Buffalo (where I’m from). Then, without letting go, type PBJ.
Stupid video awaits. Play it loud. Pass it on.
Who says corporate sites have to be boring?
[PS we broke the site. The egg is now gone.]
April 19, 2006
All you need to do is watch some boys–any boys, anywhere, any age–playing on a vacant lot and you will see the magic stick archetype at work.
This is a handheld device that is a weapon or wand, something capable of magically influencing the world around the holder.
A cell phone is a magic stick. So is the microphone that Jerry Seinfeld holds on stage (the reason he doesn’t use a clip-on wireless lavalier is… hmmm…). The iPod has succeeded largely because Steve Jobs unintentionally created a magical device that fit the archetype perfectly. And then, of course, there are guns.
The remote control changed the way we watch TV. We don’t use headsets at work, even though it would save a lot of wear and tear on the neck… it’s all the same thing. It’s about using your hands to change your world.
Megan is on a tear: More on Recommendation. The five elements:
1. First-person experience.
2. Enthusiasm.
3. Specificity.
4. Sincerity.
5. Clarity.
And from her previous post: "Of course, the best recommendations are authentic and personal and trusted, which makes it easy for you to take action on them."
All the marketing theory, insight and blather that I’ve read fails to explain some obvious phenonema. For example, why do some products seem to market themselves while others struggle? Why are some consumer behaviors so ingrained, while others disappear almost overnight?
So I think it’s time to talk about Carl Jung.
Here’s what the wikipedia says about Jung’s theory of archetypes:
…the collective unconscious is composed of archetypes. In contrast to
the objective material world, the subjective realm of archetypes can
not be adequately understood through quantitative modes of research.
Instead it can only begin to be revealed through an examination of the
symbolic communications of the human psyche—in art, dreams, religion,
myth, and the themes of human relational/behavioral patterns. Devoting
his life to the task of exploring and understanding the collective
unconscious, Jung discovered that certain symbolic themes exist across all cultures, all epochs, and in every individual.
Let me try out an example on you:
Food = Love
Parts of the world wrestle with hunger, famine and even starvation. Yet in many of these cultures, it is unthinkable to eat brown rice. Think about that.. for thousands of years, people ate brown rice, which is easier to prepare, more nutritious and far more efficient than white rice (more food per bushel harvested). And yet, there’s something so powerful about the symbol of white rice that it is embraced by people who should (and probably do) know better.
Or take it closer to home. Four obese people in a restaurant, eating far more than they should, because they can.
Or a parent sending a child to school with a white bread bagel, even though she knows that it’s not healthy–just because it’s what she grew up with.
These are all irrational acts, things that we can’t chalk up to ignorance or lack of access to alternatives. Instead, they play into a very complex set of beliefs that seem to cross cultures.
Why so much Spam (the luncheon meat, not the email) in Hawaii and other Pacific cultures? I don’t think we can chalk it up to distribution, coupons or tv ads. Instead, I think there’s a complicated relationship between an archetype and the symbols that the food represents.
I think it’s interesting to explore some fundamental consumer archetypes and how marketers have tapped into them (usually accidentally). The goal isn’t to explain the origins of these often irrational needs, but to realize that they are there. Gravity’s causes are unknown, but we still need to factor it in to our lives. Same with archetypes. We don’t have to understand them to leverage them.
Every single time I look at the price of a box of food and then throw the item in the shopping cart at the supermarket, I shake my head the way Mary Richards did in the opening credits of the Mary Tyler Moore show. I can’t help it.
And lately, every time I hear Aretha Franklin’s R-E-S-P-E-C-T, I shake my head the way Kelly does in her googleidol video.
These are touchstone moments. The way you can say "cheezbugah cheezbugah" to any 45 year old and know that they’ll get the joke.
Over. Gone. Finished.
Blogs and the web are killing magazines on a daily basis. The shakeout is happening before our eyes.
It will be a small-time event compared to what’s about to happen to both TV and our culture.
Everyone will have a network. Not just a show, but, if you want it, an entire network of shows. Lots of channels, with not so many viewers per channel. A network for each religious group, and variants for each sect. Every church, community group, local theatre and art gallery gets a network. Every classroom and every division of every company.
YES, human beings have a need to do what others are doing. We have a desire for mass and for fashion. And for those lucky enough to be anointed, there will be power and leverage and profits. But the idea that Mary Richard’s little shake of the head would be known and automatically mimicked by millions in the future is crazy.
It was fun while it lasted.
What’s going to be on your network?
April 18, 2006
I first started talking about landing pages in <gasp> 1991, but there’s probably someone out there who can pre-date me. Sometimes when you’ve been riffing on an idea for so long, it’s easy to believe that everyone gets it, but my mail says otherwise.
A landing page is the first page a visitor to your site sees.
Landing pages were important back in the day of email marketing, because if you included a link in your email, that was the page the permission marketee would land on if he clicked through.
Landing pages are even more important today because they are the page that someone clicking on a Google Adwords ad sees.
A landing page (in fact, every page) can only cause one of five actions:
- Get a visitor to click (to go to another page, on your site or someone else’s)
- Get a visitor to buy
- Get a visitor to give permission for you to follow up (by email, phone, etc.). This includes registration of course.
- Get a visitor to tell a friend
- (and the more subtle) Get a visitor to learn something, which could even include posting a comment or giving you some sort of feedback
I think that’s the entire list of options
So, if you build a landing page, and you’re going to invest time and money to get people to visit it, it makes sense to optimize that page to accomplish just one of the things above. Perhaps two, but no more.
When you review a landing page, the thing to ask yourself is, "What does the person who built this page want me to do?" If you can optimize for that, you should. If there are two versions of a landing page and one performs better than the other, use that one! This sounds obvious, but how often are you doing the test? How long does a landing page last in your shop before it gets toppled by a better one? And do you have a different landing page for every single ad, every single offer? Why not?
Landing pages are not wandering generalities. They are specific, measurable offers. You can tell if they’re working or not. You can improve the metrics and make them work better. Landing pages are the new direct marketing, and everyone with a website is a direct marketer.
