Sometimes Doing Nothing Pays Off.
(hat tip to Seth Godin for this wonderful post)
Mr. Godin is right when he says:
The irony, of course, is that they’ll (Wall-E, Pixar) make plenty of money. Bravery often pays off, even if paying off is not your goal. Especially if that’s not your goal.
Marketing isn’t always about pandering to the masses and shooting for the quick payoff. Often, the best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing at all.
Is Mr. Godin speaking on one of my favorite topics: marketing authenticity? I am not necessarily sure. If you read the full post here , you will find that he is referencing the fact that QUALITY directly relates to the overall success. More often than not, you will not need to hook up the crack wheel and act like Robin William’s in Patch Adams. Sometimes all it takes is a quality product (Wall-E) and a quality communication tool (the Internet).
I can’t imagine the extreme amount of stress seeping from the Pixar offices. You have ONE movie a year to make a splash and to make money. ONE. Talk about a huge gamble!
Honestly, I envy Pixar’s trust in their product.
Take note! Take note business owners, entrepreneurs, product managers, and salesmen. This is a great example of confidence in your product offering. We should all have this kind of confidence.
Small Pox and Smaller Indiana
Seth Godin has another great blog on gimmicks. I didn’t pull much from the actual blog pertaining to gimmicks but he had a great thought at the end:
As you sit down to consider ways to be more remarkable, the challenge is to be worth talking about… at the same time you are adding value for the person who’s talking about you.
I encourage all members in Smaller Indiana to invent your “gimmick” for Smaller Indiana. Does it add value when you are virally spreading? What will it take to create a Smaller Indiana that is worth spreading like an epidemic from city to city? Are we already there?
I will leave you with this:
I was playing Oregon Trail on Facebook and well, I died from a virus (my body was probably eaten by a pack of ravenous wolves but that is beside the point). It made me chuckle and ponder on how a virus spreads and infects.
And much like a small pox outbreak on Oregon Trail, Smaller Indiana is turning into a virus.
Life. Liberty. And the Pursuit.
I wrote last about the American Gladiators show, but I did make a comment about a Cadillac commercial being on during the show and right after a WWE commercial. Are you missing your demographic Caddy?
Even though I didn’t agree with that particular placement, I absolutely love the new marketing campaign from (insert Ad company). It looks to me as if Cadillac is trying to reinvent itself to a younger generation and demographic. It no longer wants to be grandpa’s luxury card you rode to church of the weekends. The reinvention of Cadillac is succeeding in my opinion and the tag line is genius.
I can’t tell you how much I love this tagline. Everything about it is a good thing. Way to take an old saying and make it new again caddy! You are catering to the old and the new.
Dumbing Down America. The Gladiators.
Who was a huge fan of the old school American Gladiators show on TV? THIS GUY! Yah that’s right, I used to love watching the matches between competitors and the unstoppable, iron fisted gladiators. You could imagine my intense pleasure when I read that a NEW American Gladiators was going to be released onto the American TV Screens. I can’t explain to you the excitement I had to be able to watch my beloved Gladiators again.
I sat down last night with some popcorn, friends, and a bottle of Upland Beer (BUY IT, it is from a brewery in
Long story short, American Gladiators was absolutely terrible. It was over produced and after the corniness factor I had more popcorn than I had started with.
What is happening to American entertainment? From the flopped broadcast or the Grammy Awards to the horrible CaveMan TV show, I feel like we becoming a Ray Liotta in the Silence of The Lambs 2 when Anthony Hopkins eats some of his brain.
Also, there was a Cadillac commercial right after the WWE. Enough said. Get a new VP of Marketing but keep your AD company because those commercials are amazing.
This is Ryan Seacrest, signing out.
Is that a GAP in your knowledge?
Curiosity is monumental when it comes to marketing. In the fast paced world of today where marketing is being droned down to a dull roar and people are ignoring everything they come in contact with, curiosity always reigns supreme.
A good “marketing definition of curiosity would be: Curiosity happens when someone feels a gap in their knowledge (Made to Stick, pg 84). It can be detrimental to a psyche when you feel the gap of knowledge when hearing, conversing, or seeing something you don’t quite understand.
Learning in the pursuit of knowledge is a universal trait in most human beings. When you feel the knowledge gap you scramble around trying to find something to fill it.
So many times companies try to throw the facts at their consumers without telling them why they need to learn it in the first place. “This is what makes our product work! It is a semi-conductor flex conductor.” Eventually they get to the need statement of the product but all the facts are thrown into the face of the consumer. I don’t care about the flex mumbo jumbo. How will it make my life easier!?
You can’t fill a hole that has already been filled. You need to dig the hole first to fill it in again. Dig a hole. Create a need and fill it.