Marketing » Stand Aside

Community vs. Self

We crabs in a barrel, you ain’t gettin out until I do first
And that’s why the guns burst
Whatever happened to strenght in numbers?
Some of the greatest minds on the planet are among us
But so many start on strugglin’ and never get saved
Man, Martin must be turnin’ in his grave
Like remind my soul – Akrobatik, Remind My Soul

"Some of the greatest minds on the planet are among us" So true. So very true.

The struggle for power is still ripe in many people. They yearn for the almighty dollar and would do almost anything to attain it. It is true that because of the struggle for power, violence towards other humans was born. Before the notion of violence was ever thought of, we used weapons to hunt for food to sustain our livelihood. Weapons were a tool for living, not a tool for killing. Akrobatik captures this in his inspirational lyrics, the pursuit of peace was lost as an agenda. Taking it back is key. Now with knowledge and community as the forefront of this battle. He says, "Martin must be turnin’ in his grave". Alluding to the peace keeper who tragically departed from this world before his vision was fully realized.

The community is here. We are gathering together, sharing information and ideas on a global scale. The key is in the content. Now that content is being generated by more and more people we can see a multitude of minds coming together to foster knowledge and progress. Blogging is the latest realization of this. Blogging is uniting the greatest thinkers in the world underneath their own unique umbrellas. Each niche is breaking the boundaries between the professional and the layman. Status is taking a bow and making way for content.

I am glad and fortunate to be able to share my ideas and notions with the world. What with the internet being such a perversely global agenda, we can decide its future as well as our own.

The power of what we don’t want to hear.

Such a good title, if I do say so myself! Indeed I began to wonder just that over this weekend, the title of things. They matter so much. After talking to a friend a couple days ago I am still looking back on that conversation trying to figure it out. I am still thinking and wondering what exactly it was that she said which is pulling me back to it. Today I finally figured it out. I keep going back to a sentence she said that I didn’t want to hear. Maybe it wasn’t profound or powerful, but its meaning to me was something I did not and still do not want to hear.

Now, imagine that you have a company, a business, trying to break into your niche with success. The product/service is worthwhile to consumers, the business model is stable, and marketing is doing there job of hooking customers. But, maybe this isn’t enough. Maybe more is needed to either cover current costs, or to embrace developments coming towards you. I say, tell them what they don’t want to hear. Hook them with something they would’ve never even dreamed of hearing from you.

As soon as the conversation with my friend started turning to what I did not want to hear, I began to wonder and wonder. I WANTED to know. I really did. I’m not sure what it was about not wanting to hear it, but wanting to know it. It is like a horrible tragedy that you would never want to hear about but now that you heard it you want to know more. More of what caused it, more of how it occurred, more of what you don’t want to hear. I believe that this desire and curiosity to know overrules every other sense. It does not matter how horrible or how disbelieving, we don’t want to hear it but we do want to know it. Speaking rather abstractly [heh, most of this post is abstract] knowledge is power that we get by listening, listening to things we would not want to hear about in the first place. The listening is what triggers the curiosity. I am still wondering know why she said that, and how she said that, and where it all came from. Could this be taken advantage of by my fellow marketers? Probably.
How can we tell people something they don’t want to hear in order to make them incredibly curious of us? Should we stick to something global or something relevant to our business? Should we use facts or opinions? A lot of questions come up. I think a smart approach would be to do some experimentation. In a certain area you could tell people that your store may not accept everyone but it will be here. "We don’t want you to come to our shop." It generates curiosity, peaks interest. Of course you would probably follow it up with another ad or statement. Something to the effect of, "You can come if you want, but we really don’t want you here." And another, "This is not the place for you." or "We are unique, for unique people." I do wonder how creating dissidence within a community would fair in the human mind. Would they turn to a spiteful mindset in which no one can tell them which stores they can go to, or maybe an arrogant mindset in which they are better than others so they can go in? So many questions I have, and so little area to roam.

Curiosity is very unique. I believe it is one of the most important and vital human traits. Promotes progress, change, development. Of course, my sketchy-unsubstantial plan may backfire on me and people will hate my brand because I don’t care about them. Who knows.s

Market to the talkers

Marketing campaigns are never-ever going to be fully effective. That is why many marketers constantly look to that which can optimize their campaign. There are also any number of methods and techniques and areas to focus on.

The customer comes first! Many a department store have adopted this slogan. Are they really helping themselves by telling the customer that they are the most important aspect of the selling and buying process? I think not! The customer already knows that they are in your store to buy something, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. However, a huge population have adopted the online shopping experience as their primary buying medium. My former boss and I were talking about Christmas and birthday shopping for our families. He came right out and said that he does all of his shopping online. One reason he said was so that he didn’t have to deal with the shopping environment, i.e. weather and other shoppers. The next reason was that he could get all the gifts by surfing to different websites rather than going store to store trying to find the perfect gift. Is he lazy? Maybe. Or is he being a smart shopper just like millions of other consumers?

image courtesy of Timeinc.net

If we, as marketers, are to focus on customers as primary in our campaigns we would see an unpredictable rise and fall in our numbers because of the diversity of customers. Why don’t we let the customers help us out? Focus on those that talk. The Ravers. George Silverman hits the nail right on the head in identifying that primary group, ravers, which will spread our message like wildfire among their friends. And we all know that friends value the opinions of their friends over anything a fully knowledgeable company will say about itself. The ravers are able to liven up our sales.

Next type of person, the Expert. Those who are experts in a given genre. The car-guy, the handbag-girl, the computer guru. These people will be the first to buy up your products and give them a whirl. If you treat these people with the utmost respect and maybe even go out on a limb for them, you could expect huge ROI. Their friends know they are the knowledgeable one and will value the experts opinion. Because, well, they are the EXPERT.

So, ravers– experts– and finally those that are Connectors. A person who has their nose in many, many, many circles of friends. These people KNOW people. A connector may have hundreds, thousands in their network. The connector crosses platforms and spans oceans of types of people. I guess they are similar to the raver. But, I would argue that a raver sticks to their circle while a connector breeches circles, squares, and octagons of people. Finding these people are key to making a brand global in the sense that all types of people would enjoy it depending on their situation.

This 3-person method is explored in depth within Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point

Networks as a contradiction to traditional value.

The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell. An extremely good read on the power of word-of-mouth in spreading epidemics, be it brand, product, lifestyle, whatever. I finally finished reading this book. It took me awhile because of school and such.

I came upon a stunning idea during the last chapter. The power of the social network is growing ever more in our society. It is becoming the most valuable channel to which we can connect with people. It first began with phone lines. The telephone made communication the epitomy of ease in a time when it took a physical deliverer sometimes months to confirm a message. Telephony evolved into faxing evolved into sms evolved into cellular telephony and email.

Generally in a capitalistic economy value or price rises as quantity falls and vice versa. This is true with every product or service except the "network". In order for a telephone to have value it must be able to call another telephone. Same with faxes, sms, and emails. We need more and more receivers in order to build the network. As the network grows it becomes more and more valuable. Look at MySpace and Facebook and all of the other social networking platforms. The value in the market for each of these are well into the millions and billions of dollars. As the network grows it becomes more powerful, as corporations are often said to become more powerful with additions. However, one may difference between a giant corporation and a giant network [Although arguably they are one in the same only governed by different rule sets.] is that a giant corporation becomes increasingly unstable and difficult to be managed while the network, managed by its users, is completely stable.

Can multi-million dollar corporations learn from the stable network? Maybe but I highly doubt it. Can I learn from the success of the stable network? OF COURSE! In its inherent contradiction of value I give the network the most value. The network decides what is important and not important, relevant and irrelevant, what I can use and can’t use. Hmm… WHAT I CAN USE? An interesting concept. Let’s see here. First I can use mediums, i.e. video, words, audio, and graphics. That seems to encompass most mediums. I can use feedback and connections to spark conversation. Conversation… hmmm… This could be my tool, my paintbrush, my mouse-click, my pencil. Conversation can help me to outline what really matters to the rest of the world, and adapt my message to the content which is relevant. Now my content is relevant. How to spread it? Let’s go back to my mediums. What I am spreading determines my medium. Do people want to hear my message, see my message, or experience my message? I’ll leave it up to them to decide. I am here to provide and facilitate they are here to filter and facilitate. It’s a two way street. It’s the Main Street of information. The Main Street of the future. "Person to Person communications is much bigger than marketing. It is about making the world ours, again." –David Weinberger via Shel Israel

I know… long post. Lots of words. Thanks for reading though. I’ll try to include pics next time to liven things up a bit. –KP

The power of what we don’t want to hear.

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