Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?: And Other Provocations, 2006-2012 (21 page)

This is obvious, of course.

But what are you doing about it? Have you figured out which portions of your user base are the talkers? Is it possible to focus your development efforts on making something that they like? Or are you confusing the people who talk about your competition or about other industries with the people you need to reach? Might not be the same tribe.

The #1 cause of an idea that’s not spreading or a business that’s not growing is that they don’t have a committed group of people spreading the word about them. If you treat everyone the same, you’re not increasing the odds that some people will step up on your behalf.

This is the first question to ask someone who is frustrated at the rate their idea is spreading. “Who are you hoping will talk about you?” If you don’t know, it’s unlikely to happen all by itself. On the other hand, if a
marketer is smart about finding, courting, and delighting the group most likely to spread the idea, it’s time well spent.

The Internet has amplified the volume of the true believers, the defenders of any faith.

If you’re into high-end stereo, it’s far easier to find strident voices in defense of $100,000 stereos than ever before. If you have strong views on health care (either side), it’s not hard to find the orthodox and articulate believers. It’s not just specialty magazines or conferences any longer. The true believers are in our faces every day.

When you lead a tribe, the volume and accessibility of the true believers are good things. The true believers are easy to find, and they maintain order and create a culture for the group you’re leading.

The problem is that these loud voices may be loud, but they might not be right.

If you want them to write glowingly about your company’s new stereo, you’ll make one that’s so obscure and expensive that you won’t sell very many. If you want them to adore your new restaurant, it might be so edgy and cutting edge that not enough people will actually come, and you’ll go under.

Go check out the track record of the loudest believers in your industry. They’re wrong far more than they are right. In fact, when they love a new tech product or candidate, it might just be the jinx that guarantees failure.

The truth of the market is that the market you sell to isn’t filled with true believers. It’s filled with human beings who make compromises, who tell stories, who have competing objectives. And as a result, the truth of the market is that the products and services that win (if win means you can make a good living and make positive change) are rarely the products and services that are beloved without reservation by the true believers.

Can you imagine how difficult it was to sell the jalapeño when it came over from the New World?

“What’s it like?” you’d be asked.

Well, it’s like a pepper. (Of course, it wasn’t. Black pepper is dried and tastes very different.)

Well, it’s hot. (No, it’s not. Hot is a temperature, spicy is a taste.)

It’s not like anything, actually. Capsicum is an experience unto itself, and forcing me to tell you what it’s like does neither of us much of a service.

“What’s it like?” is actually shorthand for, “I don’t trust you enough to just try it, so you better explain in detail what category this item fits into so I can decide in advance how to understand it.”

“What’s it like?” is a huge impediment to growth and to the spread of new ideas, because forcing a marketer to pigeonhole an idea naturally limits it.

“What’s it like?” leads to sequels and high concepts and crossovers, but it doesn’t get us 1966 Bob Dylan or even yoga class.

Great marketers take advantage of categories every day. Great marketers understand how to create books or services or products or technologies that are very much like something else, but better. You should do that whenever you can.

If you want a fast start and good sales, be ready to answer the question.

When you have something that’s a breakthrough, though, perhaps you need to say instead, “It’s not like anything. You need to trust me and just taste it.”

When you’re trying to sell your idea, it’s natural to assume that the people you’re selling to think the way you do. If you can only show them the facts and stories that led you to believe what you believe, then of course they’ll end up where you are: believing.

The problem, of course, is that people don’t always think like you.

Go watch some videos of people of different political ideologies talking about why they support a candidate other than your candidate. These people are stupid! They can’t conjugate an idea, they have no factual basis for their beliefs, they are clueless, they are ideologues, they are parroting a talking head who knows even less than they do! (And those epithets apply to anyone you disagree with, of course.) In fact, they’re saying the same thing about you.

Same goes for die-hard fans of the other brand or, worse, the clueless who should be using your solution but don’t even care enough to use your competitor’s product.

If they only thought like you, of course, and knew what you know, then there wouldn’t be a problem.

The challenge doesn’t lie in getting them to know what you know. It won’t help. The challenge lies in helping them see your idea through their lens, not yours. If you study the way religions and political movements spread, you can see that this is exactly how it works. Marketers of successful ideas rarely market the facts. Instead, they market stories that match the worldview of the people being marketed to.

[There’s an alternative, one that you might want to think hard about: perhaps you should market your idea only to people who already think the way you do. After all, you’re not running for president; you don’t need a majority. Screen people by their behavior (what they read, what they buy, how they act) and tell your story to only the people who will embrace it. Doing that is a lot easier than it’s ever been before.]

Perhaps the most plaintive complaint I hear from organizations goes something like this: “We worked really hard to get very good at xyz. We’re well regarded, we’re talented, and now, all the market cares about is price. How can we get large groups of people to value our craft and buy from us again?”

Apparently, the bulk of your market no longer wants to buy your top-of-the-line furniture, lawn care services,
accounting services, tailoring services, consulting … all they want is the cheapest. The masses don’t want a better PC laptop. They just want the one with the right specs at the right price. It’s not because people are selfish (though they are) or shortsighted (though they are). It’s because in this market, right now, they’re not listening. They’ve been seduced into believing that all options are the same, and they’re only seeing price. In terms of educating the masses to differentiate yourself, the market is broken.

Fixing this is almost always a losing battle. Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean the market cares any longer.

The Marx Brothers were great at vaudeville. Live comedy in a theater. And then the market for vaudeville was killed by the movies. Groucho didn’t complain about this or argue that people should respect the hard work he and his brothers had put in. No, they went into the movies.

Then the market for movies like the Marx Brothers were making dried up. Groucho didn’t start trying to fix the market. Instead, he saw a new medium and went there. His TV work was among his best (and certainly most lucrative).

It’s extremely difficult to repair the market.

It’s a lot easier to find a market that will respect and pay for the work you can do. Technology companies have been running this race for years. Now, all of us must.

If Walmart or some cultural shift has turned what you do into a commodity, don’t argue. Find a new place before the competition does. It’s not easy or fair, but it’s true. You bet your life.

[Please note that nothing I wrote above applies to niche businesses. In fact, exactly the opposite does. You can make a good living selling bespoke PC laptops or doing vaudeville today, even though the mass market couldn’t care a bit. How he got in my pajamas, I’ll never know …]

Scott McCloud’s classic book on comics,
Understanding Comics
, explains a lot more than comics.

A key part of his thesis is that comic books work because the action takes place between the frames. Our imagination fills in the gaps between what happened in
that
frame and what happened in
this
frame,
which means that we’re as involved as the illustrator and author are in telling the story.

Marketing, it turns out, works precisely the same way.

Marketing is what happens in between the overt acts of the marketer. Yes, you made a package and yes, you designed a uniform and yes, you ran an ad … but the consumer’s take on what you did is driven by what happened out of the corner of her eye, in the dead spaces, in the moments when you let your guard down.

Marketing is what happens when you’re not trying, when you’re being transparent, and when there’s no script in place.

It’s not marketing when everything goes right on the flight to Chicago. It’s marketing when your people don’t respond after losing the guitar that got checked.

It’s not marketing when I use your product as intended. It’s marketing when my friend and I are talking about how the thing we bought from you changed us.

It’s not marketing when the smiling waitress appears with the soup. It’s marketing when we hear two waiters muttering to each other behind the serving station.

Consumers are too smart for the frames. It’s the in-between-frames stuff that matters. And yet we marketers spend 103% of our time on the frames.

The work you do when you spread the word or run an ad or invent a policy is likely aimed at one of these four groups.

• Strangers are customers to be, but not yet.
  
• Critics are those that would speak ill of you, or need to be converted.
  
• Friends are those that might have given permission, or might even buy now and then.
  
• Fans are members of your tribe, supporters, and insiders.
  

You already know the truth:
You can’t please all these groups at once. And you also probably realize that each of us with an idea to spread has
a knee-jerk default, the one we lean to without thinking. Many marketers are evangelical, focused on strangers at all costs; they’d rather convert a new customer than revisit an old one. A cubicle worker, on the other hand, might focus on no one but the boss, at the expense of broadening her platform.

Before you launch anything, run down the list. How can you optimize for the group you truly care about? How much is that optimization worth? (Hint: a new true fan is worth a thousand times as much as a slightly mollified critic.)

If you’ve got an idea worth spreading, I hope you’ll consider this random assortment of rules. Like all rules, some are made to be broken, but still …

• You can name your idea anything you like, but a Google-friendly name is always better than one that isn’t.
  
• Don’t plan on appearing on a reality show as the best way to launch your idea.
  
• Waiting for inspiration is another way of saying that you’re stalling. You don’t wait for inspiration; you command it to appear.
  
• Don’t poll your friends. It’s your art, not an election.
  
• Never pay a non-lawyer who promises to get you a patent.
  
• Avoid powerful people. Great ideas aren’t anointed; they spread through a groundswell of support.
  
• Spamming strangers doesn’t work. Spamming friends doesn’t work so well, either, but it’s certainly better than spamming strangers.
  
• The hard part is finishing, so enjoy the starting part.
  
• Powerful organizations adore the status quo, so expect no help from them if your idea challenges the very thing they adore.
  
• Figure out how long your idea will take to spread and multiply by four.
  
• Be prepared for the Dip.
  
• Seek out apostles, not partners. People who benefit from spreading your idea, not people who need to own it.
  
• Keep your overhead low and don’t quit your day job until your idea can absorb your time.
  
• Think big. Bigger than that.
  
• Are you a serial idea-starting person? If so, what can you change to end that cycle? The goal is to be an idea-shipping person.
  
• Try not to confuse confidence with delusion.
  
• Prefer dry, useful, but dull ideas to consumer-friendly “I would buy that” sorts of things. A lot less competition and a lot more upside in the long run.
  
• Pick a budget. Pick a ship date. Honor both. Don’t ignore either. No slippage, no overruns.
  
• Surround yourself with encouraging voices and incisive critics. It’s okay if they’re not the same people. Ignore both camps on occasion.
  
• Be grateful.
  
• Rise up to the opportunity, and do the idea justice.
  

In the face of significant change and opportunity, people are often one of the three. If you’re going to be of assistance, it helps to know which one.

Uninformed people need information and insight in order to figure out what to do next. They are approaching the problem with optimism and calm, but they need to be taught. Uninformed is not a pejorative term; it’s a temporary state.

Clueless people don’t know what to do and they don’t know that they don’t know what to do. They don’t know the right questions to ask. Giving them instructions is insufficient. First, they need to be sold on what the platform even looks like.

And frightened people will resist any help you can give them, and they will blame you for the stress the change is causing. Scared people like to shoot the messenger. Duck.

The worst kind of frightened person is one with power. Someone in a mob of other frightened people, someone with a gun, someone who is the CEO. When confronted with a scared CEO, time to run.
Before someone can change, they have to learn, and before they learn, they have to cease being scared.