Edmundo Ruiz points us to: Geek on Stun: HD Allard.
What happens when a nerd tries to tell a different story? Here’s HD Allard, from Microsoft, transforming himself into a media mogul.
Yes, it’s just a story. Same guy, different hair. And there’s no doubt in my mind that the new look gets a very different response than the old one would have.
If your organization the only?
The only all-rock radio station in Hempstead?
The only organic bakery in Toledo?
The only church that offers its believers true salvation?
The only magazine that brings readers a particular type of story?
The only consultant that can teach people how to increase a certain type of productivity?
A few years ago, the walls of only started to crumble. I can buy organic bread online, or frozen, or pick some up at the Whole Foods Market. I can tune into music ten different ways. I can learn everything I want to learn without ever subscribing to a magazine ever again…
Only is very comforting. Only eliminates competition, provides price insulation and improves the status of my ego. Only, alas, is in short supply these days.
The challenge of being remarkable is being fast enough and brave enough to embrace the new, not just to rely on being the only.
Michael Duffy rates 2,767 winery web sites on effectiveness. He then sells a customized report to any winery that cares to pay for it. Home Page – The Winery Web Site Report.
This is the new sort of non-fiction publishing model that is going to demolish the old one (at least from an economic point of view). At $500 a copy, the report is almost certainly worth the money. And at $500 a copy, a customized overview is also quite profitable for the author. And finally, at $500, it’s an effective calling card that builds his business among a (very small but important to him) target market.
In an earlier time, you’d publish a book on the topic, wait a year for it to come out, reach 10% of the possible audience and lose money in the process. I love the idea that a big part of the report is customized. Not hard to do, worth a lot more.
PS I wonder if someone is doing wine labels, not just wine sites. Wine labels are as important as book covers.
Mark Ramsey knows way more about radio than I do. He points out that the stats I referred to about radio dying (above) aren’t of high quality. Link: Radio Marketing Nexus: Shaky Statistics.
Okay, radio’s not dying. But it’s sick!
PS A friend told me about a interesting cultural distinction at Bloomberg (the media company, not the mayor). At most media companies, corrections are a pox, a bane on the reporter’s (and editor’s) existence. At Bloomberg, though, there’s no shame in a correction. Correct early and often. Sounds like a good policy to me.
…people make up a story. They have to. We have no choice.
Consider this story courtesy of Boing Boing:
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) – A lazy worker, not a satanic cult, was responsible for severed goat heads that caused a scare at a Vancouver-area school, Canadian police said on Monday.
Police were called in after goat heads were twice found on a bench outside a school in nearby Chilliwack, British Columbia, prompting fears in the suburban community that it had been targeted by a satanic animal killing.
A 19-year-old worker at a local slaughterhouse has admitted he took the two heads with the intention of having them mounted, but then changed his mind and left them at the school in hopes a janitor would dispose of them.
“(Police) want to reassure the community that there were no satanic intentions in relation to these incidents,” the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said, adding that the man “should have known better.”
Slashdot | Radio Listening Declining w/ Digital On Its Way Up. Note that the number of listeners (not the hours, the actual number of people) is down 4% in one year. That’s huge. Also note that online listening is up 10 million people.
Once satellite etc. is standard equipment in new cars, that’s the last straw.
People will pay to control their media. They’ll also pay for the long tail. They’ll also pay to avoid commercials. 3 strikes…
It’s easy to get hung up on demographics when you buy advertising. This is probably a mistake.
Consider this insight from Pamela Parker (Lessons from the Cutting Edge: RSS Advertising.) "It turns out
the ads on the site are geared toward an audience of people who are
discovering the content — product information — via a search engine.
Because these folks are at a certain, and very attractive, stage in the
buying cycle, advertisers are willing to pay higher prices. Its feed
subscribers, on the other hand, may or may not be in the same stage of
the buying cycle — they just happen to be interested in that category
of product."
Short version: a person’s receptiveness to an ad changes based on where they are and what they’re doing. Google AdWords are brilliant for just this reason. People are trained to Google in order to go somewhere else. Most sites train people to come and to stay. Same thing is true with magazines.
Thanks to Tom Cohen for the link.
So, the reporter from the LA Times started with this question, “Why do you think the cable TV people are using the Internet to fight the government’s attempts to expand their crackdown on broadcast indency to cable?”
That’s when you know which side has already won the debate.
How can you be against indency? How can you argue against a crackdown?
Would the question have been just as accurate if it had been, “Why do you think the cable TV people are using the Internet to fight the government’s assault on the first amendment as it tries to censor and control what adults choose to watch on paid TV in the privacy of their homes?”
It’s easy to assume that I’m just playing with words here. I’m not. The words that are used in any debate are at the heart of the story we tell ourselves.
One side often tries to rely on facts, on the truth, on what’s right. The other side tells a story that fits our worldview. Who wins?
The storytellers will win every time.
Try for a moment to divorce the way you feel about this issue (personally, I’m sort of ambivalent) and take a look at the tactics. They are precisely the tactics that a wi-fi router manufacturer needs to use, or someone searching for a job.
Yes, it feels Orwellian. It doesn’t seem fair that it’s not just good enough to be correct or qualified or the best value. That’s not even close to what it takes to succeed in today’s marketplace of ideas. Instead, you must frame your message in a way that gives people a story that matches their worldview.
I heard a spokesperson for the governor of Missouri on the radio today. She was supporting the governor’s claim that eliminating Medicaid in Missouri was a moral, socially acceptable act of generosity. She explained how unfair it was for taxpayers to subsidize health care for the poor, and that in fact, eliminating health care for the poor might be quite positive because it would encourage people to go out and get a job. She did this in a calm and reasonable manner, and you could hear the foundation being built. After all, how can you be against people going out and getting a job? How can you be against people keeping their own money… If this story fits your worldview, I’m sure it sounds reasonable and believable. If it doesn’t, the story won’t persuade you. That’s the way marketing works–you don’t persuade people with your story, you just give people who already agree with you the tools they need to persaude their friends.
I do.
It’s a horrible habit, I admit it. But do I have any other choice? With 95,000 books published every year (in the USA alone), how on earth are you supposed to spend the time to read books with bad covers?
Of course, it’s not just books. We judge magazines, restaurants, even people by their covers. (and especially web sites!) And as a result, we end up skipping great meals, not getting to know terrific people and missing all sorts of terrific opportunities as a result.
So, here’s what I do about it:
1. I try to find things with lousy covers and go out of my way to check them out. If the herd is drawn to the obvious, flashy cover, then I’m not going to find insightful, rare information where everyone else is. The unique stuff is hiding.
2. I try to make covers that don’t sabatoge the work. It’s astonishing to me how many packages, jackets, labels, signs and outfits are chosen because they’re safe, boring and invisible instead of for the only reason that matters–to sell the prospect on finding out what’s inside.
I hope you’ll do two things.
First, wait patiently until Monday when I show you my new ebook about web pages and conversion.
Second, don’t wait even one minute before checking out: Call To Action: How to Improve Your Conversion Rate. The authors sent me a copy a few weeks ago, but I was too busy writing my ebook to read this. A shame, because I could have stolen countless ideas from them. It’s filled with all the facts and details and case studies that I was far too lazy to include in my ebook.
Despite the godawful cover, this book is an astonishing bargain. The book is straightforward and gives you direct, clear insight into what’s wrong with your site and what to do about it. No fancy metaphors or engaging banter. Just the nuts and bolts and the facts to back them up.
I can’t conceive of a website that won’t benefit from the ideas inside. Still reading this blog? Stop! Go check out this book.
