The reason is pretty simple: it's noisy.
Lots of organizations have used the downturn as an excuse to trim people who weren't producing. So, if you need cheap bodies, this is your moment.
But if you need amazing people, be prepared to work hard to find them.
The opening act has the toughest gig in town. The audience isn't here to listen to you. They're restless. Perhaps you'll get a few seconds to earn their attention, but not much. Your gimmicks will fall flat and you might even get booed off stage.
The rock star, on the other hand, has the crowd chanting for him before he shows up. He starts a song and people applaud. They sing along. They finish his lyrics for him.
Most marketers are opening acts. The ad or blog post or tweet is a desperate attempt at attention, at keeping people from switching it off or booing. The posture of the marketer who is an opening act is unstable and a little sad.
Some marketers are rock stars.
How'd that happen?
I'd argue that the two keys to becoming a rock star marketer are:
1. settle for a tiny audience that views you as a star, not an opening act. Then grow that audience.
and
2. Be really good.
I just went to see Keller Williams in concert. Without a doubt, he's a genius and a rock star. If he tried to pull this stuff as an opening act for someone else, he'd be booed off the stage. But he doesn't. Because he's a rock star. If he was selling something, I'd buy it.
If you think about the tribes you belong to, most of them are side effects of experiences you had doing something slightly unrelated. We have friends from that summer we worked together on the fishing boat, or a network of people from college or sunday school. There's also that circle of people we connected with on a killer project at work a few years go.
These tribes of people are arguably a more valuable creation than the fish that were caught or the physics that were learned, right?
And yet, most of the time we don't see the obvious opportunity–if you intentionally create the connections, you'll get more of them, and better ones too. If the hallway conversations at a convention are worth more than the sessions, why not have more and better hallways?
What would happen if trade shows devoted half a day to 'projects'? Put multi-disciplinary teams of ten people together and give them three hours to create something of value. The esprit de corps created by a bunch of strangers under time pressure in a public competition would last for decades. The community is worth more than the project.
The challenge is to look at the rituals and events in your organization (freshman orientation or weekly status meetings or online forums) and figure out how amplify the real reason they exist even if it means abandoning some of the time-honored tasks you've embraced. Going around in a circle saying everyone's name doesn't build a tribe. But neither does sitting through a boring powerpoint. Working side by side doing something that matters under adverse conditions… that's what we need.
If a client comes to you for a web site, the first thing you need to know is:
"Do you want the people visiting this site to notice it?"
It's a subtle but essential question.
For artists, musicians and web 2.0 companies, the answer is probably yes. Yes we want people to see the interface or remark on our skills or cleverness.
For everyone else, it's no. The purpose of the site is to tell a story or to generate some sort of action. And if the user notices the site, not the story, you've lost.
Amazingly, this means that not only can't the site be too cutting edge, clever or slick, it also can't be too horrible, garish or amateurish. It's sort of like the clothes you want the person giving a eulogy to wear. No Armani, no cutoff jeans.
Sasha had an interesting post on his blog about how horrible the typical conference call is. I hate them. He had some good tips, but it's still horrible.
So, here's my idea:
Conference calls should be accompanied by an online chat room. (Here's my favorite, it's easy and free for a month). Or try calliflower.
When you put text chat in parallel with a voice conference call, magical things happen.
The first is that everyone participates. If you don't, it's noticeable and you won't be invited back.
Second, the voice part of the call acts as a narrative for the chat part, allowing people to highlight or respond to what's being said.
Most of all, it creates organized, trackable chaos, which was the reason for the meeting in the first place.
Litmus test: is your organization so gutless it won't even try this technique?
Tom points us to a provocative idea for home builders. If you want to sell a new house, why not offer prospective buyers help in selling their old houses? Send your idle crews to their house to paint it or do other important cosmetic fixes. Fill the old house with the furniture you use in your models, etc.
Take it a step further. If your home building service is totally slack, why not get to work upgrading and selling older homes or even foreclosed ones?
Consider what a solo entrepreneur could do using eBay: instead of waiting for people to hold garage sales, why not distribute flyers offering to run a virtual garage sale for anyone who will open their home to you? Go in with a digital camera, catalog and photograph the top 20 most valuable items in the house and sell them on eBay… and split the money. Your proactive effort overcomes the seller's inertia and you both profit.
There are huge opportunities for this in the business to business space as well. Most companies would welcome a post-tax-day accountant who offered (on spec) to review bills or expenses in exchange for half the money saved. If they had time, they'd do it themselves, but of course they don't.
In my experience, much of marketing is a game of waiting for the other guy to go first. Well, if nothing is happening, you go first.
Are zippers better?
For years, I always wore jeans with a zipper. After all, zippers are better. They're faster and easier and they do what they're told. What an amazing invention! How did we survive without zippers?
Last year, just for kicks, I bought a pair of jeans with a button fly. Middle age crisis, I guess.
Now, that's all I wear. Buttons are better.
How can buttons be better? They're archaic. They take a long time. They're difficult.
Except that I like the way they look. And since I like them better, they are better.
This is a hard lesson for marketers, particularly technical marketers, to learn. You don't get to decide what's better. I do.
If you look at the decisions you've made about features, benefits, pricing, timing, hiring, etc., how many of them are obviously 'better' from your point of view, and how many people might disagree? There are very few markets where majority rule is the best way to grow.
If it's important enough for you to spend your time finding and
connecting with new people online, it's important enough to get the
first impression right.
If you use any online social network tool, the single most important first impression you make is with the 3600 to 5000 pixels you get for your tiny picture.
In the social group I run, part of my job is to pick the featured members. As a result, I spend a lot of time looking at little pictures. Here's one person's take on the things you can do to avoid wrecking that first impression:
There's a new class of internet companies that collect cookie data across websites and sell compiled personal data to advertisers. This means, for example, that Mazda can run banner ads on site X only to people who were looking at new cars on site Y.
In order for this to work, of course, the companies need to get site Y to secretly sell them huge bundles of personal surfing data. You can think that this is okay or not okay, that's not the point of my post.
Check out some of the language BlueKai uses on the page of their site addressed to consumers [I notice that the company has since changed the wording, which is certainly a good thing. Here's the original text]:
In return, you, the consumer, are rewarded with the 3C's: control, charity, and content…
Charity—It gets better! When marketers pay to access anonymous data from BlueKai, you will be rewarded with a credit to donate to the charity of your choice…
BlueKai's mission is to build the world's most comprehensive registry of online preferences that is dedicated to ensuring your anonymity and privacy.
Give me a break. Is this really BlueKai's mission? I doubt it. When marketers talk to consumers like this, it's no wonder consumers hate us and distrust us. Wouldn't it be refreshing if we just told consumers the truth? They could (but don't) say:
If you don't want the ads you see online to be relevant, if you don't want us to keep your cookie information on file, all you have to do is click here and we'll banish you from our database. No, you shouldn't have to opt out of us using your personal data to make money, but hey, that's life.
The direct marketing industry has a long, troubled history of sneaking around, assuming permission they don't have and making it difficult for people to opt out. This has been shown again and again to be foolish and short-sighted.
It is not just an issue for direct marketers, of course. It turns out that being direct and honest is a scalable communications strategy.
Judith comments on her frustration in joining a new website, "Sorry I do not provide passwords or birthdate. I would have like to have joined otherwise." Obviously, there's a trust problem here.
Frank won't read the instructions that come in an email from a trusted company, because there's always so much noise and clutter and legal garbage in the text that it doesn't pay to read it anyway.
Tim is in a bad mood the moment he arrives at the airport, because every other time he's been there, a marketer tries to rip him off, a security guard treats him like a criminal or an airline doesn't keep its promises.
Sarah won't give money to charity because the last two times she discovered that it was a false front for a high-overhead scam operation.
Emily got the three thousandth automated call giving her a second notice that her factory warranty had just expired… and she doesn't have a car.
Marketers have spammed, lied, deceived, cluttered and ripped us off for so long, we're sick of it.
Which means that even if you have a really good reason, no, you can't call me on the phone. Which means that even if it's really important, no, I'm not going to read the instructions. Which means that god forbid you try to email me something I didn't ask for… you're trashed. It's so fashionable to be skeptical now that no one believes you if you attempt to do something for the right reasons.
Selfish short-sighted marketers ruined it for all of us. The only way out, I think, is for a few marketers to so overwhelm the market with long-term, generous marketing that we have no choice but to start paying attention again.
