Here’s a summary from a book industry newsflash about what’s selling right now: Dystopia, Dark Romance, Dark Literary, Horror, Paranormal, True Crime, Alternative Histories, Decline of Democracy, Humor, Digital Wellness, Cozy & Cute, and Escapism.
Setting aside just how long it takes to bring a book (or just about anything more important than an instagram post) to market, it’s pretty clear that this list, and any list, contradicts itself.
Look closely enough or in a short enough window of time, and all you will see is turbulence. Turbulence is the chaos around the edges, the noise without signal.
The problem with snipe hunting (it’s a real creature, it turns out) is that it distracts you from the real work to be done.
A useful north star: Work that matters for people who care.
We need to figure out who the people are. What they care about. What would matter. To them. Not to everyone. To them.
And then we need to earn enrollment, trust and attention. Build a foundation, with consistency and persistence.
That’s impossible if you’re also hunting snipes.
Chasing snipes comes with a sort of deniability. It’s obvious that there are fast-moving snipes, and they’re successful as well. Of course you’re chasing them.
On the other hand, when we make a commitment to find our people and to contribute in a meaningful way, we’re on the hook. If it doesn’t work, there’s no convenient snipe to blame.
There’s a simple law: No one buys anything unless it produces more value than it costs.
This seems obvious. Value could be in the form of sustenance, status, affiliation, peace of mind or health. And value is always measured by the user.
A $300 caviar spoon will only be purchased if someone believes it produces more than $300 in value (and they can afford it).
The user doesn’t care how much it cost you to create. They don’t care how much you need the sale.
So, why don’t nurses get paid more? It’s pretty clear that they produce value far in excess of their salaries.
And why are Taylor Swift concert tickets so expensive? It doesn’t cost the promoter much at all to offer that last seat…
The reason is clear: scarcity.
When there are substitutes, informed consumers usually choose the cheapest identical item. That’s why expensive wine costs more than water, even though you can’t live without water.
This all comes together when we realize that a good business project doesn’t simply create value, it also is built around some sort of scarcity.
Freelancers are tempted to forget this, and end up racing to the bottom. “You can pick anyone, and I’m anyone,” is not a useful marketing slogan.
People are going to buy this from someone, but why would they buy it from you?
Tell us about the value you create. And tell your investors about why your offering will be persistently scarce.
Big company customer service has evolved to be pointless, a useless shadow of its former self.
Big companies can’t take responsibility, only humans can. And when we depersonalize our interactions and work to minimize the time spent and use a refund or policy to ‘make it right’, we forget what service is usually for. It’s simply cheaper to offer a refund and move on (or to fill out a form and ignore the complaint altogether).
The customer who cares enough to complain (about a doctor, a product, a service or even an expectation) is rarely seeking a refund. A refund doesn’t make things right.
We want to be heard, understood and responded to. And we’d like the organization to learn something in exchange.
Not only is this cheaper than a refund, it makes you better.
When we insist that our vision be accepted, completely, without alteration, we’ve already compromised.
It might be that we’ve settled for a much smaller audience of people.
Or it could be that the laws of physics get in the way, and our no-compromise solution is so heavy, so expensive or so difficult to use that it’s not even possible.
Mostly, though, we’ve compromised on who can contribute to our choices and make it better.
Compromise isn’t always a bug, it’s often a feature.
We spend a lot of time responding and reacting to the throws of others. Ejected, rejected, projected, interjected… No one dejects you, of course, but it’s easy to feel dejected.
Perhaps this is a good moment to take initiative, which is rarely given on its own.
No one is coming to pick you. Today’s a great day to pick yourself.
We’ve built a circle of reactions about the latin word for ‘throw’ but we rarely say the word itself. When we ject on behalf of others, creating possibility and connection, the effort pays off.
It’s not just for horror, terror and doom. These are worth preventing.
It turns out that the hard work of innovation or the creation of revolution involves imagining what others consider unimaginable and speaking up with the unspeakable.
Sometimes we work to avoid the things that scare us.
We can’t imagine something better if we’re not able to speak of it.
The newcomer introduces themselves to the community.
The brand runs its first ad.
The product’s packaging is encountered by a new customer.
You rarely get a second chance to make a first impression.
For software companies, that first impression is the user interface, and then it’s the experience of actually engaging with the software. That’s a huge opportunity (and obligation, and risk) that software companies encounter–the product is the ad.
LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT have grown faster than any other products in the history of the world. They have done this despite awkward brand names, unsophisticated interfaces and plenty of glitches. Yet the experience is so remarkable that we can’t help talking about it–even if we’re not sure exactly what to say. As a result, like the eight men in a dark room with an elephant, our stories are all different.
Whether you’re a job seeker, a freelancer or the head of marketing for a company with lots of funding, there are questions to answer before you make your first flyer, your resume or your very expensive YouTube ad:
What do we intend to remind people of?
What genre are we playing in?
What problem do we solve?
What problem does our existence cause–for competitors, for users, for bystanders…
What’s our position in the marketplace? Is it one that we can stick with, and one our competitors can’t come near?
Could we tell this story, run this ad, stand behind this position for years?
Could our competitor run precisely the same ad, or are we saying something we can own?
Who exactly is it for–not just the brand, but this ad. Who are we trying to reach?
What’s the change we seek to make?
When people tell their friends about us, what do we want them to say?
What cultural touchstones are we putting to work to advance our story?
Where is the tension in our story, the part that makes it sticky?
[The ad doesn’t exist to entertain your fans. It’s here to make a change happen.]
Some great brands have been built with ads or stories built on these questions. Maxwell House, the Mac, Marlboro, Prell, Betty Crocker, Avis, Volkswagen, the Gap, Burger King… it’s not about having a slogan, it’s about having a resilient story and a firm foundation to stand on. And then telling that story in a way that sticks, that spreads and that resonates.
My take is that the AI companies, racing as fast as they can on the tech side, have more money than vision when it comes to telling a coherent, sticky and generative story. They’re starting to spend the money, but they’re not creating much of value.
You don’t have to be a giant business to benefit from a consistent and powerful position, supported with a story. But it’s a good place to start if you want to get there.
How did we meet? What were we doing when we shifted from acquainted to friends? Who else is in our circle? How do we make space for each other and how do we dance together toward our center?
You’ve shown me who you really are, and I trust you enough to share my dreams and fears.
I know the sound of your laugh before you even start laughing and you remember things about me that I sometimes forget about myself. There are inside jokes between us that no one else would understand.
I remember you standing up for me, and I hope I’ve done the same for you. Can you count on me the way I count on you?
I’d miss you if you were gone.
Brands are not our friends. And most of them are simply acquaintances. But the most successful marketers understand how deeply our emotional bond with friends runs, and try to echo some of those feelings. Manipulate the process and you’ll inevitably disappoint the very people you seek to serve.
With their relentless push to humanize, brands have blurred the lines of connection and culture, but they’ve also reminded us that the stories we tell ourselves about our most important people are priceless and irreplaceable.
Authenticity is impossible to measure, and so consistency carries us forward. What do we expect when we hear you knocking? What promises are you here to keep, and how often are they kept?
[Coming in October: Seven years ago, I worked with my friend, bestselling author Bernadette Jiwa to launch The Story Skills Workshop. Bernadette has consistently helped people around the world get clear about the story they tell and the change they seek to make–in all arenas. She’s running it again in October.]
