Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?: And Other Provocations, 2006-2012 (27 page)

That’s not surprising if you talk to people. A good friend of mine who never, ever reads books about business or economics just picked up a copy last week. She said, “I think it’s time I read this, right?” When a product becomes a hit, an entirely new class of people become interested in it, largely because it’s a hit.

Which leads to the paradox. The easiest products in the world to develop, option, license, and get to market are copycat products. They are beyond reproach. They feel safe. In actuality, though, most markets aren’t big enough for two blockbusters. The first one dominates the little market, which allows it to break through and capture the attention of the big market. The bestseller creates the problem (I haven’t read that/tasted that/been there) and then solves that problem. The second (and third and fourth and fifth) iterations are trying to sell a solution to people who no longer have the problem.

That’s the cool thing about marketing. Unlike most other functions in the organization, marketing lets you choose where and how you do what you do.

If you don’t have the money to do a full-scale TV campaign that’s going to work, you shouldn’t choose TV.

If you don’t have the organizational support to engage in a long-term grassroots strategy, don’t do it.

I was talking to a journalist about bootstrapping the other day, and he wanted me to share some examples of big, capital-intensive companies that got their start by bootstrapping. My answer was pretty simple, “If you don’t have a lot of capital, don’t choose a business that requires it.”

If you have an organization that is slow and deliberative, don’t enter a market that rewards the fleet of foot.

If you have colleagues that love to discuss everything out loud, don’t choose a campaign that will fail if the market senses internal discussion and disagreement.

Don’t raise VC money for a business that can’t possibly pay off for the investors. Don’t promote a lunch menu in a neighborhood where no
one goes out for lunch. It seems terribly obvious, but bad choices, choices where you’re going against the wind instead of with it, are the easiest mistakes to avoid.

Every weekend there’s a line out front of the Avis rental car window on the Upper West Side of NYC. Every weekend, ostensibly computer-literate upper-middle-class yuppies waste hours trying to pick up a car when they could just use Zipcar.

For this person, in this moment, a message about Zipcar is not only not spam but is a gift.

Worth wondering why the company doesn’t have someone standing out front with fliers.

Along the same lines, why doesn’t the local accountant sponsor the business section of the nearby independent bookstore? Slip a bookmark and business card into every personal finance book the store sells; it’s the right message at the right time.

Blogs, of course, ought to be the perfect place to find people in trouble. The challenge is in getting past the “I won’t click on an ad” mindset that 80% of those online carry around. Guerrilla marketing works best when it takes the form of a sponsorship or some other unexpected combination of advertiser and content. Blogs let you go further than that, though.

The most effective marketing use of blogs seems to occur when the advertiser/marketer uses the blog as an opportunity not to sell a product but to attract people who are in the right mindset. Joel Spolsky rarely writes about his product, but that’s fine. The people who read his writing are the very same people who need his product, and his proximity to the valuable ideas (and his reputation) makes it not such a leap to go ahead and buy what he has to sell.

Attract people in trouble
>
Help solve their problems
>
Build your reputation
>
Sales happen.

Big marketing lessons here:

1. When you do something that everyone said was impossible, or that they never even considered, you get remembered for a long, long time.
   
2. Once you demonstrate that the jar actually doesn’t have a lid on it, people start jumping out left and right.
   

There was no space race before Sputnik. We didn’t even have something called a space program. Even Arthur C. Clarke, who invented the idea, didn’t expect that it would happen.

The other thing to remember: There was a Sputnik 2. There’s just about always a sequel, so don’t worry about making the first one perfect.

Three things you need:

1. The ability to abandon a plan when it doesn’t work,
   
2. The confidence to do the right thing even when it costs you money in the short run, and
   
3. Enough belief in other people that you don’t try to do everything yourself.
   

New organizations and new projects are so crisp.

Things happen with alacrity. Decisions get made. Stuff gets done.

Then, over time, things get soggy. They slow down. Decisions aren’t so black and white anymore.

Why?

Here are some things that happen:

1. Every initiative, post-launch, still has a tail of activity associated with it. Launch enough things and, over time, that tail gets bigger and bigger.
   
2. Most projects either succeed or fail. Successful projects raise the stakes, because the team doesn’t want to blow it. There are more people watching, more dollars at stake—things matter more. So things inevitably get more review, get more analysis, and slow down. Projects that fail sap the confidence of the group. People want to be extra sure that they’re right this time, so, ironically, they slow down and end up sabotaging the new work.
   
3. The paper isn’t blank anymore. Which means that new decisions often mean overturning old decisions, which means you need to acknowledge that it didn’t used to be as good as it was.
   
4. And the biggest thing is that there is a status quo. Something to compare everything to.
   

I’m not sure you can eliminate any of these issues. But you can realize that they’re there. And you can be really strict about priorities and deadlines. It’s so easy to let things slip, rather than confronting the fact that you’re stuck and probably afraid. Speak up, call it out … and ship!

You can improve your writing (your business writing, your ad writing, your thank-you notes, and your essays) if you start thinking like a blogger:

1. Use headlines.
   I use them all the time now. Not just boring ones that announce your purpose (like the one on this post) but interesting or puzzling or engaging headlines. Headlines are perfect for engaging busy readers.
   
2. Realize that people have choices.
   I know that with 80 million other blogs to choose from, you could leave at any moment (see, there goes someone now). So that makes blog writing shorter and faster and more exciting.
   
3. Drip, drip, drip.
   Bloggers don’t have to say everything at once. We can add a new idea every day, piling on a thesis over time.
   
4. It’s okay if you leave.
   Bloggers aren’t afraid to include links or distractions in their writing, because we know you’ll come back if what we have to say is interesting.
   
5. Interactivity is a great shortcut.
   Your readers care about someone’s opinion even more than yours: their own. So reading your email or your comments or your trackbacks (your choice) makes it easy to stay relevant.
   
6. Gimmicks aren’t as useful as insight.
   If you’re going to blog successfully for months or years, sooner or later you need to actually say something. Same goes for your writing.
   
7. Don’t be afraid of lists.
   People like lists.
   
8. Show up.
   Not writing is not a useful way of expressing your ideas. Waiting for perfect is a lousy strategy.
   
9. Say it.
   Don’t hide, don’t embellish.
   

What would happen if every single high school student had to have a blog? Or every employee in your company? Or every one of your customers?

The closer you are to the point of need, the more you can charge.

Pizza at the airport costs five times more than pizza on the way to the airport.

Tax audit services in the middle of an SEC investigation cost triple what they cost before one.

Scalped tickets cost more than ones bought in advance, by mail.

Emergency towing in a strange town costs more, too.

The single easiest way to increase your fees is to get closer to the pain. It’s interesting to note that no large-scale advertising ventures are closer to the pain than the Yellow Pages or Google. Both of which are insanely successful.

Imagine that half the cars in the U.S. get 10 miles per gallon. And half get 40 miles per gallon. Further stipulate that all cars are driven the same number of miles per year.

Now, you get one wish. You can give every low-mileage car a new set of spark plugs that will increase fuel efficiency by 5 mpg, up to 15. Or you can replace every 40-mpg car with a car that gets 75 mpg, an increase of 35 miles for every gallon.

Which is better?

It turns out that the 5-mpg increase is far better for overall mileage than the 35-mpg increase, even though it’s smaller both as a percentage and absolutely. That’s because the 10-mpg hogs use up so much gas. They’re the low-hanging fruit, not just easy to fix but worth fixing.

As marketers, we’re tempted to tweak the already tweaked, to turn the 100 to 101, to optimize for the peak performances. That long tail is very long, though, and if there’s a way you can raise the floor (instead of just focusing on the ceiling), you may be surprised to discover that it can have a huge impact.

Simple example: It’s way more profitable to encourage each of your existing customers to spend $3 than it is to get a stranger to spend $300. It’s also more effective to get the 80% of your customer service people that are average to be a little better than it is to get the amazing ones to be better still.

Patience.

Google was a very good search engine for two years before you started using it.

The iPod was a dud.

I wrote
Unleashing the Ideavirus
eight years ago. A few authors tried similar ideas, but they didn’t work right away. So those authors gave up. BoingBoing is one of the most popular blogs in the world because they never gave up.

The irony of the Web is that the tactics work really quickly. You friend someone on Facebook and two minutes later, they friend you back. Bang.

But the strategy still takes forever. The strategy is the hard part, not the tactics.

I discovered a lucky secret the hard way about thirty years ago: you can outlast the other guys if you try. If you stick at stuff that bores them, it accrues. Drip, drip, drip, you win.

It still takes ten years to become a success, Web or no Web. The frustrating part is that you see your tactics fail right away. The good news is that over time, you get the satisfaction of watching those tactics succeed right away.

The trap: show up at a new social network, invest two hours, be really aggressive with people, make some noise, and then leave in disgust.

The trap: use all your money to build a fancy website and leave no money or patience for the hundred revisions you’ll need to do.

The trap: read the tech blogs and fall in love with the bleeding-edge hip sites and lose focus on the long-term players that deliver real value.

The trap: sprint all day and run out of energy before the marathon even starts.

The media want overnight successes (so they have someone to tear down). Ignore them. Ignore the early-adopter critics that never have enough to play with. Ignore your investors that want proven tactics and predictable instant results. Listen instead to your real customers, to your vision, and make something for the long haul. Because that’s how long it’s going to take, guys.

New start-ups can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars racing after a dream: a giant splash on launch.

Just imagine … a big spread in
Time
magazine, a feature on all the relevant blogs, a glowing review in the
Book Review
. Get this part right and everything else takes care of itself.

And yet.

Here are some brands that had no launch at all: Starbucks, Apple, Nike,
Harry Potter
, Google, William Morris,
The Da Vinci Code
, Wikipedia, Snapple, Geico, Linux, Firefox, and yes, Microsoft. (All got plenty of PR, but after the launch, sometimes a lot later.)

I’m as guilty as the next entrepreneur. Great publicity is a treasured
gift. But it’s hardly necessary, and the search for it is often a significant distraction.

It works for movies; in fact, it’s essentially required for movies. But for just about every other product, service, or company, the relentless quest for media validation doesn’t really pay. If you get it, congratulations. If you don’t, that’s fine. But don’t break the bank or your timetable in the quest.

Perhaps you’ve experienced it. You do a presentation and it works. It works! That’s the reason we keep coming back for more; that’s why so many of us spend more time building and giving presentations than almost anything else we do.

Here are some steps to achieve this level of PPT nirvana (your mileage may vary; these are steps, not rules):

1. Don’t use PowerPoint at all.
   Most of the time, it’s not necessary. It’s underkill. PowerPoint distracts you from what you really need to do: look people in the eye, tell a story, tell the truth. Do it in your own words, without artifice and with clarity. There are times PowerPoint is helpful, but choose them carefully.
   
2. Use your own font.
   Go visit Smashing Magazine (
   smashingmagazine.com
   ) and buy a font from one of their sponsors or get one of the free ones they offer. Have your tech guy teach you how to install it, and then use it instead of the basic fonts that come with your computer’s software. Doing this is like dressing better or having a nicer business card. It’s subtle, but it works.
   
3. Tell the truth.
   By this, I don’t mean “don’t lie” (that’s a given); I mean “don’t hide.” Be extremely direct in why you are here, what you’re going to sell me (you’re here to sell me something, right? If not, please don’t waste your time or mine). It might be an idea or a budget, but it’s still selling. If, at the end, I don’t know what you’re selling, you’ve failed.
   
4. Pay by the word.
   Here’s the deal: You should have to put $5 into the coffee fund for every single word on the wordiest slide in your deck.
   Four hundred words costs $2,000. If that were true, would you use fewer words? A lot fewer? I’ve said this before, but I need to try again: words belong in memos. PowerPoint is for ideas. If you have bullets, please, please, please use only one word in each bullet. Two if you have to. Three, never.
   
5. Get a remote.
   I always use one. Mine went missing a couple of weeks ago, so I had to present without it. I saw myself on video and hated the fact that I lost all that eye contact. It’s money well spent.
   
6. Use a microphone.
   If you are presenting to more than 20 people, a clip-on microphone changes your posture and your impact. And if you’re presenting to more than 300 people, use iMag. This is a setup with a camera and projector that puts your face on the screen. You should have a second screen for your slides—the switching back and forth is an incompetent producer’s hack that saves a few bucks but is completely and totally not worth it. If 400 people are willing to spend an hour listening to you, someone ought to be willing to spend a few dollars to make the presentation work properly.
   
7. Check to make sure you brought your big idea with you.
   It’s not worth doing a presentation for a small idea or for a budget, or to give a quarterly update. That’s what memos are for. Presentations involve putting on a show, standing up and performing. So, what’s your big idea? Is it big enough? Really?
   
8. Be too breathtaking to allow note taking.
   If people are live-blogging, Twittering, or writing down what you’re saying, I wonder if your presentation is everything it could be. After all, you could have saved everyone the trouble and just blogged it or note taken it for them, right? We’ve been trained since youth to replace paying attention with taking notes. That’s a shame. Your actions should demand attention. (Hint: bullets demand note-taking. The minute you put bullets on the screen, you are announcing, “write this down, but don’t really pay attention now.”) People don’t take notes when they go to the opera.
   
9. Keep it short!
   Do you really need an hour for the presentation? Twenty minutes? Most of the time, the right answer is “ten.” Ten minutes of breathtaking big ideas with big pictures and big type and few words and scary thoughts and startling insights. And then, and
   then, spend the rest of your time just talking to me. Interacting. Answering questions. Leading a discussion.