Seth Godin's Blog, page 250

Dancing faster than ever, but why?

I just read a relentlessly snarky profile of the brilliant chef Charlie Trotter. Charlie is one of the pioneers of modern cooking, a gracious host and a perfectionist as well.

The Times is disappointed that he hasn't opened chains of restaurants, made a fool of himself on reality TV or decamped to a more expensive building in Chicago. All he's done, it seems, is mentor an entire generation of chefs, consistently create amazing meals and also donate once-in-a-lifetime, multi-course dinners for rising high school students in Chicago (150 times a year).

There will always be someone telling you that you're not hip enough, famous enough, edgy enough or whatever enough. That's their agenda. What's yours?

Shun the non-believers.

Dancing faster then ever, but why?

I just read a relentlessly snarky profile of the brilliant chef Charlie Trotter. Charlie is one of the pioneers of modern cooking, a gracious host and a perfectionist as well.

The Times is disappointed that he hasn't opened chains of restaurants, made a fool of himself on reality TV or decamped to a more expensive building in Chicago. All he's done, it seems, is mentor an entire generation of chefs, consistently create amazing meals and also donate once-in-a-lifetime, multi-course dinners for rising high school students in Chicago (150 times a year).

There will always be someone telling you that you're not hip enough, famous enough, edgy enough or whatever enough. That's their agenda. What's yours?

Shun the non-believers.

Don't be a fool

There's a day (actually, two) reserved for swapping out the batteries in your smoke detector.

Perhaps today could be a day for backing up all the data you care about. All your music, say, or your passwords or your files.

If you need a hard drive, here are three. (Or be double safe and use Dropbox.) But that's not the hard part. The hard part is doing it before you go to bed tonight. And storing it at a friend's house when you're done.

If you care about it, back it up. (After I wrote this, saw this well done pre-steal).

Introducing white space links

The challenge of monetizing the web is a tricky one, but a new venture launched right here and right now is out to solve that problem.

YOU FOUND ONE. CALL US TO BUY THIS SPACE!

It's called whItespAcelInks. 

VISIT OUR SNACKBAR.ORG PLEASE

There's all this unused white space on the web. Spaces in between paragraphs or links. Wasted.

ARE YOU THIRSTY? TIME FOR A SOFT DRINK.

Consumers are tired of being overwhelmed by ads and by pages that are stuffed to the gills with ads. What if the ads were invisible? What if we could insert links into the white spaces, links you didn't have to see but could still be clicked on? What if those ads were carefully targeted, location-based and mobile?

IT WORKS FOR LINKS, TOO: http://www.squidoo.com/seth

This is even better than permission marketing. It's invisible marketing.

PLEASE DON'T TELL ANYONE

In one fell swoop (does anything ever happen in two fell swoops?) we can double or triple the ad inventory of any website! And there's no need for complicated creative, because, after all, the links are invisible.

Some highlights from the funding plan:

We will track every user, protecting privacy by never talking about the fact that we're doing it.

We will create persistent browser tools that permit us to generate whItespAcelInks revenue even when you're not online.

There will be no push back from regulators because the links are invisible.

Will there be Android? Yes. There will.

An iPad app? I can't believe you even need to ask. In fact, the iPad app will be so appy that people will pay for it by subscription.

HAVE A GOOD APRIL. DON'T TAKE ANYTHING AT FACE VALUE.

First round funding, announced today, is $11 million. We wanted to keep it modest and prove ourselves in the marketplace. The biggest challenge for us going forward is that the service only runs one day a year.

Compared to perfect: the price/value mismatch in content

"How's the wine?"

You really can't answer that question out of context. Compared to what? Compared to a hundred dollar bottle? Not so good. Compared to any other $12 bottle... great!

"How was the hotel?"

"How's the service at the post office?"

In just about all the decisions we make, we consider the price. A shipper doesn't expect the same level of service quality from a first class letter delivery than it does from an overnight international courier service. Of course not.

And yet...

A quick analysis of the top 100 titles on Amazon (movies, books, music, doesn't matter what) shows zero correlation between the price and the reviews. (I didn't do the math, but you're welcome to... might be a good science fair entry). Try to imagine a similar disconnect if the subject was cars or clothing...

For any other good or service, the value of a free alternative that was any good would be infinite--free airplane tickets, free dinners at the cafe... When it comes to content, though, we rarely compare the experience with other content at a similar price. We compare it to perfect.

People walking out of the afternoon bargain matinee at the movies don't cut the film any slack because it was half price. Critics piling on to a music video on YouTube never mention the fact that HEY IT WAS FREE. There is no thrift store for content. Sure, we can get an old movie for ninety-nine cents, but if we hate it, it doesn't matter how cheap it was. If we're going to spend time, apparently, it better be perfect, the best there ever was, regardless of price.

This isn't true for cars, potato chips, air travel, worker's comp insurance...

Consider people walking out of a concert where tickets might be being scalped for as much as $1,000. That's $40 or more for each song played--are they considering the price when they're evaluating the experience? There's a lot of nuance here... I'm certainly not arguing that expensive is always better.

In fact, I do think it's probably true that a low price increases the negative feedback. That's because a low price exposes the work to individuals that might not be raving fans.

Free is a valid marketing strategy. In fact it's almost impossible for an idea to have mass impact without some sort of free (TV, radio, webpages, online videos... they're all free). At the same time, it's not clear to me that cheaper content outperforms expensive in many areas. As the marginal cost of delivering content drops to zero (all digital content meets this definition), I think there are valid marketing reasons to do the opposite of what economists expect.

Free gets you mass. Free, though, isn't always the price that will help you achieve your goals.

Price is often a signalling mechanism, and perhaps nowhere more than in the area of content. Free enables your idea to spread, price, on the other hand, signals individuals and often ends up putting your idea in the right place. Mass shouldn't always be the goal. Impact may matter more.

A slow news day

I think you can learn a lot about an organization (and a person's career) when you watch what they do on a slow news day, a day when there's no crisis, not a lot of incoming tasks, very little drama.

Sure, when we're reacting (or responding) and it's all hands on deck, things seem as if they're really moving.

But what about in the lulls? At the moments when we can initiate, launch new ventures, try new things and expose ourselves to failure? Do we take the opportunity or do we just sit and wait for the next crisis?

If you have ten minutes unscheduled and the phone isn't ringing, what do you do? What do you start?

 

Small screens and big decisions

My take: the smaller the screen, the more hurried and less informed the decision ends up being.

Yes, there's more currency, more immediacy, more with-you-right-now-all-the-time and more data being collected. But......

If you're working with a spreadsheet or a thread of correspondence or a set of data, I'm not sure you're doing your best work if you're doing it on an iPhone.

 

Initiative isn't given, you take it

The amazing thing is that unlike taking an apple or a chocolate bar, there's no loss to the rest of us. After you take it, we all benefit.

There's one other thing you can take at work, easily and with approval: responsibility. In fact, they sort of have to go together. One without the other is a mess.

Accepting false limits

I will never be able to dunk a basketball.

This is beyond discussion.

Imagine, though, a co-worker who says, "I'll never be able to use a knife and fork. No, I have to use my hands."

Or a colleague who says, "I can't possibly learn Chinese. I'm not smart enough."

This is a mystery to me. A billion people have learned Chinese, and the failure rate for new kids is close to zero. If a well functioning adult puts in sufficient time and the effort, she''ll succeed.

The key to this disconnect is the unspoken part about time and effort and fear. I agree that you will never ship that product or close that sale or invent that device unless you put in the time and put in the effort and overcome the fear. But I don't accept for a minute that there's some sort of natural limit on your ability to do just about anything that involves creating and selling ideas.

This attitude gets me in trouble sometimes. Perhaps I shouldn't be pushing people who want something but have been taught not to push themselves. Somewhere along the way, it seems, I forgot that it's none of my business if people choose to accept what they've got, to forget their dreams and to not seek to help those around them achieve what matters to them.

Not sure if you'll forgive me, but no, I'm not going to believe that only a few people are permitted to be gatekeepers or creators or generous leaders. I have no intention of apologizing for believing in people, for insisting that we all use this moment and these assets to create some art and improve the world around us.

To do anything less than that is a crime.

Faster, Better and More

The trifecta of competition:

Faster than the other guy. Faster to the market, faster to respond, faster to get the user up to speed.

Better than the other guy. Better productivity, better story, better impact.

and More. More for your money. More choices. More care. More guts.

You have more competition than you did yesterday. I expect that trend will continue.