Seth Godin gives us this challenge: Can you get your idea to spread or not? His point of view is that no matter what you are doing (selling, coordinating, standardizing, revolutionizing, etc…) this is the only thing that matters. This post summarizes his excellent presentation. However, I hope you can take 17 minutes of your time to watch it and perhaps gain some knowledge, perspective, and inspiration.

Eoin’s opening salvo on this site talked a lot about leadership. This is a hot topic these days, with past and current leaders beseeching newcomers to take “leadership roles.” I have heard these suggestions, but could not help thinking that the type of leadership they advocate and the kind of leadership that is required are two different things. My take is that the type of leadership ISA needs right now is the type that helps ideas spread.

The Television-Industrial Complex

In his presentation, Godin speaks of what he calls the “television-industrial complex,” which enabled people with messages they wanted to communicate to interrupt millions of people and force/trick them into listening to information they may or may not care about regarding a solution to a problem they may or may not have. This is a great approach if you have two things; lots of money and a time machine to bring you back to the 1980’s. This model is broken and the lesson for ISA here is that interruptive advertising no longer works. Interruptive advertising includes print ads, web banners and email marketing. You do the math.

Me-Mail

I think I have, to a certain extent, branded myself as a “social media drum-beater” within ISA. While I won’t shy away from that, I worry that it distracts from the full picture. The point here is that the entire range of technological innovation in the 21st century has enabled a “me-centric” information model. Having more choices and less time to evaluate them today, people now have both the requirement and means to filter out messages that don’t resonate deeply and personally with them. This is not only an online phenomenon – witness the proliferation of DVRs that are rendering the television commercial more and more impotent.

To this end, Godin points out the reality that people don’t want e-mail, they want me-mail. There is much profundity packed into that small phrase and has particular applicability to ISA with its current struggles to find the sweet spot in terms of member emails (which will be the subject of an entirely separate post and discussion).

Be Remarkable

So let’s say you now accept that the world has changed and that people are getting better at filtering out stuff they don’t care about. What’s the solution? The solution is to a) be remarkable and b) communicate with early adopters.

Being “remarkable” means having something to say or sell that is worth other people talking about. It’s that simple. It used to be that if you were remarkable and had the means to get that message in front of enough people (e.g. television, InTech advertising) you were golden. It turns out today that marketing to the middle of the bell curve is pretty ineffective today, so we should instead be focusing our attention on early adopters. Early adopters have all sorts of great qualities. They tend to be Trust Agents, and possess a passion that can be more powerful than print, not to mention far less costly. If you have something remarkable to offer, they will help spread your ideas.

And that’s what it’s all about – spreading ideas.

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Tags: advertising, early adopters, email, inspiration, Leadership, print ads, remarkable, Seth Godin, social media, TED