Tag: relationships

Only if you kill it

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A couple of examples of how to make advertisement in the shape of content, or content in the shape of advertisement.

Anticipated. Personal. Relevant.

Both are from the last episode of the podcast Pivot, with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway.

First, around minute 19:10, during the break for commercials, Kara interviews Gavin Belson, the fictional CEO of the fictional company Hooli from the HBO series Silicon Valley. The interview is fictitious and funny, perfectly in line both with the tone of the podcast people are listening to and with the irony of the series. A perfect match.

Then, right after the break, at about 22:10, Arielle Duhaime-Ross, host of the podcast Reset (that shares the same producer with Pivot) jumps on the show to ask a thoughtful question to Kara and Scott about sharenting (parents that share the life of their kids on social media), that’s of course the topic of the last episode of her show.

There is a whole lot of space to be creative, original, interesting and entertaining with promoting products and services in today’s content-driven landscape. As marketers, we should just make the effort to understand: the channel and the audience, first of all, and the irreparable damage that gets done when instead we feed commercials wrapped in plastic to an indistinct mass of people, violently interrupting whatever they are doing.

Advertising is dead only if you kill it.

Your own authenticity

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Consistency and authenticity are about doing what you expect of yourself, not what others expect of you.

Even when something is useless, even when nobody is paying attention, even when 99.9% of people would act differently, even when you will not get any reward. Doing that is what builds your persona, your character, your set of values, your story. And by doing it repeatedly, you are authentic.

Others are unfathomable, they falter, they change, they do not know you and what you are around to do. They know themselves, and they can choose, each one of them, for their own consistency.

Take ownership of your own.

About helping

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Helping others is not always easy, but it’s always the right thing to do.

Of course, “others” does not mean everybody. You have limits, boundaries and restrictions, and being aware of those is very important for your support to be effective. Similarly, “helping” takes different shapes in different situations, and you will find that what you did to help somebody might simply not work to help another.

Start with yourself, get a solid grasp on your own life, and then relentlessly open up to the others and be present. This might sound like a long way, but it might be the only alternative to “let me know if you need anything”.

Shout

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What is it that you have that others don’t?

What can you offer that is unique, difficult to replicate and of value?

What do you have to say that we have not heard a thousand times before?

If you try to get the attention with something that is in abundance, the only chance you’ll have is to shout louder. And that’s a lost game already, as you’ll always find someone who can shout louder than you (perhaps not today, but tomorrow for sure).

If instead your art, product, content, service is different, you have the option to shape your way to your audience, sit down and listen, learn, get better, make it better, and eventually establish a position that is going to be difficult to replace with something else.

It’s the power of relationships, after all.

The perfect excuse

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They don’t care.

It’s the perfect excuse, an impenetrable shield when we have something to ship.

It’s perfect and impenetrable because of course they do not care.

Why should they? Why should somebody that is not you care about the job you have to do, the impact you are trying to have in the world, the change you are out to make?

Perhaps, all of that is going to impact more people than anything else before. And yet until the impact has happened, until everything is done and complete, until you’ve moved on to something else (and perhaps even for a little while after that), no one will care.

If we are doing things with the expectation that others will confirm their validity, that they will see how great they are and give us some sort of reward, we are already set up for failure.

Important job is for ourselves in the first place.

It’s the type of job you would do when nobody is watching, when you are left alone, when you have no team and no company. It matters to you, and that’s why you should go ahead and ship it. All the others will give it a look, at best, and then move on with their big thing.