To contact us Click HERE
If you're after universal acclaim, you're chasing a fool's errand. There is just no such thing as popular consensus. Savvy brands get this, and they embrace it.
Think of vanilla ice cream. Who hates vanilla? It isn't flavorless, just... close. The trick is to start with vanilla and then add stuff, like chocolate chips for starters, or a warm brownie and some hot fudge, plus a little whipped cream and a cherry. Yum. Now you're getting somewhere.
Dumb brands vanilify.* They buy a popular treat from a small producer, and then strip it of flavor so it will have mass appeal. "Too spicy," they say. "Children and old folks won't like that." So they tone down the heat. "Those fresh ingredients are too expensive," they say, so they replace vine-ripened, uber-fragile fruit with frozen and sterile cardboard produce that ships and stores better and so is much less costly.
...And much less delicious. Then they market the heck out of it, and revenues soar - never realizing they're just trading one expense (best-in-class ingredients) with another (advertising).
Don't vanilify. Stand for something!
I see this in my own career just about constantly. It has become a running joke with my wife and me that I will alienate someone - and often more than just one someone - in each talk I give, no matter the group. I says it like I means it, and so I inadvertently step on toes. Now, I really do try to be gentle, and I hate hurting feelings. But when I'm talking to a audience of business owners and I mock the boss who hides in his office all day, sure enough, there will be just such a boss in the third row on the left. Or I pull out an example of a company that gives piss-poor service and, wouldn't you know it, someone's son is a vice president there. Oops. Sorry pal. But his bank really does suck, and you don't have to take it from me, because they just made a media company's ten worst list (again).
So too with this blog. I actually read a post on someone else's blog yesterday that mocked my all-time most popular post, in which I explain my Twitter follow-back policy. It was pretty funny, actually.
Every so often I encounter someone in real life or online who just isn't buying what I'm selling, no matter how appealing I try to make it - and you will too! In fact, let me go one further, because this is vitally important:
If no one is criticizing you, you're doing something wrong!
You're being too vanilla. You're trying so hard to please everyone that you run the risk of inspiring no one.
There are negative people out there, people who resent you because you're positive. You can't change them, because they don't want to be changed. So stop trying. Instead, take a look at what resonates with the people who do like what you have to offer, and give them even more of it! Whether you're a brand, a speaker, a writer, or a clerk at the neighborhood dry cleaners, you're helping some people with some thing - or else they wouldn't be giving you their business, would they? So give them more. Do it well enough, and those very people - the ones who used to like you, and who now adore you - those people will help you by telling their friends. Friends who also want what it is you do better than anyone. Friends who need you.
No one ever won an Academy Award for Best Critic.
Try to keep that in mind next time a snarky co-worker tries to tear down your presentation. How was their presentation? Didn't make one? Oh. I thought so.
* If that looks like Vanilla + vilify, you're not as dumb as you look. ;)
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder