Tag - blogging

Did you hear about the MIT students who built a raft out of Gatorade bottles and paddled it across the Charles river in Boston?

Jonathan, one of the students who built the raft, has been trying to get Gatorade’s attention, and finally succeeded. Here’s the response from the marketing people at Gatorade:

Jonathan: It sounds like you and your roommate are very ingenious. Making a raft out of Gatorade bottles and rowing it across the Charles River is certainly an accomplishment. Although we would not be able to use your pictures we would certainly love to see your work. You can send them to this email address as an attachment. Also, please respond with your complete mailing address sot that we can send both you and your roommate some coupons via US Mail.

Maybe it doesn’t matter so much when you sell $2 billion worth of your product yearly and can pay Michael Jordan $10 million to pump up your image. But companies would kill to get this kind of real-world exposure and attention.

I mean, the kids even have charts of their yearly Gatorade consumption, and Jonathan proclaims:

I’m the winner of Gatorade consumption!! I’m the one on the right. 47.8 gallons baby!
This totally crushes my last year’s grand total of 13 gallons, lol.

In a time when half of all young people online are writing their own stories, publishing their own photos, and contributing to the diversity and richness of web culture … and in the post-Cluetrain years … I’m going to suggest an ad based on this type of fan (fanatic) actions would be better than another generic celebrity endorsement.

I don’t care what Michael Jordan drinks: I know he’s been paid millions to have the right opinions and say the right things. But I am interested in what some ordinary everyday but funky/cool/ingenious college nerds with ideas do.

It’s different. It’s unboring. It’s real. It’s remarkable. It deserves something more than a couple of coupons in the mail.

I wonder if someone at Gatorade is smart enough to clue into that?

I’ve been following Seth Godin’s blog lately.

He’s the extremely clueful author of Ideavirus, among other books.

So in a recent post on cargo-cult marketing I found it pleasantly surprising that he states “we have no idea why some ideas spread and others don’t.”

The post is about copying things you see successful companies doing, just like Pacific Islander cargo cults blindly copied US Army procedures like making an airstrip, creating a air traffic control hut, etc. The problem?

… just because you copy the elements that apparently made something work before doesn’t mean that you’re going to be guaranteed that it will work again.

Good point.

More interesting, though, is his admission that we just don’t know why some ideas spread and others don’t. I mean, he’s the expert.

We know something about how ideas spread, through Godin’s work, as well as Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.

But why?

Some things catch. Some things don’t. Perhaps the best explanation is a Biblical one:

The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.

Which is not to say, as Damon Runyon observed, that you shouldn’t bet that way.

Just don’t expect to win every hand.

Mike Wagner at Own Your Brand has an interesting post on branding.

He’s got five points of branding:

• Difference: Tell me what makes your business or organization different.
• Invitation: Passionately invite clients to purchase your offerings or members to join your organization.
• Relevance: Your clients should be saying, “These people understand me. They get it!”
• Truthfulness: Organizationally tell each other the truth, hear the truth from your customers, and act on that truth.
• Yours: Insist (and I do mean INSIST) everyone in your organization “drinks your Kool-Aid.”

The post is mostly about Whirlpool: the company itself, and what it’s doing with its brand.

But when reading it, I actually thought he was going to develop the idea of each individual person as their own brand – within their sphere of influence: colleagues, clients, partners, friends, family, and acquaintances.

So I’m going to adapt his points for each individual person. For you. For me.

• Difference: Why are you different than 50 million other people (in your own country, and around the world)?
• Invitation: Be generous: give all acquaintances opportunities to benefit from your unique gifts and perspective.
• Relevance: Listen – sincerely – much more than you talk. Then only say things that are relevant to the person/people you are with.
• Truthfulness: Fooling yourself is a temporary luxury you cannot afford. Seek honest feedback continuously, and respond to it with real, visible change.
• Yours: Always, always, always ensure that you get proper credit for your work – without being or seeming pushy, arrogant, or needy.

One thing to keep in mind: a brand is much more about who you are than about how you want to be perceived. Inner reality always surfaces eventually.

So none of the above will work over time unless you become who you want to be.