Genius > advertising
How many advertisements did you ignore today?
How many moments of genius did you witness today?
I have good news and more good news. The first bit of good news is this: there's no point in counting how many millions of dollars marketers wasted "targeting" you with advertisements, because they're not trying to speak with you. They're throwing things at you. Do you like having things thrown at you? I don't.
The more good news is a piece of genius I want to share with you, right now. This gentleman's website features 7 videos compiled from Youtube video and sound, mixed together to form new songs. Think of it as DJing with video. Ophir Kutiel, better known as Kutiman, mixed the videos and sound together to create his mixes.
Here's the amazing part: only one week after launching the site, Kutiman had over one million hits.
Here's the frightening truth: he did it by sending a link to his site to twenty people, and they knew genius when they saw it. It spread through tweets and blogs so fast the volume of viewers coming to his site crashed it.
What's the lesson to be learned from this?
Rephrase that: how many lessons are there to be learned from this?
1) Genius will always beat advertising. Why?
2) Because people will talk about genius. They will share genius. It will spread, and more people than you can imagine will find out sooner than you think. Why will it spread?
3) Because people blog and tweet and update their Facebook and text and e-mail and post on forums. People connect instantly. It only takes a moment to do one of these things. How much do you think a million views in under a week is worth in marketing dollars?
4) I don't know - all I know is a marketing company would never suggest sending a video to twenty friends, anticipating a million others to follow so soon.
What would happen if people spent more time creating genius in every aspect of their lives? Try to picture it. From your clothing to your mode of transportation to your business card and your e-mail signature, what if everything about you screamed genius? Do you think you'd ever feel a downturn in the economy?
So you think there's no way everything you do can scream genius. Tough question: what about you screams genius? Does ANYTHING about you even suggest genius?
Build something brilliant this year. Do something people will call a work of a genius. It will get you much farther in life than a good advertising budget.
Philosophy: give me genius over anything, any day, and it will find a way to succeed.
I really like your point Jon, but I think it applies more to new and emerging products than established or commodity products. If you're Procter & Gamble, you've got some generic products with many competitors, those "targeting" ad dollars are trying to establish a differentiation that does not inherently exist. There is no viral genius in deoderant or toothpaste (I believe that would be called a disruptive technology). With genius, there is a clear differentiation out of the box which gets worn away over time as the product matures.
However, a really funny and I think pretty worthless intersection of these points is "buzz marketing" where you pay people to speak well about your product in public places. What do you think about that?
-m
Mike:
The "genius" does not have to lie within the product itself. Commodity markets always have products which are different, such as all-natural toothpaste, and those products get a higher price and probably a higher profit per item sold. That's more niche than genius. It's also a more profitable line of products.
Advertising itself can be genius. Credit cards seem like a commodity, yet MasterCard's "priceless" campaign struck an emotional chord with people everywhere. It was no longer about rewards and APR, it was about LIFE.
"Buzz marketing" is most effective when it's real word-of-mouth. Paying people has some effect initially, unless people find out and the backlash is overwhelming (Walmart had a blog like that, written by "real people" who were Walmart employees, and the backlash was quite nasty when everyone found out).
"...G.I.JOE!!!"<------- Just to reinforce our status as old 80's kids. Most of the incoming freshman class this year was born in 1990 and would not get that reference... >.>.....
It is one thing to come up with a good and novel idea, but it is another thing to find someone interested in that idea with a willingness to pay for it. The former describes the essence of attaining knowledge for the sake of attaining knowledge, while the latter is the essence of marketing and business theory.
Even the type of understanding gained in marketing theory and business theory can be of the former or the latter essence. It can be knowledge gained for its own sake, left unused and subject to the fate of all that which is esoteric. Or it can be knowledge that possesses the knowingness of its own application and applicability; becoming only what it knows it can be; no more or less than that.
~Kevin
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