Melodies in Marketing

Not your conventional review here FYI. It’s about a personal journey that I took while reading the book “Chasing Cool“. Props to Paul Herring at ChaosScenario for doing some nice writeups and inspiring my purchase. Karen Hegmann also did a review. The authors’ blog can be found here.

Unique positioning is what creates space in the mind for ‘new’ and ‘different’. By attempting to think differently, we’ll better avoid Me-Too and the inevitable position of second-best. Thus we should be wary of using trend reports as a directional field guide for a brand. They could provide us with some insight, but ultimately a few important facts are clear: it’s secondary data whose value is aging fast while also being read by numerous others as well. Does purely following others make any sense? In the name of adopting best practices for operational efficiency, perhaps so. But unless innovation and design are strongly influenced by creativity within our walls and through conversation with our customers and partners, we’re doomed to mediocrity.

Chasing Cool is a bad idea. But becoming inspired by Cool is okay. At that point, you have to create your own Cool and truly rally behind it because it is yours. That will require carving your own path and taking on substantial risk including that of failure. Preparing a strong business case will help define the opportunity and how to get there. That sort of behavior earns respect in my eyes.

There’s much more to be taken away from this title, so I suggest you pick it up sometime should chance & time permit. It taught me something important about authenticity and marketing that I haven’t been exposed to since reading Small Giants.

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