Experience Is Overrated

One of my more popular posts is about the self perpetuating circle of being "The Little Guy" in a world of big fish. It hasn't drawn any public comments, but I get tweets and emails about it all the time.

Yesterday was Day 19 of Sarah Robinson's "30 Days To Changing Your Game" blog series. The day's entry, written by Marie Forleo, was about what not to do. I'll wait for you to read it, its worth it. Done? Ok. Good.

Did you see the part where she talked about taking a job she had no experience in just because she knew she could do it? THAT is amazing. Its also why experience is overrated. Someone thought enough of her to offer her a job that she'd never done before.

You hear about that kind of thing every so often, but you almost never hear about the inverse. Someone with no experience in a particular field can rarely go up to a professional ANYTHING and say "Hey, I bet I can do that. Gimme a shot." and get away with it. There is a misguided assumption that you need experience along with education to do anything these days. That's bullshit. Just because you have experience, doesn't mean you're any good. You could have experience in doing it WRONG. The guy without the experience is coming in with no preconceived notions on how he's going to do things based on what he's done before. He'll take chances, he'll learn, and he'll get it done.

If you need experience to get a job, how can you get it if you can't get a job? You need a job to get experience, but you need experience to get a job. Lovely fucking circle, isn't it? Do what you have to do to break that circle - if you know you can do something, do it. Tell people who try to tell you that you need experience to do something that they're wrong.

If you think you can do it, you can. Go do it.

Why Hide It?

Why is it that sometimes a major change goes unnoticed? Is it on purpose?

I know that some people don't mention when they get a new haircut, or have a new significant other - sometimes that IS on purpose, to make sure it's going to work.

But if a business goes through something that changes that business down to the core of its very existance - how can they possibly think that hiding that change is a good thing?

Most companies go on the offensive if they change even the smallest thing possible. Massive publicity campaigns, new marketing, new logos, new colors, new anything that would let it be known that there has been a change.

But some companies seem like making changes known is an afterthought. Why hide it? Why not let people know that something is different? Why not be prepared to be able to do so?

Perhaps its my mindset that's clouding my understanding - my marketing brain cannot understand why a change for the better isn't plastered all over the world, why someone isn't standing on top of a building screaming the news.

Am I that messed up? I don't get it.

The Marketing Year

So...its 2010. Does anyone really care? I don't. Did anything change when the date went from 12/31/2009 to 1/1/2010? Other than the date, not really. I'm still a thirty year old married male with a degree in marketing and a retail job. My wife is still my wife, and so on. I woke up the morning of 1/1/10 and went right back to work, I didn't have the day off.

So if you're expecting a retrospective on 2009 based on the title of this post, you'll be dissapointed, because that's not what this is. 2009 was good to me, and that's all there is to it.

I don't really understand the whole restarting everything on New Years Eve/Day bit. Why do we do that? Most fiscal years aren't calendar years. Most birthdays are not on those two days - IMHO, a year begins and ends on your birth date. There is an actual marked transition there, as tied into the calendar as it is.

So what the hell is a marketing year? Its nothing, its an arbitrary term I just made up. There really is no marketing year. Marketing is measured by projects, campaigns, promotions, and a whole host of other things, many only loosely tied into date of any sort.

That's the way I choose to live my life. Birthdays and anniversaries are important dates to remember, because they actually symbolize passage of time in a relevant way to that person.

What's marketing got to do with it? Everything and nothing, both at once. Marketing is what I do, so its obviously tied into my life and its evolution and creation. But marketing has nothing to do with what date it is, or what time it is.

If you get all excited by the new year thing, good for you, that's great. But if you see me celebrating wildly on some other day, I may have just made a useful or realistic transition, on my own terms, and with my own skills and abilities. I didn't do it because everyone else did, I did it because it was time for it, and it felt right.

So go ahead, be one of those people who tries through February, and fails in March. Come see me in April, or July, September or December, I'll still be at it and kicking ass...because I want to be, not because of some weird tradition nobody really knows anything about.

So why'd you make your resolutions? What do you want to accomplish? Why didn't you do it before? Why now?

Hype - The Greatest Blog Entry Of All Time

So....

Here on the east coast, I'm supposed to be under a foot of snow by now(7:30 pm Saturday December 19th) and there's not a snowflake in sight. It's now barely gotten started way downstate, so it'll be a while before it even gets here at all.

This got me thinking about hype, since they've been pushing what's not here as 15-20 inches, the storm that defines storms for the next however many years. We may get that much yet, but the last several hours have been fun to watch.

Did this storm really need the hype? People around here freaked out like we were getting ten times what the estimate was. Storms seem to get overhyped a lot, but they're not the only things.

There has been overhyped events since the first time someone realized that more people would come to something if it was promoted. Hype doesn't give an event more if it doesn't live up to it. Overhype makes people more apt to think twice next time.

How many fights of the century have there been? Game of the decade, the biggest gathering of some sort in the last X years, it's all the same.

Next time, just say it's an event, let the quality speak for itself. Prebranding yourself as the best or the most or the least, or whatever - just makes you look foolish in the end.

What kind of overhyped balogna did you fall for? We've all done it, admit to it below, it'll make you feel better, I promise.


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AntiSocial Media

No, this post is not against social media. In fact, it's in favor of it.

Here's the deal...

I LOVE social media. You never know who you may run in to, talk to, what you might learn. It instantly connects me with whomever is out there, from a friend in high school on facebook, to the CEO of a worldwide company on Twitter...and everything in between.

There's a lot out there, just waiting for you to find it. Therein lies the rub. It's all there.

See, when I was younger, I always had trouble meeting new people. I got nervous and quiet, and would often keep to myself. As it turns out, I would later find that I had/have a slight case of generalized anxiety, and my big trigger was new people and such.

Needless to say, I wasn't too enthusiastic about social media at first, figuring that it would be just as awkward as meeting new people or going new places had been in the past.

But it wasn't. I am the same person online and offline, no more true to myself or less true to myself either place. I have actually found that the people that are the best in taking to social media ARE the people who are like me. A little awkward, maybe just nervous.

We know what it's like. Not to be reached out to, not to be friends with everyone. We understand social media. It's for learning and growing and understanding.

It's what we've been trying to do all along.

Go talk to the quiet kid in the corner. Give the slightly nervous kid a moment to collect himself. You never know who they may become, or who they might know someday...or today, even.

Everybody knows something...and social media makes a person able to teach the world....

What have you taught someone lately?

Charity As A Popularity Contest?

In 1989, there was an earthquake in San Francisco. I was 10 years old. I was and still am an Oakland A's fan, so I saw the whole thing happen on tv.

I sent two weeks allowance to the Red Cross, who had set up a fund for donations to help the relief efforts in the area.

To this day, I'm still not quite sure why I sent $10 to help the earthquake victims. But I know what didn't inspire me.

It wasn't Ashton Kutcher racing Oprah to a million followers and donating what he would have anyway. It's not Drew Carey inflating his follower numbers to donate to LiveStrong.

We get it, you're famous. Donate and we'd find out. We seem to find out everything you folks do.

Since when did donating to charity become a popularity contest?

Until now, two people knew that I donated what I did. Mom and Dad. I didn't go around starting a list and telling people I'd donate more if they signed up.

I donated because I wanted to. No matter who else knew, or cared. It felt good to do so, and that's why I did it.

This is charity, not high school. Helping people who are less fortunate is the one thing that does not need all the extra bullshit. Do it for yourself, not anyone or anything else.

Change Happens.

Things change. There's no way around it. Its life.

Sometimes change is good, sometimes change is bad. But there's no way to stop it. Sometimes its big. Sometimes its small. People thrive on change. People hate change. People want good changes, and want to stay away from bad changes. I could go on forever, but I won't.

Recently, Twitter made a big change. The retweet function was added as an option along with favorite and reply. When this was announced, almost everyone thought it would be a great change. Then the code went up as a random chance beta. People disliked it, and it was pretty buggy, and only those who had the new feature could see it. It was taken down in short order.

Then a few days later, it was back, going out to more random people, and apparently everyone has it now, sans bugs. People hate it. People like it. Its typical change. There are good arguements for both sides, which I will not get into, because this isn't about the validity of the change itself. Form your own opinions on it.

Twitter execs have included a link to send feedback on the new feature, which many people have used. Will it make a difference? Time will tell, as there has been no notice from either @ev or @biz or anyone else involved with Twitter in regards to anything.

So its up to time now. Will the new format for retweets on the Twitter website be New Coke? Or will it be Google?

I'll leave it up to you to make your decision... (hopefully below...*hint hint*)

Thanks for reading!

Bring Up The Past, Or Move Forward?

Almost every time I write, I have opportunities to mention past blog posts, past tweets, questions...whatever it may be. Sometimes I do, most times I d not.

Why is that?

I'm really not sure. But I think I have a good idea...

Have you ever seen a current advertisement mention one from the past? It happens very rarely, mostly because companies always want to move forward. When it does happen, it is always a company referencing or bringing back a great moment in their history.

Nobody wants to be reminded of what they did in the past that wasn't up to par, no matter who they are, no matter what they've done.

On the other hand, showing off your past let's people see that what you do has gotten better...or IF it's gotten better. It may open someone up to something they didn't know.

Is that worth the risk? What do you think?





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The Tipping Point vs Jumping The Shark

The Tipping Point, and Jumping The Shark. Gotta love pop culture, don't you. Explaining why things turn good or go bad is the oldest thing in the book, but its often such an interesting topic. I find The Tipping Point to be Malcolm Gladwell's best work, a thought that I know many people share. Plus, who doesn't jokingly know the exact moment when their favorite tv show or movie series jumped the shark?

The interesting thing is that as different as these ideas are, they're both the same. They're both created to show the exact point when a specific instance happens. Yeah, Tipping Point is a good instance, and for the most part Jumping The Shark is a bad instance, but they really do come about the same way. Often times, these two things can be indentical, or very close in timing. Some people have said that they are one in the same - the instant something tips and becomes popular, it has jumped the shark, and will never be better than it was previous to that moment.

The thing that links these two ideas is unpredictability. The examples given in The Tipping Point are some of the most random things I have ever seen, and there is no way I could have, or just about anyone could have predicted it. Jumping The Shark is rather unpredictable as well. Maybe you can see it coming, for instance if your television show hired Ted McGinley, but I digress.

Unpredictability. Its the bane of many a businessman's existence. How else can you explain the Pet Rock? Beanie Babies? Real Men Of Genius? Reality Television? Its a wonder all people who work in marketing or advertising haven't gone insane by now!

To do this kind of thing, you need to thrive on the unpredictable. Take everything you do as the biggest damn thing in the world, because you know what? It might be. You won't know unless you go for it.

Thanks for reading!

Why'd you name it that?

What's in a name? Everything. But sometimes nothing.

Microsoft. Caesar's Palace. Escaping Mediocrity. Burger King. Staples.

Hear or see those names, you know what they are, you know their success, you know their quality. Imagine any of them with a different name. Would they be doing as well? Would they even be? What if Bill Gates was drunk one early day when microsoft was young, and he changed the name to something else....GatesCo for example.

Would that company be here today in the same position? Probably not. But maybe, it's possible that a product is good enough to overcome a bad name.

I've been thinking a lot about names. As things change at The Marketing Mark, the name could be one of them. Will that destroy what I have already built? I don't know. Will it propel me into new heights and beyond? I don't know.

Change is scary, isn't it. Hmmm...that sounds familiar...

How do you know when the fear is worth it?


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