Seth Godin Repost: Different or remarkable?
Seth Godin, author, entrepreneur and all-around marketing guru has a really great blog that I receive updates from. They are usually concise and right on – the one below is about being different vs. remarkable. Paul and I talk about this a lot lately when we get into our post-modern discussions about how nothing is novel in this day and age.
We are both excited to start something new together some day – working at Starting Artists, Inc. and now in the Peace Corps together has shown us how much we like working as a team and how complementary our skills really are. Yet, nowadays it’s hard to think of how you can make or do something so different. Instead, as we have with Mujeres: Cambia, we’re focusing on being the most remarkable that we can be. We know that Mujeres: Cambia is not necessarily that unique since there are other folks doing paper jewelry but we can be the most talked about as a result of our quality and our story.
Here’s to being remarkable!
Mari
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From Seth’s Blog:
Different or remarkable?
Differentation by marketers has a long and obvious history. When you see competition, you differentiate.
Buy mine, I can prove it is different.
They offer X, I offer Y. They cost this, I cost that.
The thing is, differentiation is selfish. It’s the act of the marketer with intense interest in his segment of the market, it’s inside baseball, deeply thought through reasons why someone should buy my thing instead of their thing.
Most customers, of course, don’t have the same selfish view of the market, the same obsessed knowledge of features and benefits.
Differentiation is not the purple cow. This is in fact a willful misreading of what I’ve been writing about, usually by people who haven’t read it…
Remarkable has nothing to do with the marketer. Remarkable is in the eye of the consumer, the person who ‘remarks.’ If people talk about what you’re doing, it’s remarkable, by definition.
The goal, then, isn’t to draw some positioning charts and announce that you have differentiated your product. No, the opportunity is to actually create something that people choose to talk about, regardless of what the competition is doing.
I Heart Gregory Crewdson
I’ve admired Gregory Crewdson’s work for many years even before I worked at APERTURE Foundation, where his work has appeared in the Foundation’s magazine and website. I love that each of his cinematic images could tell myriad stories. He captures every detail of the moment with such care and precision that the images transcend the quotidian to become almost preternatural. No wonder his only commercial project was for HBO’s Six Feet Under, still one of my favorite TV shows of all time. You can see more about his process at APERTURE’s website and also in the documentary that came out last year: Gregory Crewdson Brief Encounters (see last image below), which I haven’t yet seen but it’s on my list!
Enjoy, Mari
Transformational TED Talks
Amy Cuddy
Jane McGonigal
Shawn Achor
Index: Day 442 in Site
# of days since arriving in site |
442 |
# of pairs of flip-flops Mari has worn out |
3 |
# of drinking glasses Paul has broken |
2 |
# of drinking glasses Mari has broken |
2 |
# of drinking glasses Max has broken |
0 |
# of ethernet cords Max has chewed |
1 |
# of times Max has gotten unjustly blamed by a neighbor for doing something wrong |
2 |
# of games Mari & Paul play each week |
10 |
# of products Mujeres Cambia has logged into inventory |
2,746 |
Amount in total Mujeres Cambia sales since Mari & Paul arrived |
$15,400 |
Average annual family income of a member before joining the group |
$2,760 |
% of meals Mari cooks from scratch |
90% |
% of meals Mari cooks white rice |
0 |
% of meals that the average Ecuadorian eats white rice |
80% |
Average # of (small) bags of gummy bears consumed by Mari & Paul per week |
5 |
# of online classes Paul has completed in the past month |
4 |
# of design tutorials Mari completes on average per week |
5 |
# of family art challenges completed |
4 |
# of times Mari has cut Paul’s hair |
3 |
# of times Paul has cut Mari’s hair |
0 |
