Are you willing to take chances? Are you? Really? It sounds good - rolls off the tongue - gives you a sense of bravado. "Yes - I"m willing to take chances". But are you? Truly? Are you willing to piss off A LOT of people in order to really connect with a few?
It takes some serious chutzpah. Women, as well as men, fear rejection. We all fear that our passions will be ignored or even worse, proven totally worthless. Will that stop you from following your passion? Will it stop you from preaching it to the masses?
One of my favorite thought leaders, Roy W. has often said, "Criticism makes you cautious." How true. How many times have you had your thoughts, insights, dreams trampled on by others who "know better than you."
Do they?
The incomparable Michele Miller invited me to be a part of her Wonderbranding Seminar in Austin Texas at Wizard Academy this past week. What an honor and an absolute blast. I learned more than probably any other person in the room, not only from Michele but from the other participants.
A familiar theme of the seminar was, "By trying to appeal to the 'average person' you water down the message so much that it does not offend anyone, but neither does it truly connect with anyone."
Who are you willing to piss off? By creating a message that truly resonates with a segment of your audience, female or male, you may have to risk alienating another portion of your audience.
This makes business owners very uncomfortable. I see them with strange looks on their faces, crossing and uncrossing their legs. "I can't risk alienating anyone - I need as many customers as I can get."
Do you? Will those customers buy from you again? Will they buy from you at all?
Michele and I believe (OK Michele, I'm going to drag you into this whether you want to come along or not) in the Anti-Seminar. If you've never been to Wizard Academy you're missing out.
Beer and wine are opened and served starting at 9 am. Music is played too loud. We use foul language (not too much -but it did get blurted out - more by myself than Michele). We danced -badly. OK - Michele danced badly. I had some pretty good rhythm. :) (boy I hope she doesn't read this)
We encouraged open honest discussion about everything
We encouraged open honest discussion about everything from "do women really want to buy the right hand ring to say 'I don't need a man to buy me jewelery" (by the way - there were some jewelers in the room who are going to come out with right hand ring ads that are going to blow any previous efforts into smithereens.)
To - ministries - what do people really want from faith and religion? How do you separate genuine, talented priests who truly believe God is telling them to spread their message from the Ego-maniacs who just want notoriety?
(one of the possible nicknames we came up with for the class was "The Java Loving Jesus Freaks" because of their love of coffee and the vast number of people from the ministry industry. To give the group credit - they seemed to get a kick out of the name despite Michele's better instincts to go with something more appropriate.)
Are you willing to have a very real conversation about who your customers are and what they really want? Are you willing to follow your passion - or theirs - and create marketing messages that climb bravely out on that narrow limb? Messages that are so powerful they send some customers away in droves, but attract others so strongly they can not possibly stay away?
Are you willing to take chances?
Well, after the last few wondrous days with you, Roy and the rest of the WonderBranding class, I think my ability and willingness to "go for it" has increased exponentially. Let's keep asking those questions and piss off a few people in the process. You were a huge factor in making this class the success it was - looking forward to doing it again!
Posted by: Michele Miller | March 18, 2006 at 02:03 PM
As a class attendee let me just say that WonderBranding was great on many fronts.
Our willingness to take chances may be one of the key traits needed to break from the pack. Every copy writer has had the experience of being tethered by the Lilliputians who specialize in dumbing copy down to the least common denominator.
Wonderbranding gave us some needed tools, but also a dose of motivation to go home and throw the cat in the punchbowl.
If I could just find that damn cat!
Posted by: Chris Busch | March 19, 2006 at 11:26 PM
I really like the part about people fearing what their customers will think because they need them.
It reminds me of a company that was having a lot of losses through theft and hired a company to look into it.
They found out that some of their customers that bought the most, stole the most.
The point I am making is that we need to really define who our customer is and what constitutes a customer.
I've seen this through the years in the area of returns also where people don't mind abusing it over and over again (it's not hard to know who they are), are they real customers? Can we risk things with them? Are we afraid to say "no" at the right times with those who may inhabit our businesses, but we really can't call a customer?
We as business owners and managers need to face these questions head on, rather than simply repeat the old saying that "the customer is always right."
If they really are our customer I could agree, but that is what we need to decide!
Posted by: Gary Bourgeault | March 22, 2006 at 09:03 PM
Michele... Know that you are not alone! God has brought many fdniers into your life through blog land that are praying for you and your family. Hang in there!
Posted by: Steven | August 21, 2012 at 02:08 AM