Weird Is The New Black
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by: RatnaMackay | Total views: 20 | Word Count: 496
The guys at CopyBlogger.com turned me onto another Seth Godin idea: are you weird enough? His new book, We Are All Weird:The Myth of Mass and the End of Compliance talks about the end of mass marketing.
It's an interesting idea (and I'm not reviewing the book. I haven't read it yet), but the idea seems to be that we are all weird. What's more, being weird is a good thing.
The mass market is dying. It is what it is/ was what it was, and was good while it functioned. It provided standardized products for everyone, like them or not. Most people liked them. They were an improvement. But now we can improve on mass. We can be unique, fragmented and genuine. We can do it for ourselves and others can benefit.
How do you go about it? Create a product, provide a service or make a website. Make it for you, not the customer. Guy Kawasaki promotes the idea, saying it worked great for Apple. Back to Godin: if you create a meatball sundae you might not create a tribe, but chances are you'll create something better than that. And when you do, people will appreciate you for it.
So ask yourself: what about you is weird? Of course, we need to agree on what weird is, in general. Godin says it's anything that is not mass market or "normal", It's also an opportunity. CopyBlogger's Sonia Simone talks about it as the long tail, which is everyone else in the world who is as weird as you are. It is the result of the fragmentation of our culture. Weird in your small town or high school isn't weird in the great big world.
What makes me weird? It's the things I like: real estate, business, flying, independence, food security, cooperative ventures, alternative energy, history and politics. All of those things inform me in a peculiar way. Some people find it weird. It makes me want to own remote real estate that I can fly to, make off grid, share with others, and use to raise food.
And while that's weird (in a good way) today, just think about how weird it was 30 years ago. So weird that it would have been harder to accomplish. Harder to connect with like minded people. Today? Not so hard. I'm connecting with those people now. All I need to do is figure out a workable model and we can do it.
Why should anyone even care? You should care because now that the idea has been enunciated it presents you with a choice: are you going to market something that you think the masses want, or are you going to create something that you want and find people who will support you? The possible answers will determine very different paths.
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Looking to find the best advice on online business, then visit www.getrichslowonline.com to find the best advice on the new economy for you.
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