Endless, unlimited and more. These are building blocks of capitalism.
Starbucks knows that they can’t get you to drink three coffees every morning, but their stock price is built on the idea that they can continue to get more customers and make more money from each one.
The Wedding-Industrial complex is built on the simple idea that your wedding should cost the same as your best friend’s wedding did (plus a little more).
The status ratchet is real, and it’s easy to be seduced by it. “Compared to what” is a fundamental component of marketing.
One reason this works is that a little progress gets you positive feedback, which makes you eager to find a little more, a cycle that doesn’t end. Infinity, all the way up.
And, for those seeking social change, the opposite is worth noting:
When asking for penance, self-control and good behavior, infinity is not a useful tool. When someone shows up and tries to do better, “that’s not good enough,” is not a particularly useful motivator.
The useful process begins by earning enrollment in the journey toward better, but it’s not amplified by our criticism of each action being imperfect.
Go-up infinity is about ‘more.’ But too often, social-good infinity is about ‘pure’. And pure is difficult to embrace, because anything less than pure feels like failure.
A suite at a New York Knicks game costs more than $30,000. Is that a donation to the team?
Why do we differentiate between the money spent on a Super Bowl ticket and the check we write for a worthy cause?
Does calling it a “donation” make it more valuable or less valuable to us?
Fundraisers can fall into the trap of believing that they’re asking for a favor or begging for a donation. But human beings, like all creatures, exchange time, money or risk in return for something. When that exchange is insufficient to cause action, we don’t do it.
The anonymous donor gets something. Something priceless, memorable and worthwhile: peace of mind.
The public donor, whether it’s the neighbor buying a raffle ticket for the scout fundraiser or the bigwig on the board of a museum, they get something as well. The status and connection they buy is a bargain, worth more than it costs. In fact, if it wasn’t worth more than it costs, they wouldn’t buy it.
The fundraiser isn’t asking for a favor. They’re offering an opportunity.
Some organizations and marketers thrive on the uninformed consumer. They seek out people who don’t know, and who aren’t particularly good at decision making.
Others do their best work when the customer knows what’s up and is making an informed choice.
Are you closing the sale or opening it?
If your prospects knew everything you know, would they choose you?
When marketers sign up for the iterative process of education and sophistication, our path is clear.
And if we sign up to confuse and manipulate, that path is clear as well.
It’s much easier to walk a tight rope than it is to simply stand in place.
Forward momentum creates stability.
“Are you sure it’s going to work?”
That’s the wrong question to consider when proposing a study.
It’s also not helpful to say, “It’s unlikely to solve the problem.”
All the likely approaches have already been tried.
The useful steps are:
Our fear of failure is real. It’s often so significant that we’d rather live with a problem than face the possibility that our new approach might be wrong.
If the problem is worth solving, it’s probably worth the effort and risk that the next unproven test will require.
[In this podcast, Dr. Jonathan Sackner-Bernstein talks with some patients and a doctor about his novel approach to Parkinson’s disease. Participants in the conversation bring up the conventional wisdom he’s challenging and share reasons why his theory probably won’t work. But none of the critics has a better alternative. The cost of the test is relatively low, and the stakes of the problem are quite high. There’s no clear answer. This is precisely what a study is for.]
What will it cost to test your solution to our problem? Okay, begin.
[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]
Don't want to get this email anymore? Click the link below to unsubscribe.