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What Kind of Story Are You Telling?
By Kimberly Bock | July 7, 2008
The following video is of Yves Behar, an industrial designer and founder of Fuseproject.
If you are unfamiliar with Fuseproject, as I was until this morning, it is a San Francisco-based industrial design and branding firm.
Exerpt from Wikipedia:
“The company motto - “dedicated to the emotional experience of brands through storytelling“.
The studio’s work has been internationally recognized by museums, including solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Musée de Design et d’Arts Appliqués Contemporains in Lausanne, Switzerland, as well as group shows in the Cooper Hewitt Museum NY, the Chicago Athenaeum Museum and the Munich Museum of Applied Arts. It has received more than 50 awards from IDSA/Business Week(Industrial Design Excellence Awards), Red Dot, ID Magazine and If Industrie Hanover, and was listed 2nd best design firm by Business Week in 2004; additionally Yves Behar is the recipient of the prestigious National Design Award for industrial design, awarded by the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Museum.”
The reason I wanted to show this video to you is to make you aware of what all too frequently eludes us.
While we are busy running after “A-Listers” for credit and attention, possibility of a few links and kudos/recognition, we are overlooking what truly sets us aside from the rest. We miss the ‘branding’ or ‘niche’ boat that so few manage to obtain because we choose to follow the cheap talk of those who desperately need for you to buy into their jazz so THEY can use YOU to get ahead. And, sad to say, I’m guessing that 90% of you WILL believe every word they say. They stick together like glue while using you for everything you are worth. For what? Where will you be in a year?
Look around. How many people are hitting the ‘A-list’? (whatever the h*ll you think that might be)
How many ‘followers’ are making that almighty dime?
Do yourself the favor of a good old fashioned reality check.
If it takes a smile and some smooth talk to snatch you up…they surely do not have a problem doling that out. It’s more than likely that you have been buying into the s**t they are gabbing.
They are very good at it.
Your fellow marketers need a new pair of shoes, and they will play you like a fiddle to get them. Supposed kindness is their greatest tool. You’ll see how ‘kind’ they are once you express a difference of opinion with them. A difference of opinion is seen as a risk/threat to them and their mission, so if you don’t ‘repent’, you are quickly dismissed. Which is just fine for them, because they have plenty more back-up where you came from. Doing their dirty work and kissing their *sses. (with the exception of few)
Think about how many of us are paying approx. $2,000 a pop for conferences held by the glam posers of SEO, although, everything they have to offer can be found for free by way of a search engine?!
Even Jeff Quipp says, (I’ve never had a run-in with Jeff - knock on wood - he seems to be one of the ‘good guys’) “the real learnings occur afterward at dinner, or at the bar…” (where ‘friendships’ are forged) - See Mark Dykeman’s, “Catch the brainwaves of Jeff Quipp“..
How do you think 99 % of THEM learned SEO? Marketing? Social Media? Think about it. Bill Slawski, expert search patent researcher (SEO By The Sea) has told me he never attended one single conference while he was learning SEO/M.
Most of them would like for you to think you need to pay the steep cash amount that they require, because they are simply sucking your wallet dry to satisfy their own bank accounts.
Once you figure that out, you’ll be well on your way to creating your own niche, brand, name.
THEY need YOU.
I thought it would be nice for you to break free of your average ’space’ to see how unique minds function at top level.
Yves Behar may not be a name you recognize as a conference speaking glam boy, he may not have ever crossed your path in the SERP’s, but his way of thinking is a golden lesson to what our mindset should entail.
Think ‘different’, ‘unique’, ‘new’, ‘creative’, ‘innovative’….
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Topics: Offbeat |
July 11th, 2008 at 12:53 am
I do think there is a reason for paying for what you can get for free - time and convenience.
I love the video especially: advertising is the price companies pay for lack of originality. An excellent book that takes this approach is John Lyons and Edward de Bono’s Marketing Without Money. I’ve re-read it many times.
Also the focus on value and values.
I’m not entirely sure what this means for my blog but it certainly has got me thinking. Many thanks.
Evans last blog post..Staying Angry