(this entire post inspired by Andy Sernovitz’s posts this week - so all due credit to him, he reminded me of Hugh’s cartoons)
Smashing together two ideas here that I think really and truly define what “good” marketing should all be about, neatly summarized in two of Hugh MacLeod’s cartoons:
“The market for something to believe in is infinite”
I liked this saying so much I actually bought the “limited edition” t-shirts when Hugh put them out a few years ago. It really boils down to passion - having passion for your own company, products, and mission and inspiring your customer community to share in that passion. People WANT to believe, even in consumer products - just think of Apple fanboys.
Related, is this awesome one:
“Quality isn’t Job One…Being totally fucking amazing is Job One”
God bless Hugh, I just love how blunt this is. I tried to capture something similar in one of my favorite posts (and popular, 5 whole comments!) - “Passion starts with two simple words” - with a focus on creating a powerful, positive reaction among customers as your overriding priority. The beauty of Hugh’s comment is that it focuses the mind not on some abstract term, but on a gut level feeling we can all relate to.
Amazement plus passion isn’t bad combo to aim for as a marketer.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Love it. 100% agree.
Hey it looks like you are using Falbum. I would be very interested if you posted a how to on how you integrated it with thesis :)
@Kyle, thanks for the comment!
@Fiffer, actually I used to use Falbum on this blog, but with a prior theme (K2). I couldn't get it to work at all with Thesis, and just didn't have the time to really sit down and play with the template enough to figure it out. I also used Slickr Gallery with Lightbox for a while, which was cool but unwieldy for me.
So instead on Thesis for the photo sidebars I just use FlickrRSS, and for the images on my Photos page (found in the top nav) I use a simple but cool plugin called PictureGrid by Kieran Delaney. It only shows one set from your Flickr stream, but that's all I needed for now. You can see all my plugins listed at http://kevinbriody.net/about/plugins/ for the links (including the Slickr link under “Inactive”).