This Is Marketing: You Cant Be Seen Until You Learn to See

Choose your axes, choose your future
When you look at the list of available attributes, it’s tempting to pick the
ones that most people care about. After all, it’s hard work to claim an edge,
and to pick one that few people care about seems foolish. Better, we think,
to pick the popular one.
If you do, you’ll certainly be choosing a crowded quadrant. And without
the magic of advertising, it’s very difficult to grow in a quadrant that’s
crowded. Your customer doesn’t know what to do, so he does nothing.
The alternative is to build your own quadrant. To find two axes that have
been overlooked. To build a story, a true story, that keeps your promise, that
puts you in a position where you are the clear and obvious choice.
Everyone else, the average or hard-working brands that picked the
average or popular axes—they’re all lumped together. They are Oldsmobile
and Plymouth and Chevrolet and the rest of the lumpenproletariat.
You, on the other hand, have gone out on a limb, one that belongs to you,
and maybe, just maybe, there are underserved customers out there who
can’t wait to find you, connect with you, and spread the word.
So many choices
Software, perfume, insurance, candidates, authors, devices, coaches,
charities, and retailers—there’s a brand everywhere you look. If you could
only pick one brand to put next to each of the following emotions, one
brand that you’d choose to help you feel a certain way, which brand would
you pick?

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Safe
Beautiful
Powerful
Worthy
Responsible
Smart
Connected
Hip
If the marketers have done a good job, they have made these choices
easy for you.
People are waiting for you
They just don’t know it yet.
They’re waiting for the edge you will stake out, the one that they can
imagine but don’t expect.
They’re waiting for the connection you will offer. The ability to see and
be seen.
And they’re waiting for the tension of the possible, the ability to make
things better.
Your freedom
You have the freedom to change your story. You can live a different one,
one that’s built around those you seek to serve.
You have the freedom to change how you spend your day. You can
outsource the tasks and find the guts to do emotional labor instead. You can
go out on a limb and do what others aren’t doing.
The most frustrated marketers I know are the ones who take it as a given
that because they are in industry x, they have no freedom.

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And so real estate brokers hustle for listings and do precisely what the
other brokers do.
And so pharma marketers run slightly generic ads and skirt the line in
influencing doctors, instead of realizing how many options they actually
have.
And so we get on the Facebook merry-go-round, boosting our posts,
counting our followers, and creating ever more content in the hope of being
noticed. There are so many other ways to make an impact and earn trust.
Much of what we take for granted in our marketing toolbox was
considered a risky innovation just a few generations ago. It’s worth
discarding the cruft that we built and replacing it with more generous tools.