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

Humility and curiosity
A marketer is curious about other people. She wonders about what others
are struggling with, what makes them tick. She’s fascinated by their dreams
and their beliefs.
And she has the humility to embrace the lack of time and attention that
her audience wrestles with every day.
People aren’t eager to pay you with their attention. The fact that you
bought an ad doesn’t earn you something that priceless.
Instead, we can hope that people might voluntarily trade their attention.
Trade it for something they need or want. Trade it because they’re
genuinely interested. Trade it because they trust you to keep your promise.
Not everyone will be interested. But if you do your job right, enough
people will.
This is the lock and the key. You’re not running around grabbing every
conceivable lock to try out your key. Instead, you’re finding people (the
lock), and since you are curious about their dreams and desires, you will
create a key just for them, one they’ll happily trade attention for.
A lifeguard doesn’t have to spend much time pitching to the drowning
person. When you show up with a life buoy, if the drowning person
understands what’s at stake, you don’t have to run ads to get them to hold
on to it.
Case Study: Be More Chill—More than one way to make a hit
Two years after almost no one went to see this poorly reviewed musical
debut in New Jersey, its soundtrack showed up on the Billboard Top 10
original cast album chart. More than a hundred million streams after it was
first recorded, Be More Chill is the hit musical that you can’t see (yet).
Except for Hamilton, this is the most beloved musical of its time,
spawning fan fiction, illustrated video animatics, and high school
productions.
This phenomenon happened without a Broadway debut. Without the risk
and time and committee meetings. And most definitely without strong
reviews after opening night. Charles Isherwood wrote in the New York
Times: “predictable in its contours . . . stale . . . boilerplate . . .”

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The thing is, it wasn’t a play for Isherwood or any of the other critics. It
was aimed squarely at the new generation that has adopted it. And talked
about it. And shared it. A fan named Claudia Cacace in Naples, Italy, drew
some of the video animation, which was seen by Dove Calderwood in Idaho
Falls, Idaho, who hired her to draw some more. And so it spreads.
At a recent café performance and meet and greet in New York (the meet
and greet lasted for several hours), fans came from all over the world to
meet the creators. And, just as important, each other.
It should come as no surprise that there will be a new run of the musical.
Off-Broadway this time.