Hugh MacLeod – Don’t Be Boring

“As Russell Davies, the UK ad executive says, “A brand’s first job is to be interesting.”

Once you are interesting, every contact with every customer, supplier, and stakeholder becomes easier. When you look at how commodity products and services are differentiated from their competition, it always comes back to the successful ones being more interesting – usually in an unexpected way.

Yes, quality matters. Yes, price matters. Yes, all the stuff you learned in “B” school matters. But what matters most to your customers is that you are smarter, quirkier, cooler, and more determined than the next guy. Once you are able to project these human traits to the world, customers and prospects are drawn to you.

This is for the guys who still think that the only way to market is through explaining product benefits and price advantages. Because being more human and showing that you are different, with personality and purpose, is even more important.”

HYDLE – TSOIGDH

In the history of HYDLE.com… this ridiculous “TSOIGDH” entry marks my 999th public blog post since May of 2009 – When I started this crazy world of blogging ideas, thoughts and Genius vs. Not Genius intermanents and social media successes or failures.

So for the sake of getting google credit for it…

“TSOIGDH” = TURNING SHIT ON IT’S GOD DAMN HEAD

Turning shit on it’s god damn head is going to be my 1 single inspiration for the next 999 blogpost entries. I can’t wait to open up my connection layer for all my loyal readers… so I can start finding out who you actually are.

Cheers to 999!

TSOIGDH

Seth Godin – Making a Ruckus

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Bring forward a new idea or technology that disrupts and demands a response

Change pricing dramatically

Redefine a service as a product (or vice versa)

Organize the disorganized, connect the disconnected

Alter the speed to market radically

Change the infrastructure, the rules or the flow of information

Give away what used to be expensive and charge for something else

Cater to the weird, bypassing the masses

Take the lead on ethics

(Or you could just wait for someone to tell you what they want you to do)

Seth Godin – The Coalition of No

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It’s easy to join.

There are a million reasons to say no, but few reasons to stand up and say yes.

No requires just one objection, one defensible reason to avoid change. No has many allies–anyone who fears the future or stands to benefit from the status quo. And no is easy to say, because you actually don’t even need a reason.

No is an easy way to grab power, because with yes comes responsibility, but no is the easy way to block action, to exert the privilege of your position to slow things down.

No comes from fear and greed and, most of all, a shortage of openness and attention. You don’t have to pay attention or do the math or role play the outcomes in order to join the coalition that would rather things stay as they are (because they’ve chosen not to do the hard work of imagining how they might be).

And yet the coalition of No keeps losing. We live in a world of yes, where possibility and innovation and the willingness to care often triumph over the masses that would rather it all just quieted down and went back to normal.

Yes is the new normal. And just in time.

Harlan Ellison – Pay the Writer


[YouTubeUlar] <— 524,719 Need some balls to justify your freelance ability to do anything? Remember these words of Harlan Ellison... this is your answer.

“All you got to do is pay me. Everybody else may be an asshole but I’m not. By what right would you call me and ask me to work for nothing? Do you get a paycheck? Does your boss get a paycheck? Do you pay the telecine guy? Do you pay the camera men? Do you pay the cutters? Do you pay the teamsters when they shlep your stuff on the trucks? Would you go a gas station and ask to give you free gas? Would you go to the doctor and have them take out your spleen for nothing? How dare you call me and what me to work for nothing…

…there is no publicity value. The only value for me, is if you put money in my hand.

I don’t take a piss without getting paid for it.

I get so angry about this because you undercut by all the amateurs. It’s the amateurs who make it tough for all the professionals.”

Now that we have that clear… lets talk about some creative thinking.

[Learn more about Harlan Ellison]