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How to turn a PC user into an Apple fanboy

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

Image by videogioco

What would it take to make North Americans yield to the conventional wisdom of most countries and start calling soccer by its more widely used name: football? How do you make a life-long Coca Cola drinker switch to Pepsi? When does a Boston Red Sox fan learn to love the New York Yankees? Can you teach an old dog new tricks? Where is the tipping point at which an influencer can have an impact on our beliefs, tastes, thoughts, and behavior?

The answers to these questions are the equivalents of the Fountain of Youth, the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Midas Touch to marketers everywhere. The ability to influence behavior, as much as some of us despise the thought of being manipulated, is a very valuable thing to people who have products and services to sell.

A tale of two tunesmiths

These thoughts are running through my mind today as I’ve just finished listening to a Fresh Air podcast in which Terry Gross recently interviewed Iggy Pop.

Iggy was one of the early punk rock musicians in the late 1960s (coming to the public eye as the lead singer of the Stooges) and now, in his early 60s, he’s just released a new album Preliminaires, which I awkwardly describe as French-inspired crooning: softer, more melodic, and more subtly seductive than, say, “I Wanna Be Your Dog” or “Real Wild Child”.

Do you think that die hard Stooges fans will flock to Preliminaries in droves? Good question.

A couple of weeks ago I heard yet another Fresh Air podcast where Terry interviewed John Doe, another famous punk rock musician who rose to fame in the Los Angeles band X. Doe has more visibly experimented with different musical genres. He’s joined up with a Canadian band (the Sadies) to create Country Club, a clearly country/western album. Doe sang snippets from several songs on the show. His musical output since X’s heyday (late 70s, early 80s) has certainly ventured into country-ish music, none of which I’ve heard.

I should mention at this point that I detested country music in my teens and early 20s. In the early 90s there was a small number of country-ish musicians that caught my ear, although they were more rock/pop tinged than others (like, say, Garth Brooks, Dwight Yoakum, and Steve Earle) but I still cringed most of the time whenever I heard pedal-steel guitar or nasal vocals.

Somehow, though, hearing John Doe belt out some country standards blew my mind and made me reevaluate my musical tastes. He’s got a great voice, for one thing. However, I think it was the emotion his singing conveyed (I think Terry Gross called it a sense of desolation) that really touched my heart. So to speak.

What’s the tipping point?

So, at some point, a person’s tastes may seem to change.

Suddenly, twelve year old Suzie tries boiled spinach and decides that it doesn’t taste as bad as she thought. A beer drinker tries wine and decides it’s palatable – or vice versa. You finally watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer after your close friend raves about it for years on end… and you decide it rocks, even though vampires and the supernatural always seemed dumb to you in the past.

You finally decide to check out Broadcasting Brain after all the rave reviews and… OK, seriously now…

I’m not a professional marketer but I have been observing things for awhile. I think that any kind of influencer is going to have an uphill battle trying to get people to like something unless:

It meets a need – information, utility, entertainment… any or all of the above.
It’s similar to something you already like that it’s easily identified and understood – at its core, country music can tap into the same emotional roots as soul or blues music: normally pain or joy.
It’s a work of love or art - it sure looks like the people who made or discovered this thing knew what they were doing and did a fine job making it.
It touches you emotionally - when Terry Gross asked John Doe about his interest in country music he said, (half) jokingly, that all white men like country music. While that’s not literally true, what Doe meant was that the feelings of pain and joy that country music explores are feelings that most men can relate to in a pure, unvarnished form: most men go through periods when we feel cheated, worthless, powerless, and heartbroken, believe it or not, and sometimes we get to feel some joy, too.

I’m not saying pity the poor white man here, by the way: many of us are dickheads at times, too.

The point that I’m trying to make is that these mournful country tunes somehow rang Pavlov’s bell for my musical tastes because they satisfied one or more of the criteria that I mentioned above.

So, how do you turn a PC user into an Apple fanboy?

Yes, I suppose I should address the original question in the post title.

You can take one route, I suppose, and try to recruit an influencer, sneezer, etc. to try to convert a die hard PC user to a hard-core Apple user. You could get Jeff Goldblum, Louis Gray, or Tiger Woods to promote your product.

However, this will only be successful in the long run, in my opinion, if you can tap into the other four things that I mentioned above:

Show the PC user that an iMac is not THAT different from a PC
Show how it can meet needs
Show how it is a darn good product
Show how it can evoke that “gosh wow, this is cool feeling”

Otherwise, no one will care. Or change.

Over to you: what are your stories?

I’ve told you a story about me, now I’d like to hear something about you. Please, in the comments section, tell us all a story about how you came to like (or love) something that you never liked before. How did it happen? Did any of the criteria that I mentioned above come into play? Did someone else’s recommendation influence you?

Tags: influencer, psychology, tastes
Posted in marketing | 6 Comments »

Unanswered questions from Tribes by Seth Godin

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

I’ve read through Seth Godin’s Tribes a couple of times since I got it a few weeks ago. I would describe it as a manifesto on how to organize people (at a high level) to affect change. I do not like this book as much as Unleashing the Ideavirus, The Purple Cow, The Dip, or Small Is The New Big, but that does not make it a bad book. It is a good book.

But there are still a few things that I don’t get:

Can you belong to more than one tribe?
Can you lead more than one tribe?
What happens when two tribes go to war?
Why is making a tribe exclusive supposed to be a good thing? I can see it from a bonding perspective, but to me that’s how bad feelings and bad feelings happen between groups: when they make themselves exclusive from each other.
What happens when people don’t want to be led?

There’s been a lot of positive feedback about the Tribes book and the Ning community that has arisen. I know that there are some good things happening there.

Nonetheless, so much of the coverage of the book feels like hype to me. Like I said, this is a good book. Is it revolutionary? Groundbreaking? Original? Not so much – it’s basically an extension of Godin’s previous writings that crystallize around the Tribes concept.

To his credit, Godin doesn’t suggest that everyone needs to be a leader, he’s just saying that there’s never been a better time to be a leader given the tools that are available. Fair enough.

So tell me, what do you think about Tribes, if you’ve read it?

Tags: leadership, marketing, review, seth godin, tribes
Posted in marketing | 8 Comments »

You are not a personal brand – you are a character

Monday, November 10th, 2008

Personal branding discussions are making the rounds of the social media, marketing, and PR blogging circles. Some people think “personal branding” is evil, others think it’s necessary, and others still don’t care about it.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about personal branding:

Personal branding is the process whereby people and their careers are marked as brands.^[1] It has been noted that while previous self-help management techniques were about self-improvement, the personal branding concept suggests instead that success comes from self-packaging.^[2] The term is thought to have been first used and discussed in an 1997 article by Tom Peters.^[3]

You might say that your personal brand is a collection of attributes that define you as a person and make you distinct from other people.

Thing is, a lot of people don’t want to be thought of as products like cars, MP3 players, foods, cleaning products, or sports teams. It’s demeaning.

On the other hand, anyone who’s ever gone job hunting, bucked for a promotion, or tried to sell ANYTHING knows that branding, which is based on perception and reputation, is real. Perception is reality and perception is everything. On a personal level I’ve spent many, many years fighting this idea, only to be forced to recognize it over and over again.

So, if you don’t want think of yourself in terms of a box with a fancy logo, there may be another way to think about personal branding that feels a little more human.

Don’t think of yourself as a brand – think of yourself as a character in a movie, play, TV show, or novel.

Perhaps you’re a hero like Captain Kirk, Superman, Luke Skywalker, or Aragorn.

Perhaps you’re a villain like Darth Vader, a Romulan, Lex Luthor, or Sauron himself.

Maybe you have the intellect of Mr. Spock, Data, or Sherlock Holmes.

Perhaps you have the surgical skills of Bones or House… and the acerbic personalities to match?

Characters are memorable. They have have attributes: qualities good, bad, or just… interesting.

In the right situations, people will want heroes, or villains. They’ll want a general, a drill sergeant, or America’s sweetheart.

Just remember the following:

Characters are defined in part by their words, in part by their appearance, but mostly by their actions.

If you don’t have actions to back up your words, things will eventually catch up with you. IMHO, of course. But it’s also true that perception is reality for people who don’t take the time to research, learn, and find the truth. But, if you believe, like many other people, that the truth eventually does come out, then if you want to be perceived like the character of your choice, back it up with your actions. It’s better that way.

Recent posts about personal branding

I don’t care about your personal brand

EDIT: Geoff Livingston has a follow-up article about personal branding on Nov. 12/08 that’s also worth checking out

Why you need to care more about your personal brand

How do you feel about personal branding?

Can you list your personal brand attributes?

Tags: marketing, personal branding, social media
Posted in marketing | 16 Comments »

Outsource your decision making – influencers are ready and willing

Friday, February 1st, 2008

Thousands of people are trying to control the thoughts and actions of billions each day. This isn’t a science fiction novel or a paranoid delusion: this is real life. These thousands of people are charged to influence the behavior of other people.

It’s nothing new, either: people have been trying to influence their fellow humans since the dawn of civilization and probably earlier than that. In a year that will be dominated by information designed to elect the next president of the United States of America, it’s important to think about the power of influence on all of our lives. The fact that people are working to create a social media index, a way to determine the relative influence of social media users, should serve to illustrate the intense interest in figuring out how efficiently and effective spread messages.

The blogosphere has been abuzz in January 2008 with discussion about a Fast Company magazine article that attempts to cast doubt on some of the current wisdom about trendsetting and the adoption of new ideas. The argument centers around the ability of some people “to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behaviour, opinions, etc., of others” (the quote comes from this white paper).

If you accept the argument that certain people, referred to as influencers in academia and business circles, can guide or shape the thoughts and actions of other people, the research of Duncan Watts may serve to cast some doubt on the power of the influencer. This seems, on the surface, to contradict a school of thought made popular by Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.

For the purpose of this article, there are two principle schools of thought on how to have an impact on what people think and what they do without overtly coercing them:

(a) Broadcast messages through every feasible medium, using every feasible persuasive method, that you hope your target audience will hear, believe, and act upon – mass marketing
(b) Aim your messages at the influencers within your target market (the group of people whose behaviour you want to influence), convert them to your way of thinking, and have them exert their own ability to persuade and control their network of contacts

There are many opinions as to which methods are most effective at making people behave in the way that you want. Mass marketing may be more effective that influencer marketing in certain scenarios. Proponents of critical thought and free will may scoff at the power of influencers while savvy marketers may know otherwise.

I think that it’s increasingly important to be conscious of the fact that people are always trying to control us in some fashion, whether on a personal level or at a macro level. US citizens have been subjected to a mind-numbing barrage of political advertising and media programming during the past few years in the most extended prolog to a presidential election in history. In addition, business and academia continually fling messages at groups and individuals, trying to sell ideas, products, and services.

Despite the mutations of forms and methods, influencing is nothing new. We all attempt to wield influence at various times in order to meet our needs. Should we be concerned that many people are trying to get better at controlling our thoughts and behaviour?

No, because ultimately we have free will and if we try hard enough, we can usually get to the truth.
Yes, because many times we choose to forget that we have the ability to think critically and make decisions or we abdicate that ability during times of hardship, fatigue, fear, and laziness.

The choice is yours, but there are plenty of people out there who will make choices for you if you let them. Think about it.

Links to posts about the Duncan Watts article in Fast Company

Political Ad Spending Set To Climb Sharply

Tags: influence, marketing, social media
Posted in marketing | 16 Comments »

Links to posts about the Duncan Watts article in Fast Company

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

There’s a new Fast Company article out by Clive Thompson with an interview of Duncan Watts, “a network-theory scientist who recently took a sabbatical from Columbia University and is now working for Yahoo”. Watts has done research that seems, on the surface, to contradict some of Malcolm Gladwell’s ideas in The Tipping Point about the nature and power of influencers, the people who set trends or spread ideas through various means.

Fascinating stuff. I’m trying to track the conversations and I’ll be updating this post over time.

Here’s the Fast Company article:

Is the Tipping Point Toast?

Here are a bunch of reactions:

Social Media Explorer (Jason Falls)

Smooth Span

All Things Digital