Do we need to wait for everything to be pristine and tip top before proceeding with our new fangled marketing plan? Is it necessary to get everybody's consensus and to be 100% risk-free? So what if certain things are still a little screwy?
Seth Godin, a pioneer in the new world of
citizen marketing, sums it up pretty nicely with his latest post. Quoting from him:
She doesn't really look like this. Especially in the morning or after a long plane flight. And yet we're bombarded by photos of one perfect celebrity after another... enough to buy into the fantasy that they're all perfect.
Businesses are the same way. If you read enough stories, it's easy to believe that Starbucks and Apple and the rest of the all-star list somehow manage to effortlessly create remarkable products and happy customers. One thread that has become clear to me from reading my email is that there are no perfect companies, no ideal places to work, no marketers who always manage to please their customers.
The danger in celebrity worship is that it can persuade you not to bother trying. After all, the thinking goes, our organization is so thoroughly screwed up that we've never got a chance to be like them, so why bother? In fact, organizations like Apple struggled for years, and continue to struggle... it's just that the facade matches our need to believe, so we ignore that part.
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