Hi, I'm Kelly, the co-founder, creative director, and senior copywriter at Fear: how bad hair, habits and horrible has-beens happen
Fear is a convenient excuse, a procrastination technique, an avoidance tool. Fear is free, so it’s easy to wield it in the face of anything in life that imposes difficulty. A better method is to state your fears, then dispel them one by one until all that’s left is fearless action.
Take going gluten-free as an example. Can you guess the biggest fears people have about going gluten-free?
1) They won’t like the taste.
2) They won’t be able to eat out.
3) They don’t know how they will find gluten-free foods.
4) They will always be hungry.
These are all myths people tell themselves to avoid change. Funny thing about change is that it almost always has positive benefits. Not changing, on the other hand, or investing in fear, almost always has drawbacks. People invest in fear because it sounds easier and seems to cost less from an effort standpoint, when the reality is they are making life or business much harder.
Like all myths, the above fears about gluten-free eating can be dispelled in seconds flat:
1) They won’t like the taste.
Finding a taste they like may be an exciting adventure. Just like with glutinous foods, there are artisan gluten-free bakers and brewers to be found.
2) They won’t be able to eat out.
Restaurants have one primary goal: to make people happy. The first person who requests gluten-free food might be an inconvenience, but everyone after that presents an opportunity to please. Eating out will not be a problem.
3) They don’t know how they will find gluten-free foods.
Finding gluten-free foods is easy, presents opportunities for venturing outside of old routines, and promotes positive change. Reading labels is easy and takes only a few seconds.
4) They will always be hungry.
In point of fact, they are likely to be less hungry. You need less food when your diet contains no gluten. Gluten reduces the effectiveness of the digestive system, so eating gluten in effect manifests hunger. Eating gluten-free foods allows the digestive system to pull maximum nutrients from food, so you require less intake.
In spite of all these facts, people keep eating gluten because it’s easier to invest in fear. Marketers understand this and play to it on a daily basis. The results of investment in fear about going gluten-free include a steady decline in health, a bigger belly, asthma, digestive problems, discomfort, sleep apnea, and so on.
Do you invest in your fears? We all do. Investing in fear is free and easy. It requires almost no effort. It’s also boring. Doing things that scare you just a little bit is healthier because you are challenging yourself and those around you to learn and grow.
If you are marketing fear to yourself on a regular basis, you reinforce your own status quo. It’s how bad hair, habits and horrible has-beens happen. Doing the opposite is exciting, scary, and actually pretty awesome feeling. The price is change. The benefit is priceless.
On categories – People are people, human is human.
People are people, human is human. All the rest are just categories used to market ideas. Sometimes those ideas are valid, legitimately protective, promoting community and joy. Often though, categories are used as means to impose oppression and promote separation.
When we step into an automobile, we instantly wield a very heavy object approximately 50 times the size of ourselves, and we exert an influence on those around us. We can impose irregular actions on them. Call it defensive driving to put a spin on it. In a car, there’s an obvious physical reason why we influence the people around us, but in the space of humanity, of one person or family on earth, why would anyone have a need to influence fellow humans and neighbors in an oppressive manner? It’s a real noggin-scratcher.
Generally speaking, we don’t need to defensively live. There’s plenty of room for most ideas and for people to express themselves and live in those ideas without direct imposition.
Cheers to Kenneth Cole for promoting the strongest of human qualities—the ability to recognize and promote equality—in their marketing. Kenneth Cole ad for gay marriage.
How can you know what I want before you know what I know?
We live in a time of experts. Everyone is an expert, a guru, a leader, an authority. Few customer service departments practice active listening because they’re too busy asserting their authority. Have you ever encountered this? Customer service wants to exert their expertise and authority over you when you call in. They must tell you why you are calling before you can even tell them. If you object, their hand pops through the phone receiver to slap you silly and tell you how it is. Well, maybe not through the receiver, but you get the idea.
Customer service isn’t customer service when they aren’t listening. They are agitators. If I want to be agitated, I’ll jump in a washing machine.
What happened to the customer is always right? Or even, the customer knows what they want and need?
If everyone is an expert, and the experts aren’t listening, is any learning occurring? Isn’t that really the point of customer service? To listen, learn and help. I’d like to see every customer service department train their people in the concept of active listening.
One problem with learning about active listening is that in order to accept it, you have to know what it is. Which means you have to actively listen. You have to accept before you assert (even if you are an expert). It’s kind of like learning what the customer needs before telling them what want.
Humanity-based customer service is the new rule
Since customer service is a top-down equation, poor customer service experiences are clearly designed with pessimism in mind. Which is odd because that’s a person or a team of people working against human nature to manifest experiences they themselves do not want to encounter.
‘I’m just doing what they tell me,’ we hear customer service reps say. I frequently tell the pleasant ones, “You sound like a nice person. I hope you one day find an employer who will allow you to do a great job.” (Most reps actually tell me they appreciate hearing that, and the conversation always gets better afterward.)
If management isn’t designing humanity-based customer service processes, we need a revolt.
Customer service can be an overall positive experience which helps companies keep existing customers happy. In fact, that’s how it used to be, and for good reason. It’s always cheaper to keep your existing customers happy than to attract new ones. (It also helps people speak of you in a good tone.)
If your customer service team is treating people poorly, you lose revenue as you hemorrhage customers, and you have to spend more on marketing. If, on the other hand, your team is working with human nature in mind to make sure people have positive experiences, you keep customers happy and can budget your marketing more frugally (or grow more).
Somewhere along the way, someone who was treated poorly decided they didn’t like their customers, and they wanted new ones, no matter the cost. How this attitude caught on like wildfire is something of a mystery. Barnes & Noble comes to mind. When their stores were packed with book-buying public, they brought in creature comforts and chocolate because people buy those things when they are comfortable. Customers bought less of these items when BN changed to aggressive sales tactics that made people uncomfortable. They could have taken the hint, it seems.
The companies who buck the trend, like Zappos and CDBaby, stand out for it. Both of these stellar examples embrace human nature in everything they do, and their reputations (and profits) rock because of it.
Poor customer service is the rule that should never have gained prominence because it lacks a fundamental level of humanity, and can lead only to failure. It’s refreshing to see smart companies challenge it. Good customer service is good marketing and a business fundamental.
We are inherently a world of optimists
If you divided everyone in your life into two columns, optimists on the left and pessimists on the right, you would wind up with one full column and one empty column. Which is which?
The question of optimist or pessimist has an easy answer every time. Like many questions, the answer can go only one way if honesty is employed. Optimism represents life, and pessimism represents death. That’s reality, not a metaphor.
Like most life forms, we involuntarily fight for life. It’s in our nature. And it stays firmly planted there all the way up until the end of our lives here.
The idea of pessimism gets validation only when people are treated poorly, often in repeated fashion, until their spirit is broken. Even after a person’s spirit is broken, their inner optimism usually still grasps a glimmer of hope for something better such as escape, redemption or success.
The only possible honest answer to the question of optimist or pessimist is: optimist.
Your greatest potential
Is it possible that when we reach a high level of comfort in a profession, it is our signal and clearest indicator that to realize our greatest potential, it’s time to move on to the next challenge?
Is this scary sounding? Good. Considering potential is exciting.
How would the country be doing if this were applied (five years ago) to large bank executives and state legislators. If they can do such a great job squandering personal potential and opportunity for doing good, imagine what they could accomplish in a new career where they are forced, just like most people, to prove their worthiness rather than defend their positions.
Better yet, think about how many great careers one person could enjoy. A great many I suspect. Most people have too many great ideas and not enough time to pursue them all. If you changed up your career every time you attained a high level of success, how many of your ideas could you bring to fruition? It’s entirely possible your greatest potential success lies in one of your dormant ideas.
Honest marketing begins within
Honest marketing used to be thought of as impossible. I’m not sure why, but I suspect it had to do with romancing a stone, or to put it more succinctly, polishing a turd (ick). Thing is, honest marketing has always resonated better than fictional messages, inflated promises or (gasp) marketing lies.
We all tell ourselves little lies. It’s how we get past the unbelievable; how we embrace the impossible, inconvenient, or unacceptable, which is kind of a weird habit because in the long run, it always comes back to bite us.
Companies are dishonest with themselves all the time when it comes to their marketing. It most often manifests in false messages in advertising, websites, promises.
I’ve seen clients self-inflate budgets they can’t afford to increase or talk themselves into buying advertising space they can’t afford. The most common of lies people and businesses market to themselves are in regards to the claims they make about their products. When they do it – and people do it every day – they open a bottomless can of worms with two heads, eleven lives and sharp fangs that inflict ‘lie hangover,’ a highly poisonous substance. And the thing is, there is absolutely no need for it.
There’s a difference between polishing a boring truth and being misleading. One involves first telling yourself a lie, then marketing it to others until you both believe it. The better path involves strong creative. That’s it. Nothing misleading, negative, or fang-bearing.
Honesty in marketing is truly all that’s needed to connect with people.
How do you market from within? Do you tell yourself convenient half-truths, or are you honest and up-front with yourself?
Honest marketing begins within. When you are honest with yourself, you manifest what you need, and it comes through in everything you do. Whether or not they tell you directly, people notice; you see it as people trust your brand and messages, and your business rises as direct result.
The toxicity of buddy deals
How often do you try to get ‘buddy deals’? People have approached me, saying a ‘buddy deal’ went south and didn’t turn out how they wanted. So they came to me, saying they wanted to do it the right way, saying they didn’t want to skimp on budget, telling themselves (and me too) they were entering into the relationship with completely different intentions.
Funny thing is, each time this has happened, the businessperson tried to negotiate on price (bigly, like 50% or more discount big), then wound up going with another buddy deal after I refused to give them one.
Could I give them a deal? Sure, I could (not 50%), but that would only serve to set us both up to fail, and I have no interest in failure. They shouldn’t either (but they often do). After all, they came to me because they found out that ‘getting a deal’ netted them less than what they wanted.
I’m rarely given the opportunity to ask people if they are being honest with themselves when they go for the next buddy deal. Then again, I already know the answer and they probably do too, deep down inside.
Buddy deals are great when it’s a long-time friends equation, but when it’s that person you met at a networking party once and exchanged cards with, there’s no ‘buddy’ in the deal. Seeking a deal there is essentially trying to put one over on the person being asked. Perhaps worse, however, is the fact that the person doing the asking isn’t being honest with themselves, which undermines the foundations of both their marketing and their brand.
Change is easy, make work exciting
Why make work exciting? If your work is mind-numbing, imagine how your product feels. Imagine how the people using your product experience it. Mind-numbing is mind-numbing no matter how you market it. It comes through in your dialog, in your brand, and in your product.
We need excitement!
There is always a new way to package an old product. A twist on an idea, a tweak that makes a new product or changes everything. That’s what we need. And nearly anyone can do it (which means you can too).
When you change how you work, you change your product.
I have a client who has been extremely successful over the years, but now she’s having a hard time dealing with the new economy. I’ve listened to her look at every angle under the sun as to why things aren’t working like they used to. But she’s skipping one very important thing. Actually, it’s the #1 most important thing.
It’s her.
The question is not why things aren’t working like they used to. In fact, that’s not a question—it’s a fact. The only thing she needs to change to regain her success pattern is her approach to work. That means she has to change. Change is hard. Well, it seems hard. Change is easy when you consider the benefits and the fact that the same amount of effort is required whether she works the old way or changes and works in a new way.
The truth is change is exciting, and since ‘exciting’ and ‘nervous’ produce the same feeling in the stomach, we tend to avoid both.
Power is personal. Equality is each person’s right.
Martin Luther King, Jr. died the year I was born. In the time that passed between those two events and now, a profoundly different attitude towards the equality of human beings has been embraced by generations. It’s been marketed, promoted, believed, and thankfully, celebrated.
What hasn’t happened, unfortunately, is total equality and elimination of racism as an idea that proliferates society and poisons human interaction.
To be perfectly straightforward, I was blind to this hard fact until I returned to university in 2011, where I began studying humanities. I believe in a day when racism no longer exists, but we are not yet there—not even close.
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. put forth one essential reality (among many), that human beings are created equal. There has never been a day in my life when I thought anything different. Human is human is human. That’s not to say I’ve been a saint, but it is to say that I have always been stunned when I read about or witnessed people of one race treating those of another with less respect than we all deserve. I’ve thought this way as long as I can recall. I was born with this belief.
In school, I’ve discovered that a different reality exists in this country on the topic of racism. People still to this very day bury their heads in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist. But it does.
All you have to do to experience racism is change your skin color (admittedly difficult), or simply ask someone who has experienced it themselves. It’s not something that ‘happened back then.’ It’s happening right now, today, and people will share their experiences if you ask and actively listen. It happens to African-Americans from all walks of life, from the downtrodden to the highest reaches of social status, and it happens to people of other ethnicities. It’s not just about race, though that is perhaps the most visible form of racism present today. If you ask and really listen, you may gain a new perspective that inspires action and positive change, or at the very least a greater awareness of how it impacts your life and those of your neighbors.
Before reentering university, I had never been exposed to the idea that being born ‘white’ was a privilege, but it is. Now I see, and I’m affected by it. It’s not because I have privilege, though by accounts of those who are not white, I do. I am affected because others do not have the exact same privilege—because equality is not universal. I am affected because I have always seen different skin color as something rich and beautiful, but now I see that much of society regards it in the opposite manner. And thinking back, I have experienced this at close range, and it has affected me. And I have fought against it without even realizing I was fighting.
This brings me to another essential Martin Luther King, Jr. idea, that we must work for our freedom (thank you, Seth Godin, for mentioning this today). Working is fighting, peacefully. Working is finding a way to promote ideas you find meaningful, valuable and just.
The French philosopher, Voltaire, said, “All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they may be equally free.”
Power is personal. Power is what you believe it to be. You gain power by believing, finding a way to pursue your beliefs, and working to live by them.
Equality, on the other hand, is not handed out. It is not our place to grant equality. Equality is each person’s right from the moment they are born. And where it is obviously not present, where we can see the injustice of inequality exists in our society, it is our responsibility as humans to not bury our heads in the sand, but to support our fellow human beings in their struggle for attaining equality.
I don’t mean to preach. This is me living by my beliefs.
