Talent

Mitch Joel wrote an interesting blog post about talent earlier this month, Let's Face The Cold Hard Truth About Talent.

It's interesting because Mitch argues that the 10,000 hours rule, made famous by Malcom Gladwell's Outliers book, isn't true.

And I think Mitch may be right.

I knew so many girls who practiced water polo just as much as I did, who were just as dedicated, who wanted to be good just as much as I did.  But you know what?  They weren't as good as I was.  How do you account for that?  

It's talent.  I have a gift for athletics, especially sports that require hand-eye coordination and not a whole lot of foot speed on land.  

Transparency

Marketing is so often a game of deception - we try to make things look better than they are or make people feel a certain way to elicit a response.  

That's all good and well, but there has to be transparency for there to be success.  

Mitch Joel posted on his Six Pixels of Separation blog this week about the the need for transparency between agencies and brands regarding money.  His post, How much does it cost?, brings up lots of good points, but my favorite is the point about transparency.

"It sounds like bitterness, but it's really about transparency. 

This isn't about procurement or sour grapes, it's about a healthy and transparent partnership because that's what the best brand/agency relationships look like. If you're hiding what the true value of the work is from the beginning, the relationship starts out in a deficit. This is the marketing business. In business, all parties should be clear on how the process will unfold, who the participants in the competition are and what the prize will be for the winner at the end. This shell game of fishing for ideas, creative and strategy with no commitment to following through on the mandate is a thorn in the side of the marketing industry that doesn't need to be there. Things have, sadly, progressed to the point where agencies are putting weeks against a competitive pitch to only uncover that the project has been shelved, budget wasn't allocated or the brand was simply kicking some tires to see if a better solution was out there. 

Brands may think that this makes them smarter at the marketing game, but look at the overall results and costs for that effort? Sadly, this strategy seems like a lose/lose for all parties."

I firmly believe that transparency among partners is the only way to succeed in business.  If you want people to trust you, you have to be trustworthy.  Honesty between you and your vendor partners is the only way to ensure they will have your back and promote you.

Avoiding Project Apocalypse

Seth Godin's blog post today, The three toxic stooges of the project apocalypse, really resonated with me.  Seth names the three components that contribute to project failure: over promising, under sharing and lack of polish.

I cannot agree more with the first two components: over promising and under sharing or lack of communication are fatal to projects.

In my experience, people who excel at managing expectations and have strong communication skills tend to be good project managers because they minimize the chance for disappointment.

In my own career I have often been faced with the unpleasant task of bringing a team - or my boss - back to reality.  This is probably partly because I have been a part of companies that aren't well versed in digital and social media marketing, and so the constraining resources are less obvious to those around me.

It comes back to under promising and over delivering, which is an easy way to manage expectations.  When you under promise just a bit and communicate clearly what your objectives are, your clients are more likely to have realistic expectations for their project.  It also gives you just a bit of wiggle room to impress your clients, which tends to make them happy.  And happy clients are usual return customers who are more likely to refer you new business.

Creating a Successful Website

Seth Godin has a pretty great formula for putting together a successful website.

I wish I had his blog post, Q&A: What works for websites today?, to refer to when I was designing a website eighteen months ago.

It's really hard to juggle the aesthetics and the expectations of the client but what marketing professionals know is that our personal investment (and that of the brand) doesn't mean a thing.

What matters is what the people who visit your website think, and ultimately if you build a user-friendly site with rich, useful content you'll find success.