I got a tweet from a gentleman who goes by the name of Tyler last night about a project he's undertaking. The details of the project are here, but the gist is that he wants to show what 100 well-connected people can do together. The vessel? The art of the immensely talented Hugh MacLeod. I've been a fan for a long time, and am honored to get a chance to help spread Hugh's squiggly gospel.
This is probably my favorite of Hugh's works, as I'm sure many others will agree. The surly looking squiggle-a-saurus really sells the concept behind the words on the page.
I like to think companies like Apple and Google "get" this and ones like Microsoft don't. Case Study: Bing. Pardon my French here, but just what the fuck was Microsoft thinking? You're not going to run clever TV ads and magically steal market share from a company that grew organically. That's old, pre-Internet thinking. The very nature of thought is changing; groups (tribes as Seth Godin would call them) generate preferences based on more perfect information than ever before, and there are so many ideas accessible that it is no longer enough to tell people that they should use your product.
Make a great product that costs very little, get it into the hands of the people who need it most, and let the amazing power of modern idea-commerce do the rest. My store has customers, my twitter has followers and my main website has readers, and I've not spent a red cent on an advertisement in my life.
The status quo will always be average. No one ever got good at anything by trying to be average.
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