Take Aways from Week Three

This week I read/watched:

- The Origins of Social Media

- The Death of Segmentation

-The Ted Talk on How to Get Your Ideas Spread

- Breeze Session

- Podcast on the Long Tail

This week was my first week at my new job, so unfortunately I wasn’t able to read any of the suggested readings as I like to do. But I still think this week presented a lot of good information that has given me a lot to think about. The reason I really enjoyed this week’s videos and reading were because they are particularly applicable to my life. I just started a new job that is primarily focused on fundraising. The concepts about how to spread one’s message and get buy in were exactly what I needed to be focusing on in this new position!

There were several overall themes I took away from this week’s materials. The first was the concept of product vs. publicity. I always believed that creating the right product is the hard part- if you have a great product it should be able to sell itself. This week I learned that is not the case. The fact that the invention of sliced bread did not take off due to lack of marketing is just incredible to me. This makes me question all the products I buy because I simply “need” them. Do I really need them or has the marketing for these products become so sophisticated that I simply buy into the idea that I need it. If Coke Japan comes out with a new product every three weeks with the hope that one of them hits it big with consumers, then I imagine not every product is of equal quality or worth.

The Ted Talk says that finding the innovators and early adopters is the key to being successful. If we all think carefully, I’m sure we can think of examples in our lives were we did this without knowing we were following an particular marketing rule. In college, for example, I was involved in a political advocacy organization. When recruiting for members we never spend money or time with fliers for the campus. Rather we would find the people who have self-selected as caring about the issues we cared about. Getting those people involved was key because then they would spread the word for us and involve their like-minded friends. This same mindset must be present with marketing.

The Podcast made an interesting point that I’d like to discuss. The professors discussed the motion that companies are selling less of more. Interesting thought, especially if we think of that in terms of the other reading materials for this week. I’d like to go back to the Coke Japan example. If customers are more informed than ever and can be more selective than ever, then companies must keep providing options that will eventually be what the customers want. But for every product that is a hit, there are countless products that never make it. How can a start-up company possibly be successful if these are the standards? How can a well-established company maintain its edge when we expect more but actually buy less? I think the only choice these companies have is to create quality products with their niche target customer in mind so they do not have to keep reinventing products for different customer groups.

I’d like to end this post with a personal story that touches on a point mentioned in the Breeze session. Several years ago I was tasked with choosing our summer intern. We had a sizable stack of well qualified resumes. We narrowed it down to two applicants. Out of curiosity I facebooked both applicants to see what would come up. Both pages popped up. The first page I checked out was totally innocuous. The second page I checked out had a sexist and offensive status that was posted just that day. That applicant’s lack of discretion made it a lot easier to narrow down who would be a good fit for our office. This is just one small example about why the warning to be careful about what you put out there on social media should be taken seriously.