Last night, I had the privilege of being one of a group of people invited to watch and comment upon a run-through of Seth Godin's newest talk. In it he adds some of the ideas from his latest book Tribes to the mix while synthesising a lot of thinking that is bubbling around social media and marketing. It was terrific.
Coincidentally, one of the points he made was what I had intended to blog about today. That point is that among all this talk of social objects, friending on Facebook or herd behaviour, the underlying test is what would happen if you were suddenly not one of the group. Would you be missed?
If your product/service is not so remarkable, so well able to meet your users' need and (in some more ephemeral sense) adds to their lives by virtue of standing for something, then they will not miss it if they don't buy it. You want your product/service to be one of those that people pine for when they're travelling overseas or suddenly discover they've used up. You want it genuinely to engage them rather than just get their attention. You want it to be something that truly engenders passion.
Being missed is ultimately what all the oft-quoted examplars have in common(think Nike, think Innocent, think latest industry poster-child) and being missed is what your marketing should be all about.
Addendum: The actual talk happens later this week and thereafter the slides will be online. You should check them out.
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