spreading ideas
846 posts
Something For Everyone
Pineapple Chili flavour ice lollies aren’t for everyone. And plenty of people hated Go The F**k To Sleep, which became a best seller by delighting parents with a particular worldview. If everything was created for the market of everyone, there would be no room for art by Banksy, t-shirts by Threadle
How To Tell A Good Business Story
Start with the truth. Identify the worldview of the people you need to reach. Describe the truth through their worldview. ~ Seth Godin What picture are you painting of your business? Are you trying too hard to sound more professional, bigger, slick, more polished than the competition? Is your story
The One Thing To Remember About Website Traffic
Of course you want more ‘traffic’ to your website. After all; MORE EYEBALLS = MORE AWARENESS MORE AWARENESS = MORE AUTHORITY MORE AUTHORITY = MORE SUCCESS MORE SUCCESS = MORE CHOICES Behind that ‘traffic’, every statistic, every blip on your analytics, every search term that brought them there. Behi
If : A Love Note To Entrepreneurs
If you’re doing your best work. If you touched one person. If it makes a difference to a handful. If you’re building a legacy, not just an empire. If your values are front and centre. If you’re launching ideas from the heart. If you understand why you’re doing this. If it doesn’t have to matter…
What Makes Ideas Matter?
Ideas are formed in the mind, but triumph in the heart. Your fabulous, worthy, well thought out ideas might have logical foundations. Logic though is not what will convince people to rally to your cause or click the ‘Buy Now’ button. So begin everything from where your audience is. Set out to delive
Building A Currency Of Trust
It’s tempting when selling your product, service or idea just to focus on what it takes to make a particular transaction happen. That transaction might make a dent in the balance sheet in the short term, but it’s important not to lose sight of what will make a long term difference to your business a
The Idea Manifesto
You will often hear it said that creating a manifesto is a great way to spread an idea. A few months ago I wrote this post about ideas and realised that what we really needed was a manifesto, to illustrate the messy truths and blurred edges of ideas themselves. One of my wonderful clients, graphic…
Brands Are Shaped By The Stories We Tell Ourselves
Coffee chic is not merely a creation of Starbucks, no more than flawless design is the singular domain of Apple. What these companies do with a clever brand story, is make it easier for us to buy into the wants that we associate as being part of our story. What we actually believe to be…
Why Knowing What To Leave Out Matters
The secret of any great book, movie, business, product, or service is in the editing. As an entrepreneur or creative, your understanding of what to leave out is just as important as what you decide to leave in. Christopher Nolan will no doubt leave hours and hours of carefully crafted shots and scen
What Should Your Website Do?
What you want your website to do is probably very different from what your customer wants it to do. The trick (as with most elements of your business), is to build for customers and community first to realise the benefits for you later. “A website turns a stranger into a friend, and a friend into…
Pick Yourself
Do you remember the feeling of helplessness in a junior team line up at school, as one by one the captains and team leaders of the moment chose who was ‘in’? Remember the fear of being last, of not being picked and the feeling of having no control over your destiny. As economies tank, and…
How To Write Great Website Copy
So you’ve got the crash hot website, the perfect calling card for your business. Fantastic! There’s just one problem you’ve got to fill it with engaging content that not only showcases what you do but gives potential clients a sense of who you are and how your business can help them. I’ve stared dow
How Do You Differentiate Yourself?
Life’s too short to sell things you don’t believe in. ~ Patrick Dixon Often the real value of the work you do isn’t what gets delivered in the package, during the session or in the ebook. In order to differentiate you need to really understand the effect of what you do, sell, offer or deliver…
Brand Names Are The Start Of A Story
From the moment the blue line appears on the pregnancy test and for the next 35 weeks, the one thing that obsesses most couples day and night while waiting for their new arrival is what they will call her. They compulsively leaf through baby name books, trawl websites and test out sound combinations
How Virgin Wins With A Better Story
Good Story means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. ~ Robert McKee Every time a customer encounters your marketing they are filling in the blanks. Their perceptions about your business are being etched in their minds and if you’re doing a great job, in their hearts too over time.
What Story Can People Tell Themselves About You?
This is the story of two businesses. I tell it often. Two cafes, that are literally side by side on the same street. One has a shaded elevated outdoor seating area with a view of the ocean. It is bigger and has a couple of comfy couches inside, where customers can relax over a light…
Advertising Is Not Real Marketing
Think about the people you do business with and the brands you care about. Are you drawn in by their advertising or their marketing story? That full colour advert in the Sunday supplement is a tactic. So is the expensive, shiny new website you’re having built and those letterpress business cards you
The Secret To Creating Ideas That Matter
Ability, knowledge, education, money, self belief and connections, all fall away in the face of the one thing that really makes ideas infectious. The success of ideas and dreams of leaders and heroes the world over, from Richard Branson, to Steve Jobs, Scott Harrision to Jacqueline Novogratz is pass
People Don’t Want To Buy Your Process
I’m working with a client who is choosing images for her website, she’s worried that they need relate exactly to the services she offers. Maybe you do too? When Grace comes into your salon to have her legs waxed she doesn’t usually ask what kind of wax you use. You might think what she needs…
The One Thing To Remember About Website Traffic
It wasn’t going to be cheap, but Anna figured that she’d outsource all of her online marketing to a company who knew what they were doing. She’d spent the past two years working really hard to build her service business offline, and was hugely successful at converting customers face to face. Now in
