Quotes
Marketing is...
At its best, marketing is a transfer of enthusiasm.
When you’re truly pumped about what you’re doing, when you’re truly driven by the vision, when you absolutely must make something that you need and want, your enthusiasm leaves a mark. It’s a brand. Not the noun, but the verb.
At its worst, marketing is a transfer of everything else. Your worst fears, your biggest insecurities, the charades you play. False enthusiasm on display, empty promises, and sloganeering no one believes. It quickly makes you a liar.
Just like you can’t not communicate, you can’t not market. Everything is marketing.
The best, and the worst, is always on display, like it or not. You can’t hide from your own presence, however it shows up. Marketing casts, like a shadow casts. Attached to every move.
Think about what someone else is doing that you’re enthused about. Where did that come from? What transferred it?
Of course many things that are great simply work. Nothing more, nothing less. No stories, no excitement, just the snick of a perfect fit. But somewhere down the chain, someone cared enough to make that thing right. And that’s a transfer too.
The Price
Every time I see Trump using his power as president to punish people I think of the time Obama humiliated him at the White House Correspondents Dinner. When I saw it the first time I knew it was trouble. When you’re on top you simply don’t do what he did. It always comes back to bite you in the ass. Obama had every right to be pissed about the birther stuff. But when you’re number one, you can’t do what he did. The president has to be above it. Self-indulgence. Not worth the price we’re all paying.
Time
Frank Chimero –
I asked AI what we do with time, and it came back with words that were commercial and violent. We spend time, save time, take time, and make it; manage, track, and save it; we kill time, we pass it, we waste it, borrow, and steal it. We abuse time and it beats us back up, either in retribution or self-defense. It’s a zero-sum perspective of the material of our lives; it makes us prisoners to our own utility.
The AI said nothing about love, loyalty, or enthusiasm. When you wrap those up, it becomes clear that the best thing to do with time is to devote it. That is how you get time on your side. When you are working with time instead of against it, every bit matters, it all counts, even the fallow times, the empty times, the time off the path.