The Talk Bubble is About to Pop
Yesterday, Mark (who is building sandcastles on the beach with his family and finally reading that Buckminster Fuller biography I loaned him in 2006) and I were chatting over the phone and got to talking about the value of implementation to what we do and how we are positioned in the market. There is a tension between implementation and strategy when it comes to positioning: with the implementation being almost to the point of commoditization, differentiating your service in terms of a strong point of view and focus on richly researched planning is essential. But without following through with implementing that planning, I’m not sure how to maintain whatever perception of value you may have built. Reflecting upon how the market has been squeezed so significantly over the past couple of years, forcing people to question what they are truly getting, I remarked, “Yeah, the talk bubble is about to pop.” I do think this is a pretty big deal. So this will be one of two posts on the subject—one written by me, the other by Mark. We’re sensing some significant movement in the web marketing space, an frustrated impatience with the hype and the talk and a growing demand for sensible action. Earlier this month, Gadi Amit wrote an impassioned article for Fast Company along these lines. I’d recommend reading the entire thing (keep reading for some insightful points around the double standard we “high-mindedly” hold between gadgets and food), but here’s a piece that cuts straight to the point: Another example comes from designer Frank Chimero, someone who has impressed me with not only his talent but also his thoughtfulness. He writes: Needless to say, I agree with both of them that we’ve hastily given away the method and practice by which we should be refining our thinking, and that there’s something in our short attention spans that causes us to want to focus our present thinking on the “future” but not remember or care about those thoughts when the future actually comes around.“We grew accustomed to deferring the hard work of delivering real, tangible products to someone else, usually across the ocean. We grew complacent, convincing ourselves that white-collar derivatives of such actionable, tangible creations is just as good and even better—we Strategize, Manage, Research, Innovate and Market! Yet when it comes to delivering the finished products, we opt out, assuming that none of “that stuff’ has any value or merit.”
“Lots of writing being done with predictions. Very little being done to test those predictions. My frustration with punditry & futurism (my own included) is that the hypotheses very rarely get tested because the comments are from a spectator point of view. I realize there is an insatiable hunger for predictions, but we need more players. We’ve the tools to try things out, but we’re lacking things to point to as specimens. The pencil can’t hover above the page forever.”
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