Some more brilliance from George Carlin. For marketers and entrepreneurs alike it’s a great reminder of the value of language and how that can be used to create a benefit perception in peoples minds. Although, I’d recommend the picture we create is one of authenticity. Enjoy!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvhsJyecpLc]
There’s quite a few bad words used in business and marketing. Words which quantify, extract and segment. They dehumanise business. I’d like to see them removed from our vernacular. Here’s two examples worth sharing.
Target & Consumer. I prefer Audience and People and here’s why:
A Target is something we aim for, shoot at, maybe even kill. An Audience is something we try to impress. An audience gives us a chance to prove our worth, they invest their time in us and we must respect it by trying to over deliver to their expectations. In the hope that, they throw flowers on the stage, cheer and ask for an encore. But we enter the stage knowing we may get rotten tomatoes thrown at us, if that’s what we deserve. The onus is on us.
A Consumer is someone who buys stuff. Their primary purpose is to devour whatever we provide. They are faceless, nameless and irrelevant. We want as many of them as possible to fulfill our financial needs. A Person however, is someone we know. A person has emotions, ambitions and meaning in their life. They have opinions which we must value, and a life which we need to enhance. A person is someone we hope to relate to on a human level. A consumer is machine like and undervalued.
The best startups and brands, know that they need to perform for their audience. They know that audiences are made up of people.
We live in a wordy world. It seems there’s a new acronym, piece of business jargon, or self defining adjective emerging every minute of the day. It’s easy to get caught up in the language, the jargon and forget what business and startups are all about:
Building stuff. Buying something for $1 and selling it for $2. Having a laugh along the way.
Keep it simple. Don’t try and be everything to everyone.
With all this in mind I’ll hand over to George Carlin – and yes, this video is worth every second of the 3.56 minutes it takes to watch.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6J3OD4Z0UQ]
I recently got an email from a domain name provider called hostess.com.au. It was about selling domains names with some recent examples. The title of the email was ‘Your domain name could be worth big dolllars’.
Here’s a screen grab.
It’s easy to think that this type of behaviour is ‘unethical’. But the reality is we live in a capitalist society. Speed and noticing opportunities is a key business skill. So my view is if you’ve savvy enough to find and speculate on domain names and make some cash – good luck to you. There is no shortage of examples of people who’ve made a bundle doing it.
So how to do it? Well, here’s a couple tips on some people have done it:
I’m sure you can think of some other ideas, or methods used in such speculating…. be sure to add them in the comments.