Safe is the New Risky

Have you ever seen one of Frank Gehry’s buildings? They catch your eyes with their unusual contours and their unique materials. Gehry has been dubbed by Vanity Fair as “the most important architect of our age”, and can likely cut through any list of RFIs to easily become a contender for any high-profile bid.

"We have way more choices and way less time." - @HerbertLui

Gehry’s buildings are designed to be remarkable. To this day, he still has critics pointing out flaws with this untraditional approach. Author and The Art of Marketing speaker Seth Godin points to Frank Gehry to illustrate this statement: safe is the new risky, and risky is the new safe.

We live in an age where we don't care about ads. Right now, we’re bombarded with over thousands of marketing messages every single day. We have way more choices and way less time than we did previously. We just ignore stuff.

If you’re in marketing today, you need to do something to cut through those thousands of other advertisements. You need a remarkable product . Godin uses the example of a cow: imagine that you’re driving along a road, and you see farms with cows on them. You see cows all the time, so you’re bored. Then, you see a purple cow -- wait, what?

It’s a purple cow! It’s something you haven’t seen before! Can we stop and take a photo with it? Does it produce purple milk? Can we pet it? Does it smell different? Can it do anything that normal cows can’t? This curiosity is naturally piqued. Then you drive off, and a few miles later you see another purple cow. You’re still curious, but this time it’s not as wondrous.

Several miles later, you see another purple cow. This time, it’s even less interesting. On the way to your destination, you may see a hundred other purple cows, but each gets less remarkable as you proceed.

That’s the thing about purple cows. They don’t get ignored -- for a while. But if all cows were purple, it would be the most normal thing in the world to us. This is the factor that decides what gets talked about: is it remarkable? Is it worth making a remark about?

This is the prerequisite to spreading an idea to an audience. Not only is it so special that people decided to hear it out till the end. It’s also so provocative that people took it upon themselves to spread it to their friends and family. This message just got an endorsement from that person’s brother, sister, mother, or father. Now, your next cohort is that much more likely to watch it.

"This is the factor that decides what gets talked about: is it remarkable?" - @HerbertLui

Even bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones. RIM got magazines and blogs talking with their latest advertisement (a revised cover of Keep on Loving You by REO Speedwagon). While a lot of the attention was negative, it rallied a surprising amount of support. (For example, see the comments section in the previous link.)

The fact is this: you know about it. RIM took a risk with the video, and despite overall hate for it, it became something that a small proportion of people saw as a, “breath of fresh air.” They don’t need everyone to love it. Safe is the new risky, and risky is the new safe.

In order to get into the juicy middle, the promised land you want to go to with all the revenue, you need to appeal to geeks and early adopters of your target market. The only way to do that is by creating something that's worth them talking about and sharing.

Anything else is risky.