An idea without a metaphor is meaningless

Stage Door by Slimmer Jimmer

If you want to understand why storytelling is so important, you have to understand the importance of metaphors.

Poet and painter William Blake wrote that what is now proven was once only imagined.

A metaphor is a stage upon which we present an aspect of life.

And a story connects the stage experience to the real life experience.

A story is a description of what happens on the stage. A story is a description of what you experience when you look at what happens on the stage.

You could say a story is the restaging of an idea in more familiar ways.

How to compete with Microsoft (and other giants)

How did Bill Gates start building the Microsoft empire?

By building 1 PC.

One.

Nowadays, competing with Microsoft seems virtually impossible.

In fact, no one has the means to build an imperium at once as big and as viable as Microsoft’s.

Changing the world looks a lot like competing with Microsoft.

Impossible.

But changing the world doesn’t mean creating a different world at once.

Change happens by spreading your idea one person at a time.

One.

Not every one at the same time.

When he or she supports you, they will most likely connect to other people, and so on.

That’s when something is changing.

That’s when your movement becomes visible.

That’s when you start competing with giants like Microsoft (if you’re in the same business).

That’s also when you realize: every one of us can make a difference.

Why marketing is missing the point (and you are not)

This is a Manifesto about spreading ideas in the 21st century. It’s a long post. But I promise you, your effort will be rewarded.

Spreading ideas is all about probability. So are creativity, leading, marketing. The thing is, you just can’t manage life. That’s to say: micromanagment is out of the question. Forget about controlling all the details. When you learn how to settle with probability then life becomes one big opportunity. Then you can become a great leader, a great creative, a great marketeer, a great spreader of ideas.

Here come the Herds

“Here we outline an alternative model of how things spread: one rooted in the contemporary behavioural sciences and which we have already successfully applied in practice. It is remarkably simple, useful in describing the spread of all kinds of behaviours, and rooted in our species’ scientifically demonstrated social – or ‘Herd’ nature.” (Dr Alex Bentley & Mark Earls)

Ideas spread through herd-like copying. It sounds like the premise of Tribes, Seth Godin’s new book. Turns out it’s the key notion in a new scientific model on how ideas spread.

In their article “Forget influentials, herd-like copying is how brands spread” Mark Earls and Dr Alex Bentley use behavioural science to explain why marketing should radically change its course if it doesn’t want to make itself completely useless over the next decade.

What does Herd-like marketing look like?