Seth Godin has drawn a marketing lesson from last weekend’s failed apocalypse:
Every time, people succumb. They sell their belongings, stop paying into their kid’s college fund and create tension and despair.
Here’s the simple lesson:
Sell a story that some people want to believe. In fact, sell a story they already believe.
The story has to be integrated into your product. The iPad, for example, wasn’t something that people were clamoring for… but the story of it, the magic tablet, the universal book, the ticket to the fashion-geek tribe—there was a line out the door for that. The same way that every year, we see a new music sensation, a new fashion superstar. That’s not an accident. That story is just waiting for someone to wear it.
Photo by Liqueur Felix.