I just re-read Hit Makers by Derek Thompson. One of the things I love about this book is that you could either read it as solid advice on how to drive exposure, or as a collection of great stories that will find a way in all of your conversations.
A. One of my favorite ‘anecdotes’: Billboard Hot 100
The famous music chart ranking has been up and running since the late 1950s and has been the benchmark to understand what songs and genres where the most successful ones.
‘What you measure is what you get’. When the methodology was based on surveys (influenced/bought by record labels) the most popular genre was rock; after they changed it in 1991 (e.g. using actual record sales), hip hop and country became almost overnight hits.
Takeaways? 1) As a user/consumer: Beware of biases 2) As a producer: Content by itself is not king. Distribution and marketing are the main drivers of ‘virality’ after a certain quality threshold is met.
B. One of my favorite ‘lessons’: Being completely original doesn’t pay off
Contrary to popular belief, people don’t like new things. They think they do, but they actually prefer familiar content that’s presented in a slightly different way.
Raymond Loewy, one of the most influential industrial designers in 20th century you never heard of, guided his work along a framework he called MAYA (Most Advanced Yet Acceptable).
MAYA ties in nicely with another useful general rule of thumb when thinking about marketing for innovative products: the more disruptive, the harder the adoption (think about the easiness of adopting the Guinness’ can w’ the nitrogen ball vs the bizarre toothbrush ‘Blizzident‘).
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