aggressively attracting

How hard is it to rewire the brain from old-hat-push-marketing to pull or Clue/Hugh/J  - train marketing thinking?

Hard it seems, here's a petition from somebody struggling with the issue (found in comments here):

How aggressive do we want to be to attract users?

What about "How lovingly shall I punch him?" or "How honestly can I steal?"

Yep, it's not easy to let go...

Comments

[Sheamus]

Morning Sig;

Your post (including link to Greg's post) got me going on this early morning in Toronto (an extra (unexpected) hour of thinking and writing) and... Original ideas and good questions are but two of the reasons I visit your blog daily! ;)

FYI I include an exact copy of my comment to Greg's post as follows:

"Greetings from Canada!

Lovely to have discovered your blog this morning (with thanks to Sig's Forthcoming Blog).

Geeking with Greg is now on my daily read list, and over time, I will also review your blog archives in some detail.

Now to address your post!

The heading is a tad provocative in that you "set up" one frame of reference i.e., a context (and possibly, which may not be entirely useful relative to the intention for your post).

The concluding paragraph then "sets up" further frames of reference as follows... "Is ruthlessness the key to success for Web 2.0 startups? Are you ruthless enough to succeed in the same way these others have done?"

First... I address your questions as follows:

[a] Based on my 35+ years as a successful entrepreneur in the knowledge world... ruthlessness is not "the key to success" for Web 2.0 startups, and

[b] Your second question includes at least three presupppositions (e.g., ruthless, enough, in the same way) which (in my view) are not useful relative to Web 2.0 startups achieving meaningful contribution and success.

Second... during the process of addressing your post I began wondering "What is Greg really seeking to accomplish? I wonder what Greg really wants to learn, accomplish, do?"

[sig]

Glad to help keeping you awake early mornings!

To your last point, that is one approach; what is the purpose, where is he going? But sometimes we do not need a purpose, only a drive starting inside, the instincive "what the...??"

That's certainly mostly my mode! :D

[John Dodds]

Oh Sig, I think you always had a purpose in mind - not a fixed objective for sure but, to return to one of your earlier metaphors, you identified an appealing track and are in the process of determining what sort of autoroute to transform it into.

[John Dodds]

Then will come the really fun bit - deciding what tolls to charge!

[sig]

Ah, played the ball straight to my foot there :)

Purpose can be money or it can be to fulfill that "bugger, something is seriously wrong with the world, must do something about it..."

The latter being intuitive dream driven instead of dreaming of driving a Porsche.

Luckily I'm a staunch believer in having fun, do the right thing, follow my intuition and do what one is best at - then money follows. And anyway, the trip is more fun that way!

And toll-level-setting, hehe, food for another series of posts I think ;)

[Sheamus]

Sig writes, "To your last point, that is one approach; what is the purpose, where is he going? But sometimes we do not need a purpose, only a drive starting inside, the instincive "what the...??"

That's certainly mostly my mode! :D"

Oh... That "drive starting inside thing"!

I remember a particular moment when I was a kid about age ten (small farm, rural Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia), running down small dirt road behind our horse and buggy as the horse trotted along, feeling free and wonderful and suddenly thinking "I'm going to be a tycoon when I grow up". Don't know where that thought came from so long ago and... it has stayed with me these last 50 years in most beautifully empowering ways.

Is that that wonderful sense of "drive" to which you are referring! ;)

[Arnie]

Push vs. Pull, Permission vs. Interruption, Jerk vs. Nice Guy. I don't really believe there is a "new vs. old" feel here - it's more of a personal prefence thing. I don't believe there is one path to "success" or "failure" (whatever those me to each of us personally). As Ted Turner once said, "Money doesn't make you anything, you are who you are. All money does is make you more of it".

[sig]

Arnie, agree that jerk vs. nice guy is age old - what's new is the main point of the mentioned "trains", that markets are conversations and thus the jerks are not given much time and consideeration which is kind of nice. :)

And definitely, never one path to success! But it should be at least "a path", I found the quote to be a neat example of split message, split path kind of. And walking down two paths never works... Pull or Push, not both :D