Average is over.
Tip of the cap to my wife for sending me Thomas Friedman’s latest op-ed from the New York Times. In it, he makes the (I think correct) correct assertion that an American worker today needs to do more given the changing landscape and economic climate:
In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over. Being average just won’t earn you what it used to. It can’t when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius. Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra — their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment. Average is over.
That phrase in bold print is one of my favorites. And, it applies to marketing too. I was happy to see Mr. Friedman use this language which closely mirrors my company (Sprouse Marketing Group) and our feelings on how average marketing can no longer work much less survive in today’s world.
You can read our take on it right here. The gist of it is:
Most marketing is average – whether it refers to advertising, social media or print campaigns – and hardly any of it is award-winning, much less “acclaimed”. Because of this, secondly, marketing is sometimes viewed through a lens of being a below-the-line expense and somehow not as critical to incremental sales, branding or profit growth. This makes sense, we guess, because if you’re “average” at something, it is easy to be overlooked.
Sprouse Marketing Group knows these views to be false (because, we’ve proven them so), and we have seen over the past decade that the collective marketing industry has not done a good enough job in foreseeing and explaining a complete marketing story to customers, our own employees, shareholders or Boards.
So the questions are: what areas of what you do are “average”? Is your marketing average?
