Reflection 10 of 52: Whatcha wanna talk about?
March 10, 2014
Marketing guru, Seth Godin wrote a blog in February about how, as a society, we
have a need to belong via major events. That blog made me realize how much we yearn
for those moments.
As the
author of Tribes, he supports his theory as follows:
One way the tribe identifies is through the observance of a
holiday, of a group custom, of the thing we all do together that proves we are
in sync. People thrive on mass celebration, but as our culture has fragmented,
these universal observances are harder to find. We used to watch the same TV
shows at the same time, eat the same foods, drive the same car. Given a choice,
though, many people take the choice—and so, as the culture fragments, we move
away from the center and to the edges.
Halloween and the Super Bowl are the new secular holidays, the
group-mania events that prove we're able to stay in sync. Every year, signed up
for it or not, each of us is expected to survive the relentless hype. We see
almost a month's worth of never-ending media about the Super Bowl—business
articles, travel articles, legal articles, cooking articles—a huge onslaught of
content-free noise.
And every year, the commercials disappoint, while the game
includes eleven minutes of action over the course of four hours of not so much.
And yet we do it again and again. Because the corporate hoopla
is beside the real point, which is a chance for all of us to talk about the
same thing at the same time. This is part of what it means to belong.
While the Super Bowl is a large-scale example of this happening
across a huge swath of people, these occurrences happen often in much smaller
tribes as well. The buzz about Fashion Week or CES or the latest from Sundance
are micro varieties of the same desire to be in sync. Your customers and your
employees want to feel what it feels to do what other people are doing. Not
everyone, just the people they identify with.
It's easy to be persuaded that this event is somehow about the
game, or the coverage or the hype, but it's not. Like Groundhog day, it's a
pointless thing we do over and over again, because hanging out with people you
care about (even if it's just to eat junk food and talk about how bad the
commercials are) is almost always worth doing.
Once Seth
raised this idea, I started to witness it everywhere. My husband and FB friends
who were getting up at 4am to watch the Sochi Olympic Hockey Game between
Canada and Sweden, the astounding impact on Twitter of the Ellen Degenerous and
celebrity friends selfie, and the email exchanges about Rob Ford
appearing on the Jimmy Kimmel show. Conversely, there are many times people
stop you in your tracks if you mention a popular show on Netflix… "spoiler
alert, don't tell me any more!"
Back to
Mr. Godin’s point that people have a desire to hang out with people they care
about...and, that is almost always worth doing. People are starved for opportunities to talk
about the same thing at the same time. It does not have to be these types of
hyped events. Let’s all remember we can just get together and talk about
anything that concerns us, anytime. I hosted a small group of women last week and the conversation organically ended up focussed on courage. It is up to us to find common areas of discussion.
Just
something to think about.
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