Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk on “Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Action” is one of the highest viewed videos on Ted.com. He explores why certain companies have been able to achievetotal success, while others with similar resources have failed. Sinek explains this concept as the “Golden Circle”, in which “Why” represents a business’ core belief, or why it exists, “How” explains how a business accomplishes its core belief, and “What” shows what the business does to realize that belief. Sinek has found that many companies approach their business backwards, starting with the “What”, and thus forgetting “Why” they exist in the first place. Beginning with “Why” allows a company to attract the customers that align with its core belief, resulting in loyalty and success.
Seth Godin relays a very important lesson in his Ted Talk on “How to Get Your Ideas Spread”. In the over-messaged world we live in, the people who canspread their ideas win. Mass marketers try to reach the very center of the market, where people are already far too inundated. The edges of the market must be paid more attention to. While the niche areas have fewer people, they have passion for their respective positions. Sell to the people that are actually listening. Godin also mentions the importance of design, as it is often the attribute that sparks passion, which can then lead to product, service, or brand obsession. Moreover, it’s not good enough to be merely good—playing it safe leads to boring ideas. A product or service must be truly remarkable, with viral quality, to be noticed. Figure out what people really want, and give it to them.
In Steven Johnson’s “Where Good Ideas Come From” Ted Talk, he confirms that innovation is about interaction and engagement. An idea is fundamentally a network rather than an isolated item. Johnson describes it as the combination of two or more “plain old things”. Environments that encourage people with diverse backgrounds to come together are the ideal places for ideas to be born. Moreover, ideas are most likely to happen in chaotic environments. When people collaborate, creativity is nurtured; sharing personal experiences leads to better thinking. It seems that extraordinary ideas suddenly come at one charmed moment, but in reality they have had long incubation periods. Embrace connections with others, as we should spend more time sharing ideas rather than protecting them to live in a world of true innovation.
Dan Cobley creates an unlikely combination in his Ted Talk on “What Physics Taught Me About Marketing”. Newton’s second law states that the larger the mass of an object, the more force is required to change its direction. In marketing terms, the larger the brand, the more effort is needed to change its positioning; this explains why companies with multiple brands often keep their brands separate, allowing to more easily change one brand’s identity. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle says that it is impossible to measure the state of a particle because the act of measuring changes it. For marketers, this means that the act of observing consumers will change consumer behavior; this is why focus groups don’t always work. The scientific method claims that a hypothesis can’t be proven through observation, only disproven. Parallel to this, in marketing oneopposing observation in a brand’s positioning will extinguish consumer belief. In thermodynamics, entropy, a measure of the disorder of a system, is always increasing. Marketers can’t completely control brand messaging because of online sharing tools like social media, but brands must find a way to work with that.