I’m guest hosting a Webinar with Demandbase later this morning – and the topic is Best Practices That Must Die. It’s a topic that I’m familiar with, as I posted earlier this year how I thought Best Practices Produce Mediocre Results. In fact, they tell me that my post inspired the Webinar Series – which is both flattering and exciting.
So, I thought I’d summarize at least the first part of my talk here – because I think it’s a fun way to think about our marketing strategy and what we have to do on a day to day basis.
Let’s Bring Out Our Marketing Daredevil
So, and this will show my age…. when I was a kid… Evel Knievel was one of the biggest daredevils out there. Watching him jump busses and cars and what not was just simply incredible. He was the guy who set the standard. And even today – I imagine that most of you, despite your age, know who he is.
But, maybe, the way you know who he is – is because when he failed… He tended to fail rather spectacularly. In one jump –at Ceasar’s Palace in Las Vegas – he landed short – and suffered a crushed pelvis and femur, fractures to his hip, wrist and both ankles and a concussion that kept him in a coma for almost a month. As a side note, the next time we’re worrying about whether that new PPC marketing campaign might work we might just ask ourselves… What’s the worst that can happen?
See for kids like me – and even to this day – Evel Knievel represented the daredevil we all want to be… He was fearless and as he said…
“bones heal, pain is temporary, [and] chicks dig scars…”
But What About Success?
So, he was crazy and he was a daredevil and he pushed the limits – but was he successful? Well real quick – consider that a successful major league baseball player has about a 30% success rate in batting. The highest average as of today is Josh Hamilton of Texas with a little over 34%. An NFL pro quarter back – let’s say Drew Brees of the Super Bowl winning New Orlean Saints –his passing percentage (meaning how many of his passes were caught) was 70.6%. Which, by the way, is outstanding.
So, over his career, Evel Knievel had 300 or so jumps – 276 of which were successful. That’s a 92% conversion rate for success. So, he not only created a sport where he pressed the limits – he was incredibly successful at it.
In 1975 I was one of the kids that watched on TV as he successfully jumped 14 Greyhound Busses. It was an amazing jump. And even though he didn’t quite make it – which almost made it cooler because he landed on the safety deck on the 14th bus - it got him the distance record for jumping the most buses. He set the standard. And it was a World record that would hold for 24 years.
Incremental Improvements – Huh?
So, one of the things that made Evel great was he didn’t spend the next 25 years trying to top his bus or car jump by one or by two. His next jump was trying to jump the Grand Canyon.
But now, flash forward to 23 years later. In 1998 a guy named Bubba Blackwell breaks the first World record of Evel Knievel when he jumps 20 cars. This was exactly one more than Evel Knievel had done back in 1975. And then one year later – in 1999 – he tied Evel Knievel’s World record when he jumped 14 busses. Some say beat it since Evel’s tire had actually hit that 14th bus. So… amazing right?
Except… Who the heck is Bubba Blackwell?
And the – and I’m sure you were all over this news. In March of this year – Seth Enslow went to Sydney harbor in Australia and broke the world record again – and this time – as the headlines said – he SMASHED the record by going 183 feet. That’s a 16% difference. Huge. Except….
Even though the event was called Seth Vs. Death (gotta love that title) by the folks that were marketing it – as I’m sure you all have guessed – the rest of the world just hasn’t cared that much. Bubba Blackwell… Seth Enslow… Yaaaaaaaawn….
Lessons
So… What’s the lesson here…. To me, first of all it inspires me to live life more daring. Now, let’s be clear anyone who knows me, knows that I’m not one of those guys. No skydiving, bunji jumping or shark tanks for me. I’m not necessarily going to do something so daring that I’m going to break my femur bone if I don’t succeed. But I at least want to try extraordinary things some of the time. And I certainly want to try extraordinary things in the place where I spend the majority of my day – my work.
At least some of the time, if we’re going to fail – let’s fail spectactularly because we tried something extraordinary.
The other lesson I get from Evel Knievel is that you can be the one to change the rules and set the new standard … Or you can be the one to incrementally break a record… And, most of the time (quite honestly) the one to establish the record – that’s who gets remembered.
That’s what STARTING at Best Practices – but not ending there is all about. Let’s take some time to bring out our marketing daredevil. I’d just leave you with two quotes from Peter Drucker and Albert Einstein. So, Drucker famously said that “business only has two functions… Marketing and innovation… Marketing innovation creates value and all the rest are costs…”
So, if we slavishly follow marketing’s best practices – it’s a great way to avoid failure and succeed moderately.
But to quote Albert Einstein… “Try not to be of success, but rather of value… “
Looking forward to my Webinar today – and I’ll post the Audio of it and the presentation once it’s ready.
