I was very honored yesterday to get to participate with some extraordinarily smart folks in what was labeled “The Great Marketing Conversation”.  It was a webcast hosted by PropelGrowth and sponsored by the DemandGeneration report.

Joining me on this webcast were:

• Mike Volpe – CMO of Hubspot.
•  Ardath Albee – Author and B2B Marketing Queen Extraordinaire
• Marcus Sheridan – The Amazing Sales Lion (nuff said)

What was originally going to be a “Debate” of how content marketing and inbound marketing differed – turned into a wonderfully productive conversation about how to actually start to apply these processes in your marketing organization.

Of the hundreds of registrants – we sadly only got to about five or six questions from the audience before time ran out.   As promised, we wanted to answer many of the other questions that came in – and so I thought I’d run them here.    So, without further ado…. Here is a baker’s dozen more questions and my take on the answers…. I hope you enjoy…

Q. I don’t get the difference between content and inbound marketing

As Mick Said “I know… It’s only Rock and Roll – and I like it!”  My advice is don’t worry too much about it. At their core, both are approaches to marketing that use content – whether organically grown or curated – as a means to create a positive business result.  You might look at Inbound Marketing as a little more focused on the upper end of the funnel (being found, and generating leads) and Content Marketing as more focused on deeper engagement, establishing thought leadership and moving into deeper parts of the funnel (customer upsell, retention etc..).  But in the end – it doesn’t really matter.

Q. Interested to hear the take on traditional SEO being replaced by inbound.

I guess I would ask: “is SEO being replaced?”   In my view, great SEO starts with a high velocity of quality content (especially these days with the Panda update).   If you get that engine humming, then the rest (meta tag manipulation, keyword density, normalized HTML and inbound links) are like the fine tuning of the race car.   So, I don’t know that I’d agree that SEO is being “replaced” by inbound.  Rather, I think SEO, itself, is fundamentally changing – and quality content (that is shared through social media) and the practices around inbound and content marketing are simply becoming more important to the practice.

Q. Is the question whether content marketing is considered outbound? I also understand the idea of placement of content but both forms have snakingly strong ties to traditional advertising, don’t you think?

Bonus internetz for you for using the word “snakingly”. And, yes, in a way they do.  For years, we’ve spent money to place content in context with where our buyers might be.  We called it Advertising.  Now, we are focusing our strategy on changing that content to something that’s more “valuable” to the end-user and spending the same kind of effort to place it strategically.   So, in a way, Content Marketing is the next generation “media buy”.    But now, of course, we as marketers can “own the media”.  In other words – we used to rely on scarce inventory available to us from a media supplier that had an aggregated audience.  Now, WE can actually aggregate our own audience – and contextually place that message in a way that solves our customers challenges.

Q. Why is this debate/conversation important to human mankind?

Well – how about this…. Einstein said “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT’S relativity.”   It’s all about your point of view I suppose.

Q. Why isn’t content marketing just considered to be a subset of inbound marketing?

Because it’s not.    While they overlap – there are many distinct differences about which processes are applicable.  Inbound Marketing (which is no doubt growing and transforming like Content Marketing) has traditionally focused on the upper end of the funnel – using content to “be found, generate inbound leads and facilitate prospects through the funnel”.   Content Marketing – especially the brand of CM that we work with at CMI – focuses on other aspects of the funnel.

In my experience, I see that the marketing department has more responsibility over more aspects of the business than it’s ever had in the past.  Let’s say I’m a shoe company, and I sell shoes online.  And, as the marketing team I have a role to play in making sure our customers stay loyal and evangelize our brand.  I’m going to use content – placed strategically to encourage our customers, not that we sell better shoes, but that we sell “happiness”  (yes, I’m using Zappos).     Or, another example:  we work with a large software company that is using Content Marketing practices to educate and drive attendance at employee and partner meetings.  That’s not traditional inbound marketing – but it is certainly content marketing.

Q. What are useful content & inbound strategies when my customer base has widely divergent personas (behaviors & interests)?

Great question.  I wish there was a book for that… Oh there is…. <grin>   But just like there’s no one shoe that fits – I would argue that if your customer base has widely divergent personas – then there will be different strategies that fit those personas.   The question is how many are there?   Really?   Those personas will naturally aggregate under different channels.  So, you might find that it’s better to launch separate channels (completely) for the personas your targeting.  For example, one might be better served by a print magazine – and the other might be better served with a social strategy (blog, Twitter etc..).  If you start with WHO.  And then add the WHY (which is just as important) – you end up with a target audience.   Then, the channels start to define themselves and the question will be – what story do you want to tell each?

For example, I know a services company – and their service works for old people, and children.  The two personas couldn’t be any more different.   So, for old people – their content marketing is all offline, event driven and physically based.  And, for the kids – it’s almost all online.  And the stories themselves are all under one overarching brand – “they sell comfort”.  But the way they tell those stories are VERY different.

Q. How much content creation is needed? (its vague I know)

Yes… it kinda is.  So, I’ll give ya an equally vague answer.  As much as is needed to affect the behavior you want changed, and not one word more.

Q. How to use Inbound Marketing to attract the right kind of traffic for your target market persona

You might read this book… Or this book….  (see what I did there).

Q. Generally speaking, what percentage of an annual marketing budget would you apply to content and inbound marketing.

That’s the wrong question.   Don’t look at content and inbound marketing as competing tactics to your other marketing efforts – that’s where you’ll get into trouble.  Neither are tactics.  Both are processes that lay directly on top of and integrate into your existing efforts.  Content marketing will affect your traditional media spend.  Inbound marketing will naturally feed off of your other efforts.   These are processes that you apply to an integrated effort.

Q. Generating great content is great to increase your leads and reach, but in your experience, when/where is it appropriate for a content/inbound marketer to push for the sale?

If you’re doing it right – you’ll never need to push.  When you understand your customer’s buying process in an intimate way – you will have mapped a journey that you will take them on.  So, once they have reached that last stage – it is perfectly okay to make them the offer.  But at that point – they have already decided to purchase.   Remember, in the best scenario, you never sell people.   Through the experience you give them, they come to the realization that they need your product or service.

Q. How do you convince old school executives to do inbound or content marketing?

Mike Volpe over at Hubspot had a great suggestion of giving them a great book – and leaving it on their desk for them to discover.   Other techniques include just trying a content marketing program against one of your already existing tactics.  Ask your executive if you can just experiment with any money you save.  Also, as Marcus Sheridan says – show them your competitors are doing it.

Q. How to target multiple stages of the buying cycle?

With the same content?  Yes – do it where and when appropriate.   If you’re asking actually “how” to do it – well then that’s a much deeper conversation.

Q. Should we be optimizing content on our site for mobile for a B2B audience?

Well…. I might ask how much of your audience wants to access your content on a mobile device?    If the answer is A LOT – then yes.  If the answer is “none” or “few” then I’d say “maybe”.   Assuming the “few” answer – I’d ask if that’s a new market for you?  In other words – is there a new persona that you’re trying to attract – and how might mobile content attract them.  Who are they and WHY would they care about the story you’re trying to tell.

Keep The Conversation Going

Hope some of that is helpful for you all – I’ll update when the archive of the event is made available.  Until then – remember It’s your story. Go out and make it remarkable.

So, I’m the guest speaker at a Webinar hosted by the folks over at Hippo today.  When they asked me to speak – they wanted me to put some thought into how “context” was going to play a role in changing the process of content marketing.  Okay –  Context Aware Content Marketing.  That’s cool. I got it.

Now for some strange reason – As I wrote this post – I felt the need to put on some music. And what hit me was Etta James’s Something’s Got A Hold Of Me. 

I have no idea what this has to do with marketing (other than… well it’s Etta – and it’s just an awesome song) – but I’m not one to ignore my gut – so there ya go.  So if you want the same context I had while I wrote this – turn on Etta there on the left – and then read the rest of the post as it plays.

I’ve put a bit of thought into it – and as I look out to the future of how context is going to change what we’re doing from a content marketing perspective – I see 4 evolutionary steps over the next three to five years (see image).

Four Evolutionary Steps For Context Aware Content Marketing

Step one is Channel Aware
(” …sometimes I get a good feeling”)

This is where we found ourselves last year as we started scrambling to manage Web content for all these different channels – mobile, social, landing pages, global web sites etc… It’s simply a realization that it’s not about just dumping our content into these different channels.  Publishing the entirety of our Web content onto a mobile site is easier – but it isn’t terribly productive.  We’ve got to change our content marketing processes to reflect an awareness of the context of how and (more importantly) why our audiences are consuming our content through different channels.   When the CEO asks us to put the whole Web site into a Mobile app – we have to say “no”.  It just doesn’t make any sense.     The feedback loop here is mostly manual.  Our Google Analytics, reports in content management systems and manually creating CSS for the design of our content is all done as we’ve done it for years – iteratively as a process.

Step two is Attribute Aware
(“…something’s got a hold on me…”)

This is where the feedback loop becomes slightly more automated – and is a step I think a good many marketers will start to take this year. Look at many of the CMS vendors out there – and look at their move to “managing the experience” and you can tell it’s one they are certainly hoping you take.   This is where we start to use attributes that we can glean from our audiences to optimize the content for context.   Think here how we might automatically detect what KIND of mobile device you’re using.  Or, how we can start looking at explicit attributes like your title, your name or your preferences and optimize the content dynamically to be more relevant based on that information.  The technology is already here to deliver this (and has been for years).  But this is something (much to the contrary of what you read) is something that most marketers just aren’t doing in practice.   Maybe now it’ll start to take hold… Etta’s startin’ to get to me…

Step three is Real Time Aware
(“…somethin’s got a hold and it won’t let go”)

The technology will need to catch up a bit here to make this easier for the average marketing team – but this is where we can start to optimize content using interaction happening in real-time.  For example we want to optimize our visitor’s content experience based on choices they make in real time – watching clicks and optimizing content based on that behavior (maybe watching the speed of the connection to offer abstracts or a slimmed down version of the site).

Step four is Contextual Integration
(…“I don’t know what it is but it sure feels good”)

Out a few years (my guess is by 2015) we’ll start truly integrating content as a service – and interfaces themselves will adapt to the context automatically.   This is where I might pull in multiple data sources in real-time to help optimize content for a particular audience.  For example, if we’re a product company selling software to businesses – and a visitor hits our site – we might be able to match attributes (device, location, company, time of day) with real-time awareness (what the visitor clicks on in the site) and pull in third-party data (information about the visitor’s company) to help contextualize their experience.

As Soon As We Get A Hold On Who….

These steps are evolutionary… and certainly I may be overestimating or underestimating how fast we’ll get there…   But this much I know – applying context to our content marketing strategy starts with WHO.  We’ve got to understand who we’re talking to – and then what, where when and (again maybe most importantly) why they want our content through different channels and in different contexts.

I’ll update with a link to the webinar after it’s archived… Until then… Etta and I are out..

La La la la….

There’s a scene in the movie Adaptation when Nicholas Cage – playing a screenwriter struggling with telling his story – is in Robert McKee’s renowned story structure class.  He asks McKee about stories where “nothing happens”.  He wonders if telling these stories are actually more like “real life”.

It’s a wonderful setup because it’s a question so commonly asked.  What about those movies, or books or stories where “nothing happens”.   The sitcom Seinfeld was even self-aware enough to express this explicitly.  Jerry would commonly say that the show (and the fictional show he created with George) was “about nothing.  But of course that wasn’t true – because Jerry violated our expectations every time.

But back to McKee and the movie Adaptation. Watch McKee’s brilliant (NSFW-language) response here:

Okay… if you’re at work.. Or didn’t’ feel like watching the clip – basically McKee flips out and says – if you’re going to tell me a story where NOTHING happens – why are you wasting my 2 hours.

Having taken McKee’s class twice (which I can’t recommend highly enough) – I can tell you that the scene is largely based on fact.  Inevitably in the class there is always a student that asks about creating stories where “nothing happens”.  The reaction you see in the scene above – is basically the same hell that he brings on any student unlucky enough to ask that question.

What’s Happening In Your Story

What McKee is really talking about in storytelling is that you must violate expectations in order to keep an audience involved, engaged and interested in hanging around.  You must make interesting things happen.

For example – let’s look at the outline of the beginning of two stories.

Story 1 – Guy wakes up, he brushes his teeth, he gets in his car and drives to work – walks through the parking lot, drops his keys, picks them up – and walks into his office building.

Story 2 – Guy wakes up, he brushes his teeth, he gets in his car and drives to work – walks through the parking lot, drops his keys, and as he bends down to pick them up he notices his boss stuffing a bag with a human arm hanging out into his trunk.

Which story are you more likely to continue reading?

This holds true in everything we’re doing in marketing.  Let’s take B2B marketing for a moment.   If you frequently give or receive overview/sales PowerPoint presentations for  customers – let me predict how most sales presentations are ordered:

Slide 1 – Who we are – why we’re a great company.  We’re awesome.  We’ve been in business for X amount of years.  We’ve won awards.

Slide 2 – Here’s our products – and the awards they’ve won.  Did I mention that we’re awesome?

Slide 3 – Logo Slide – here’s all the customers that have bought from us – and wow aren’t we impressive that we’ve closed all these big deals.

Slide 4 – Case Study – here’s one of those customers and a quote telling you why we’re so awesome.

And so on…..

What if instead…. This company’s overview deck went a little like this.

Slide 1 – Picture of a man.  Let me tell you a story about this man.  Normally you might think I’m going to tell you a case study.  But this guy didn’t buy from us and he is NOT a customer.

Okay… I’ve already violated the audience’s expectations.   I could go on from there and tell the audience how we pitched this guy – and even though he wanted to – he wasn’t able to buy from us.  He was forced to buy a competing product from a “safe” vendor.  They had a horrible time with it.   In fact, he now works as our Director of Marketing – because he was so taken with our solution that he wanted to work for our company.

Now when we show that logo slide and we tie it into how our solution has changed the direction of all these companies -  it starts to mean something very different than simply “we’re awesome”.

Start Watching For It Everywhere

Every single movie that you love – every single scene you think is great – and every single book that you can’t put down uses the violation of expectation to keep you engaged.

A few examples:

The classic scene in Good Will Hunting when Ben Affleck is trying to woo Minnie Driver in the bar.  The arrogant Harvard student goes to embarrass Affleck’s character by talking about “the economy of pre-revolutionary America” and your expectation is that they’re going to fight.  Instead, Will (Matt Damon) comes over and mentally obliterates the arrogant student with more knowledge than he could ever know.

Or… this classic scene from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade where Indiana and his father have managed to get into Berlin to retrieve the diary – a book that the whole German army is looking for.  As they’re trying to escape they manage to bump into Adolph Hitler… And… he signs the book like it’s an autograph.

Or maybe the best example of all – there’s this amazing scene from Casablanca; where almost every single line of dialogue violates your expectations; starting with the lines  “what’s your nationality?”  Rick says  “I’m a drunkard”.  It’s just amazing writing.

As a side note – if you take the McKee class – I guarantee you that after you experience his day-long analysis of Casablanca if it doesn’t become your absolute favorite film – it will be top five.

So…. if you’re a marketer – and you’re going to start to use content to help power your strategy – start to exercise this muscle… Watch a movie, read a book – and watch for the turns, the violations of expectations…

You may even surprise yourself where it will take you….

Oh… by the way… how many of you noticed that the picture for this post is the earth “upside down”…. Remember – there’s no rule that says North is up….

So, if you didn’t see it – this week, a major clothing brand actually did the exact opposite of a celebrity endorsement deal.    It would seem that clothing brand Abercrombie & Fitch wasn’t really digging the fact that Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino wears their clothing.  They actually offered the popular reality star a “substantial” amount of cash to NOT wear their clothes.

A few analysts and bloggers have come out and applauded the move.  One in particular, ISI’s Omar Saad wrote “We applaud the decision to dissociate A&F brands from “The Jersey Shore” characters. Especially overseas, this is a proactive step to help maintain the brand’s emerging position as the beacon of casual American luxury.”

I actually think that this will prove to be a stupid PR stunt for Abercrombie – but almost certainly had nothing to do with their stock tanking this week.  And I believe that this type of move is completely wrong-headed for marketers.  Allow me to explain why.

In a world where the definition of “celebrity” is becoming fuzzier, and where content sharing is increasingly fluid and easy – this ahem… situation… (sorry)  brings up two extraordinary questions:

What do we do with rogue promoters?

Is there an opportunity in anti-targeting? 

Let’s explore both….

Look Out – They’re Goin’ Rogue

So, the idea of the rogue celebrity offering up their “endorsement” of a brand is nothing new. In his Wall Street Journal article, writer John Annarone reminds us that Burberry had a similar situation (oh dear yes I just did it again) in 2005 when their clothing became the “uniform for some hard-partying Brits” and “alienated some of its higher-end traditional shoppers.”  Similarly, Annarone writes, Tommy Hilfiger had challenges in the 90’s as it became a staple of the Hip-Hop culture, which disenfranchised some of the “preppy” audiences they had previously appealed to.

But I think Annarone is getting this wrong.  Really those latter examples were just unintended audiences that actually (theoretically anyway) increased sales.  That’s a different marketing challenge.  More similar is in the 90’s when Scope actively named Rosie O’Donnell the “least kissable” celebrity.  Or, a more recent example is when Playboy model Kendra Wilkinson repeatedly declared her love for The Olive Garden restaurant chain – and prompted Playboy to do a nude feature called “Girls of the Olive Garden” (I really don’t make this stuff up folks).  That last one prompted the restaurant chain to say that the association with the brand had become “a complicated issue”.

But, coming right out with an anti-celebrity endorsement campaign can also have disasterous results.  Just ask Cristal Champagne.  In 2006, when their managing director implied that Cristal didn’t welcome all the references to their brand in Rap Music lyrics – they faced an embarrassing boycott led by Jay-Z.

But that leads us to the other question….

Can a “NOT FOR YOU” Position Work For Our Brand?

The ability for marketers to target content and messaging to audiences has never been more powerful.  Using content management and delivery software – we can segment based on target personas, their behavior, explicit information, assumed attributes etc…   In fact, the whole idea of the hot topics of Web Experience Management, and Customer Experience Management are built on the idea of targeting our content to a specific set of customer attributes.

But as we know – this is going well beyond digital marketing. Segmentation, and persona based marketing is really driving just about everything we do now – no matter what platform we’re using.

In this situation (okay I swear that’s the last one), creating targeted personas is what I’d call a “Passive NOT”.  In this case, the absence of targeting a specific persona filters (by default) out the number of people we think won’t be interested in our product or service.  Remember the “Passive Not” – because I’m going to come back to it.

But this Abercrombie stunt asks a different question.  It asks if we can (or should) flip that idea on its head and start to tell our story in a way that we specifically take a “this is NOT FOR YOU” point of view.  This is what I’d call an “Active NOT”.   This is certainly the idea behind the Abercrombie PR stunt.  Whether or not they are serious about actually paying The Situation to NOT wear their clothes, they are basically saying “if you act like Jersey Shore people, then we don’t want you wearing our clothes.”

To me this is an extraordinarily short-sighted strategy.   First, it’s just mired in negativity.   There’s no way that you can do this and not look snotty or just plain arrogant.  It’s really the equivalent of walking up to a craps table where a guy has been on a run and then betting against him.  Now, the guy might be a complete jerk – but you’ve just proven yourself to be one as well.

Untying The NOTS

See, looking at the underbelly of persona targeting – we have to deal with the Passive Nots and the Active Nots.   And, Rogue Endorsers might bring us either choice.   If we choose to segment our personas too tightly – and really take an Active Not stance – we may lose the opportunity for “Happy Accidents”.

Remember – our Tommy Hilfiger example from above?  So, a little more context in that story is that in the early 90’s the Tommy Hilfiger brand was bringing in about $25 million per year. They were squarely targeting “preppy” men.   But, in 1994 a Hilfiger wearing Snoop Doggy Dog (the Rap star) performed on Saturday Night Live.   It was almost an overnight transformation.  Over the next six years, the Hip Hop culture took to the Hilfiger look – and the brand jumped to $67 million.   With some quick re-positioning in their marketing, Hilfiger ultimately grew the brand (thanks in large part to the unintended explosive growth of the Hip Hop culture) to $1.8 Billion.

Here’s my Question:

What kind of different history do you imagine would have happened – if after Snoop Dog had performed on Saturday Night Live the Tommy Hilfiger brand had come out with a press release offering the rapper money to NOT wear their clothes?

As marketers, we’re taught, quite appropriately, as we put together our persona strategies – to make them as specific as possible so that we really know these people, we understand their drives – and that we can speak relevantly to them.   This, inherently, creates some Passive Nots – because by optimizing who we’re going to speak to – we’ll naturally completely miss others.  This is fine.

But let’s NOT Actively Dislike a group of people that we find “off-brand” just because they find value in our product or service.   More than being kind of douchey – it just doesn’t make good business sense.  It poses the real risk of us losing what could be a completely new and unrealized potential audience.

Like it or not Mike “the situation” Sorrentino is successful.  He’s been able to cultivate a following – and Abercrombie has no idea where that will turn.

And as Franklin Jones – the wonderful writer, PR Executive and humorist said “nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success – yours OR his.”    As marketers, it’s really our choice what to do with both.

And as for me, I’m just of the opinion that open arms are better than a cold shoulder.

For whatever reason, I seem to have been spending a lot of time lately reading and commenting on creative marketing strategy.  From strategic positioning, to tag lines, to business plans.   I’m struck not by the uninspired creative (although a few clearly are) but rather how “safe” they all want to be.

It all reminds me of this George Bernard Shaw quote:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. All progress, therefore, depends upon the unreasonable man.”

I combine this with this true fatigue I have over the phrase “data-driven marketer”.  Interestingly, if you Google this phrase, you’ll get about 22,000 results and most of them are links to how to become one.   We just need to lose the vision of the  “data driven marketer” – holding a spreadsheet triumphantly over their head, ROI emblazoned on their super-hero cape as they stand at the summit of their mountain of Google analytics.

Thankful for Mediocrity

Do you ever wonder what our world as marketers would look like if everything were creatively amazing and compelling?    What if it was easy to create amazing, compelling, persuasive stories?  What would we do?

Well, I think Paul Arden had about as good an answer as I’ve seen.  In his book,  It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be – he asks:

Why do we strive for excellence when mediocrity is required?

There is little demand in the commercial world for excellence.  There is much, much bigger demand for mediocrity.

Arden wonders what we would do – and suggests that we would “react against it, saying, “Isn’t this boring.  How can we be dull?  Let’s do it badly, let’s make it ugly, and let’s make it really cheaply.”

In fact, you can even see some of this happening today.  I actually wrote an article for iMedia connection in June called How ‘Ugly’ Can Boost Your Campaign.

But the key difference in all of those campaigns was that “ugly” was “remarkable”.  They weren’t trying to be safe – they were actually trying to be different.  That’s the key.  They actually said something.  As Realtor Mark Seiden relayed to me when I interviewed him for that piece:

“We took the challenge of ‘ugly’ very seriously. The designer’s first iterations really missed the mark. They were too pretty. The key was for the designer to really feel the emotion and the feeling of the frustrated seller.”

So, thank goodness the world is demanding mediocrity.  It gives us a chance to do something different.

No Remarkable Marketing Is Ever Data Driven

Name any remarkable creative marketing campaign you can remember,  and I’ll guarantee you that it did not come out of a spreadsheet.    Our most compelling story, our most persuasive campaign our most viral content didn’t come as the result of an A/B test.  It did not come from our Google Analytics report – and it did not come from our landing page conversion metrics.

It came because we took the time to figure our what our business REALLY does and what problem we are REALLY solving for our customers. And we creatively figured out a way to tell a story that was different from our competition.

Differentiating means “being different” not being incrementally better than our competition.  If you haven’t read “Different” by Youngme Moon – give yourself a treat.  It’s wonderful.

Data is important.  Data is helpful.  Data helps you wring efficiency out of your visitors, and target your message more capably and generally make your campaigns better.  Data helps you be incrementally better today than you were yesterday.

Data gives you the opportunity for insight.  But YOU are the one that has the insight.

You are the one that makes the exponential leap. You are the one that thinks up the B version that outperforms the A version by 2000%.   You are the one that dreams up the story of your business that you’ll tell through content marketing.

Our Content Our Unique Story

If I can butcher the Shaw quote for a moment I’d say that the reasonable marketer adapts their story to the world.  The unreasonable marketer persists in trying to adapt the world to their story.   All of our success therefore, will depend upon us – at some time  or another – being unreasonable.

Whether it’s our creative brief, our positioning statement, our content marketing story or our newest creative ad campaign.  Let’s occassionally try to be unreasonable.   As Arden says – there’s little demand for it.   And, we’ll certainly fail more than we succeed at it.   But it’s our best bet to create something remarkable.