Thursday, June 03, 2010

Seth Godin - On Multiplicity and Its Impact on Marketing

http://www.athousandwords-photo.com/images/multiplicity.jpg

How cool - Seth Godin's recent post looks at the idea of multiple voices in our heads (parts, subpersonalities, selves, ego states, whatever you want to call them) and how they impact career choices, decision making and so on. As regular readers know, this is one of my interest areas.

It's a brief post, but cool to see.

Is this noise inside my head bothering you?

Not just my head, but your customer's head and yes... yours.

Everyone has multiple conversations and priorities going on, competing agendas that come into play every time we make a choice about doing, buying, creating or interacting. I think these voices (and a few I missed) determine which career we choose, how good a job we do, where we shop and what we watch. Here are a few:

  • The ego--seeks applause and recognition.
  • The lizard--seeks safety, wants to fit in and not be rejected or criticized.
  • The artist--wants to be generous, creative and make positive change with impact.
  • The boxer--wants to poke and be poked, seeks revenge and ultimately victory.
  • The zombie--wants to turn off and be entertained.
  • The carpenter--seeks to do useful work, and finish it well.
  • The philanthropist--wants to help, anonymously.
  • The evangelist--wants to spread an idea.
  • And the hunter--wants to successfully track and bring down a target.

There's a lot of overlap here, no doubt about it. Who's winning?

For those interested in learning more, here are a few of my old posts on the topic:

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