Aug 24, 2006, Posted by Mike in the category, 7 Comments
Good Enough Ain't Good Enough
At the risk of becoming one of those blogs that just tells you what’s on other blogs, I’ve the good and the bad from Seth Godin (we’ll save the ugly for some other day.)
I’ll start with:
The Good:
With Tuesday’s publication of his book small is the new big, Seth’s been on a new media blitz. He’s been interviewed for blogs and podcasts across the marketing web, and in my humble opinion, the best of these was on Mark Ramsey’s blog hear2.o with Seth riffing on the future of radio, as he sees it.
Best quote:
If you’re in radio today, you have a spectacular asset: The ability to communicate to people directly who want to hear from you. But it’s a wasting asset. And big media companies refuse to acknowledge the fact that their licenses are gonna be worth less in ten years than they were ten years ago. And they’re trying very hard to keep their head in the sand and ignore that.
The Bad
That same day, Seth also posted a piece on his blog that has me wondering:
a. Is he kidding?
b. Is this just a ploy to have everyone who reads it pull their hair out, so Seth won’t be the only bald guy in the room?
In his post, titled Good Enough, he says:
I wonder, though, if “good enough” might be the next big idea. Audio players, cars, dryers, accounting… not the best ever made, not the most complicated and certainly not the most energy-consuming. Just good enough.
Umm, Seth, have you heard what an iPod (or any MP3 player for that matter) sounds like? Have you used a cell phone lately? The makers of the audio devises we use every day are already getting by with good enough. I could rant for hours about the whole sound quality issue, and never get past the “yeah, but my iPod only cost $100, and I can take it wherever I go, and I don’t have to listen to stuff I don’t like” argument.
Being in the audio business, we see it every day, whether it’s the home recorded voice over demo MP3 that’s been compressed incorrectly, and gives the artists’ voice that tell-tale “gummy teeth” sound, or whether it’s the prospective client who wants to save a few bucks, and record his own voice over for a video, we’re surrounded by “Good Enough”.
From a business perspective, is “Good Enough” really viable? The Yugo was good enough, haven’t seen one of those lately though. There are dozens of companies that manufacture audio equipment that’s good enough, just check the shelves of any MegaLowMart and you’ll find the least-common-denominator, good enough approach, hell, check the shelves of any eletronics retailer, and most of what’s on the shelf is “good enough.”
There will always be companies that use “good enough” as their strategy, and many will do well, but fortunately, not all companies will follow that creedo. Just take a look at some of the companies that Seth has riffed on in the past, Starbuks, hell look at one of his best selling books, Purple Cow, the subtitle of which is: “Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable”. Hopefully Seth’s post isn’t clue to his next book: Just Another Cow: Good Enough for Whatever.