Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [39]
mills, and yes, the interior design of a $20 million corporate jet is a huge part of the sale),
artists have moved from the exterior of our economy to its center. Disney now licenses its
images to egg farmers. Eggs now have Disney characters printed on the shells and you
can scramble Mickey for breakfast. Everything from food to luggage to phones to pens to
insurance forms is transformed by design and art and insight. If art is about humanity,
and commerce has become about interactions (not stuff), then commerce is now about
art, too.
The reason you might choose to embrace the artist within you now is that this is the path
to (cue the ironic music) security.
When it is time for layoffs, the safest job belongs to the artist, the linchpin, the one who
can't be easily outsourced or replaced.
Do You Need to Be an Artist to Market Tofu?
That's an interesting question. If you start with the assumption that an artist works with
paint or clay or music, then this is a hard leap to make. If you believe that art is somehow
separate from work, that it's a different sort of endeavor or a different sort of person, then
it's almost impossible to imagine an artist marketing tofu.
I don't see it that way. I think art is the ability to change people with your work, to see
things as they are and then create stories, images, and interactions that change the
marketplace. So, yes, I do think you need to be an artist to market tofu, if you want to be
any good at it.
Years ago, someone decided that there was a predictable, scalable, industrial solution to
marketing. They asserted that coupons and incessant advertising, combined with
distribution and aggressive pricing, were not only sufficient but essential to growing a
brand. Now, as we've seen over the last decade, none of that by-the-book marketing
shtick works so well. Now, it's more common to see the success of a brand like Jones
Soda--not because founder Peter van Stolk followed the rules, but because he's an artist.
At its peak, the company was worth more than $300 million, and none of that value was
generated by following the rule book.
Peter said, "I don't care what anybody does in the beverage industry. I really don't.
They're going to do what they're going to do. We've got to do what we've got to do. You
have to know what they're doing, but you don't have to follow what they're doing."
Is there art in being Jones? He broke every rule in the book. He put his customers'
pictures on the bottle. He made mashed potato flavor. He answered the door when people
came to visit. People came to visit. Do you think many people go visit the local Pepsi
bottler?
Does that sound like a marketer to you? To me, it sounds like an artist. Perhaps the
reason you can't name a beloved brand of tofu is that no artist has bothered to market it to
you yet.
Would Shakespeare Blog?
Does the technology used by the artist appear on the scene to match what the artist needs,
or do artists do their art with the tools that are available?
Shakespeare didn't invent plays; he used them. Salinger didn't invent the novel; he wrote
a few. The technology existed before they got there.
I don't believe that you are born to do a certain kind of art, mainly because your genes
have no idea what technology is going to be available to you. Cave painters, stone
carvers, playwrights, chemists, quantum-mechanic mechanics--people do their art where
they find it, not the other way around.
The art that you do when you interact with a customer, or when you create a new use of a
traditional system or technology--it's still art. Our society has reorganized so that the
answer to the question "where should I do art?" is now a long booklet, not a simple
checklist of a few choices.
The Myth of Project-Specific Passion
In a pre-Internet world, where Amazon.com couldn't have existed, would Jeff Bezos be a
nonpassionate lump? If Spike Lee hadn't found a camera, would he be sitting