Meta Marketing - "HOW" are you thinking?

It's been a while... I never stopped blogging for so long. There are times when your mind is looking for something... else or different. Times when thinking is not enough anymore. You see, observe, listen to the world around you and wish to take part, contribute in a different and more accurate way. As described by Jonah Lehrer in his post on meta thinking, found on Seed Magazine:

 

"Good judgment is more than a matter of “gut feeling” — it’s the willingness to reflect on the decision-making process itself". 

 

Excellent article about metacognition, that I invite you to read.  Hopefully, most of us know that it's the journey that counts, above the destination. Being human also means keeping faith in what we believe in, up to the limits of our minds and bodies. Explore, be curious, innovate, fly. - [see above "G." stunning human film directed by J. Xavier Velasco touched me with both its form and metaphoric content]

Now, back to the Belgian actuality: Seth Godin's presence at Flanders DC on the so tweeted about "Ahead of Marketing" speech, paraphrased : "Creativity, innovation and how to market those well". I regrouped a few words of wisdom of the respected Marketing God, found on Twitter via the #godinfdc tag. Let's call them the most tweeted :

 

- "Be personal. Be relevant. Be specific."

- "The old way: average stuff for average people"

- "Scarcity of choice is over! Be remarkable!"

- "The old marketing = interrupt your way to success"

- "The new marketing = Ideas that spread, win"

- "The market for something to believe in is infinite."

- "Albert Einstein ruined the word genius"

- "Being a genius = solving a problem like no one else has ever before"

- "Interchangeable parts lead to interchangeable people"

- "Want to be indispensable ? Make a difference!"

- "The reason they want you to fit in is that once you do, they can ignore you"

- "Public school trained us to shut up & stand still"

- "You can't blame the system anymore. You are responsible"

- "A lizard brain is all about fear. 'Oh my God, I'm going to die' "

- "CREATE YOUR RULES!"

- "Are you afraid or are you curious, the choice is up to you"

- "Leaders only have one thing in common: they're leaders"

- "Teach kids two things: to solve interesting problems and to lead"

 

Now, my question to you is: how would you describe these quotes? Are they new, unique ideas about the marketing of tomorrow, creativity or innovation? Things you have never heard before? (OK, besides Einstein's big genius bang and the freakin' lizards metaphors maybe) ; )

Maybe Godin created his own rules and applied what he teaches like no one else has ever done before and so, he restored the word genius from Albert Einstein to manage his meta-way through "being Seth Godin" as a diabolic -yet very admirable- money making machine (???) And in this regard, it's a fact, yes: the market seems to be infinite for someone people believe in.

I leave it up to your own judgment, really. What do you think about it? Or should I say "how" are you thinking about it? I was not there but in a way, to be honest with you, I don't have many regrets. Bird's eye view brought it's load of insights and guess what, I'll be thankful to Seth for activating this thinking. Hopefully some smart non-lizard brains already pinned a few things out of the speech. In a way I felt a lot more connected to these Alien thoughts than to the words of wisdom themselves. Also really appreciated the brilliant angle taken by Clo Willaerts in her post on the event. It made me think about a quote I read on the Hopenhaegen site: "WHEN PEOPLE LEAD, LEADERS FOLLOW". Yep, I believe a lot more in the inspired, consciously shared, trusted, engaged, collaborative lead than in the individual performances or "power / force lead".

 

And if you don't mind -pardon me the expression- I can't resist sharing with you a few key paragraphs from Jonah Lehrer's article. I think they are touching the "HOW to fly":

"The larger point, of course, is that humans aren’t rational calculators. According to Kahneman and Tversky, when people are confronted with an uncertain situation, they don’t carefully evaluate the information, or compute the Bayesian probabilities, or do much thinking at all. Instead, their decisions depend upon a short list of emotions, instincts, and mental shortcuts. These shortcuts aren’t a faster way of doing the math; they’re a way of skipping the math altogether.
So far, so bleak: The human mind is an imperfect computer, stuffed full of programming bugs. But some researchers now believe that there may be a way of avoiding such innate psychological mistakes. When we flex our metacognitive muscles and think about how we are thinking, we are able to notice when we’re thinking poorly. The end result is that we avoid those avoidable mental blunders.
...
Given the distinct talents of our various cognitive styles, a willingness to think about our own thought processes and to adjust our mode of decision making to the task at hand could transform the way we use the mind. Before we do anything else, we should go meta."