Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself
Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself
Bari Weiss may be the best thing to come out of Pittsburgh since Michael Keaton and Heinz Ketchup. Not only does she publish one of the best resignation letters ever to everyone's favorite paper to hate, she then goes on to start one of the best Substack newsletters in Common Sense. She has consistently had some of the most thought-provoking pieces in journalism, and this week's article was no different.
Let me introduce you to Jane Kitchen. Jane, a liberal, was from a small conservative town in Arizona and couldn't wait to escape its confines to the hallowed halls of Byrn Mawr College, just down the street from where I'm typing this. At first, it was blissful, but then she felt pressure to conform to a particular viewpoint. She brushed it off and prepared for a study abroad program, and then came March 2020. You can read the rest here. The long and short of is this: the ideological conformity she felt, in addition to being at home and unable to go to campus, became so soul-crushing that she eventually transferred to the conservative college, Hillsdale. She now feels free to be herself despite her difference in opinion with most of her fellow students.
So why bring this up in a newsletter about content and marketing? I think this presents one case where the pressure to conform to an ideological viewpoint as well as being fearful of sharing your perspective can create such despair and depression; it's soul-crushing. We know that much of this is happening in the culture at large, including in most of our content creating and marketing companies. This inability to speak your mind and share your honest thoughts leads to many things, but one of the most destructive is fear of your co-workers, fear of speaking up in a meeting about the latest trailer cut, and fear of pitching a new idea. Fear can become so encompassing that you don't even try to be creative anymore. You try what has been done before because you don't want to rock that boat.
Seth Godin, a blogging marketing guru, had a phenomenal quote about marketing to your audience the other day. I'm going to quote it in full here:
Most marketers don't want to lead…they just want to follow.
Best practices aren't necessarily best practices, they are just marketers copying other marketers. The blind leading the blind. Just pooled ignorance.
This is also why when you do a Google search, all the paid ads say the exact same thing.
But this creates a customer experience problem. We're creating marketing messages and funnels that match what we think are great, not what our customers want to see and experience.
Don't stand for that. Stand for something better than that.
And why do marketers do all of this? I'm sure Seth would say that are many reasons, but I do believe one of the biggest is fear. As Seth so beautifully lays out in the quote above, that leads to all sorts of problems down the road. I want to challenge all of us to begin looking at our work and the opinions of others with a little more humility and respect that everyone deserves. Getting back to looking to entertain and engage our audiences requires nothing less. We want people to join this industry because of the joy of storytelling and the magic that it can produce, not to run away from it because it becomes an ideological conformist sinkhole with no escape. We want the Jane Kitchens to feel alive and free, not depressed and discouraged. Storytelling can and should be an enlightenment to the soul. We must continue that tradition as it was passed down to us. We should not let it collapse on our watch.
What Netflix Missed
In my effort to watch most of this year's awards contenders, I recently finished Jane Campion's Power of the Dog on Netflix. I'm not going to comment on the movie itself, but what struck me as I watched it on my television was how much of the film was shot for a theatrical experience. The striking vistas, not to mention the creepier bits, would have been ten times better in the theater, but it felt just like a television movie on my screen.
In his blog post this week, Matt Belloni made a fantastic point on the difference between a movie seen in a theater versus streaming. The audience doesn't develop what he calls "mindshare." Despite the hassle, going to the theater makes the film mean something. One has more of an emotional experience in a theater. I have to wonder if I might have enjoyed the Power of the Dog more if seen in a theater.
I know I belabor this point on the podcast, but we, as consumers and an industry, really need to have a conversation about what precisely a movie is. Otherwise, Netflix will continue to push these movies out on its service and completely miss an opportunity to provide an underserved audience with a visual and emotional experience.
Pages from the Commonplace Book
This week's quote comes from our 26th President, Theodore Roosevelt. Take it away, Teddy:
"It is not often that a man can make opportunities for himself. But he can put himself in such a shape that when or if opportunities come, he is ready to take advantage of them."
The pandemic has proved a challenge, and much has broken, but this is also a time for new opportunities. We must prepare ourselves accordingly.
Get The Founder’s Brew weekly to your inbox. Subscribe here!
