In marketing (and therefore business, without marketing you have no business) you have three outcomes – die slowly, succeed spectacularly, or fail spectacularly.

Let’s look at music for example – you can have one hit as a musician on an album with 20 mediocre songs, and you’re a success. An author can publish one great book a decade and be a bestselling author. A movie director or actor can make one great movie out of every 10 and be deemed a success.

You can fail spectacularly and still succeed – as long as you make an impact.

What would you rather have – 100 people who love what you do or 1,000,000 people who think you’re ok?  Let me ask that a different way, would you make more money if 100 people loved your product/service or if 1,000,000 thought your product/service was mediocre and forgettable?

If you chose the million people keep reading. If you chose the 100, good for you, but keep reading anyway so I can pitch you at the end of this post.

Mediocrity is death – a long slow painful demise into nothingness.

Having 1,000,000 people think you’re “just ok” is translated into having 1,000,000 people acknowledge you for one second and forget you the next second. You are in the noise floor, part of the background, lost in the crowd.

Last year I attended the Montreal Salsa Congress (I performed in it actually), and I remember 4 shows from the dozens that were showcased. I remember the 2 best performances – and I can recount the worst 2 performances – I have stories to reference both of them.

Everyone I know who went to that Congress can recall that same list of performances. All the other performances were good, but forgettable. But 2 failed spectacularly, and 2 succeeded spectacularly – and therefore both are memorable.

Look at Britney Spears, a come-back queen. She fails spectacularly more often than she succeeds – what’s the result? Millions in record sales and sold out concert tours.

Look at Paris Hilton, she built an entire career and millions in endorsements, fashion, even music sales (agh!) by literally failing at everything (except getting attention!).

One of my favorite advertisers, self titled The Wizard of Ads, Roy H. Williams, coined this phrase: “the risk of insult is the price of clarity”. I am borrowing it Mr Williams, and I’ll tell all my readers to buy your books in exchange (go buy his books please).

Memorize this: The Risk of Insult Is the Price of Clarity.

Achieving clarity is inherently risky.

If you run your organization with the #1 priority being risk mitigation (reducing risk), you are not hedging your success, what you are doing is failing slowly.

So how do you use this axiom, “the risk of insult is the price of clarity”? Well first, it’s the RISK of insult, it’s not actually insulting. Although that is a strategy that can work…

What this statement means is that you have to speak to your fans/tribe/followers/fanatics/whatever-you-want-to-call-them. You are never advertising to “everyone”; you are making ads that appeal to those who you want to buy your product/service – so you real prospects say “THAT IS AWESOME”, while everyone else might say “I don’t like that” or simply nothing at all. Your attitude should be Well fine, don’t like it, I don’t care about you anyway.

Look at companies like American Apparel, Diesel, Tommy Hilfiger. Youth amorality, alternative rock, preppy sailer boy. Each one has a distinct polarizing brand.

Apple and Microsoft are another great example, the geek vs the nerd arch-types. Apple made the geek the cool version of the nerd. They totally polarized the audience and made them choose a brand association – ie. they made them choose a side.

These companies take risks to be great. There is another great book called “The Strategy Paradox” by Michael Raynor I highly recommend (go buy that book as well, it’s a heavy read, but well worth it).

The strategy paradox describes companies focused on mitigating risk simply put off their demise for a long time. They are shoring up their success and using their size and market leadership to beat down competition. They stop innovating because they stop taking risks. Basically, they are guarding what they have until what they have is innovated away from them – someone comes along and does it better, or different, and makes them irrelevant. Great example is the MP3 and the music industry…

Jim Collins in the book “Good to Great” outlines that most companies are great for short periods of time, but very few seem to be able to sustain “greatness” for very long. The bigger a company gets, the tougher it is to take chances, they just have so much more to lose. Dozens of smaller companies will burn out before one invents a technology or process that brings the goliath down. Smaller companies have much less to lose on an absolute scale, so they can take bigger chances.

What i’m trying to say is — whose side are you going to be on? David’s or Goliath’s?

Are you going to take the risk of being BOLD in your marketing and advertising or are you going to play it safe?

Are you going to only do what has been proven and you can find good case studies for and know others in your industry are doing or are you going to be innovative in your marketing and brand position?

If you want to help figuring out how to be bold, how to punch well above your weight class, how to find and aggressively market to your target audience, and how to do it all profitably and grow your business by an order of magnitude (10x!) this year alone, then get in touch. Do It Now.