Cool
On the flight to Oklahoma City for the MinistryTECH conference, I had the chance to wrap up Chasing Cool: Standing Out in Today’s Cluttered Marketplace by Noah Kerner and Gene Pressman. This was one of those books that’s right in my wheel house. It spoke to everything I’m most passionate about when it comes to getting our message heard in today’s culture. Here were some of the highlights for me…

  • "Magazines, like so many objects of desire, are not desirable unless they form some sort of attachment with the reader. In the magazine business they call this engagement. But what it really means is that the product is relevant."
  • "Never create for today."
  • "There must always be a careful balance between influenced and original, between what’s out there and what’s not yet been done."
  • "Watching the culture" is "a prerequisite to reshaping it."
  • "Knowing exactly what should come next is only possible if you really live and breath the same air as your audience." [TONY'S NOTE: This should frighten those of us trying to spread the Gospel while being engulfed by a Christian subculture.]
  • On outsourcing versus hiring… "All our creative is driven in-house. We just understand our brand better than anyone else could."
  • "In so many corporate environments, there are simply too many people involved in every decision-making process. It might seem like the essence of democracy, but it more often becomes the tyranny of conformity. It’s messy. When there are too many opinions, coming to a gemlike conclusion is nearly impossible. And without a leader to maintain a singular focus and champion a unified vision,…you end up leaving the boardroom with a lot of unanswered questions, diluted creativity, and unfinished business."
  • "Assign too many chefs to cook up a vision, and the product will taste like something reheated."
  • "Ultimately, you may get some people talking, but it won’t last unless the product is truly relevant to the audience. And if you get people talking, and the product doesn’t deliver, then you will only accelerate the road to failure."
  • "Consumers are overwhelmed by too many options. An aversion to clutter–both literally and existentially–is a wise editorial strategy for any product offering."
  • "The hard truth is all companies would be advised to think this way–to consider the aesthetic appeal, meaning, and experiential impact of their product–if their goal is to really ignite their brands." [TONY'S NOTE: This same principle holds for our message. Aesthetic appeal and experiential impact matter to our unchurched audience.]
  • "The little moment of counterprogramming had more impact than a performance with twenty dancers, acrobatics, pyrotechnics, neon signs, and fireworks. Remember, as noise keeps increasing, people have to stop listening. Speaking very quietly draws people in."
  • "Younger wants to be older and older wants to be younger."
  • "When a company steps out of its comfort zone to break into a culture that it knows little to nothing about, more often than not the resulting misrepresentations and misappropriations leave young people less interested in the company than they ever were before." [TONY'S NOTE: Substitute "ministry" for "company." There is so much truth to this statement that it hurts.]
  • "When a company ventures into an unfamiliar culture, in order to share equity, it helps to admit and accept that it knows little, which allows the company of course, to learn something, enhance its brand and contribute to growing the culture."
  • "You can’t sustain, especially in modern times, without taking the kind of risks necessary to truly stand apart. Everybody talks about avoiding train crashes. I say let’s make a couple of train crashes."
  • "Too many companies get drunk on their own success and make the mistake of trying to fill up their cups even further. What happens instead is that they wake up with a hangover of irrelevance."
  • "Bob Pittman, co-founder of MTV, told us that forward movement is such a religion at his old network that they’re not afraid to leave fans behind."