I enjoy reading blogs as well as writing the Membership Marketing Blog.
One blog that I visit regularly is an economics blog, Carpe Diem. It is written by Dr. Mark J. Perry who is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan.
He recently wrote the following on the topic of negativism in the media and from other economists.
“I made a decision a long time ago not to make my career a bet on bad things happening. I think that approach simply corrodes your strategic thought capacity. Human history is progress, so if you’re constantly having to screen out the good to spot the bad, your vision will be unduly narrow. If you bet on progress, you can easily contextualize the bad, because progress is never linear. But if you bet on retreat, you must consistently discount advances as “illusions” and “buying time” and so on, and after a while, you’re just this broken clock who’s dead-on twice a day.”
His guidance applies to membership marketing. When we see weaker marketing results or a declining membership, we can bet on continued bad things happening. Or we can accept the reality of what is happening and get excited about trying to find a solution.
I am an optimist at heart. But this approach seems like a good one to me. What do you think?
One blog that I visit regularly is an economics blog, Carpe Diem. It is written by Dr. Mark J. Perry who is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan.
He recently wrote the following on the topic of negativism in the media and from other economists.
“I made a decision a long time ago not to make my career a bet on bad things happening. I think that approach simply corrodes your strategic thought capacity. Human history is progress, so if you’re constantly having to screen out the good to spot the bad, your vision will be unduly narrow. If you bet on progress, you can easily contextualize the bad, because progress is never linear. But if you bet on retreat, you must consistently discount advances as “illusions” and “buying time” and so on, and after a while, you’re just this broken clock who’s dead-on twice a day.”
His guidance applies to membership marketing. When we see weaker marketing results or a declining membership, we can bet on continued bad things happening. Or we can accept the reality of what is happening and get excited about trying to find a solution.
I am an optimist at heart. But this approach seems like a good one to me. What do you think?
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2 comments:
I tend to constantly try to find a solution to our marketing results even when they are good. Especially, direct mail and it's regularly underwhelming response rates. It may come off as I'm pessimistic most of the time, but I see it more as always driving forward.
Sounds like we are on the same page. I suppose I try to view the world that there is always a better way. We just need to discover the solution to a given problem. If we think that there is a solution that we simply need to discover then there is a greating likelihood of finding it. Tony
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