Mussolini on marketing
The mob is a woman
I’m not gonna be the first guy out here to liken marketing to picking up girls.
It’s actually been done so many times that it’s now basically cliché.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not correct.
In fact it’s the opposite.
I’ve heard DHH talk about wisdom in a similar way. The gist of what he was getting at, is that any timeless truth is repeated so many times that it becomes a platitude. But it can only get to the point of being a platitude if it’s got some gold in it.
So, back to picking up girls and marketing.
The worst thing that can happen to a guy that is looking for a date is to have girls be indifferent to him.
That means neither attracted OR repulsed.
Instead, the guy is ignored. He’s considered boring and uninteresting.
(Hot tangent: in marketing the opposite of being boring is not to be exciting as so many marketers and copywriters seem to think. It’s to be interesting. As in, interesting to your market)
To counteract this problem of being boring, a lot of dating advice (which is good) says a guy should be polarising. This doesn’t mean being deliberately argumentative and contrarian which is fake and gay and doesn’t work.
It means to stand for things and have a view. And not be afraid to express it.
Again, this is not some tactic to make every girl like you. In fact, it’s sort of the opposite.
The point is to be ok with having a girl not like you.
They can take you or leave you. Let the chips fall where they may. The point you’re getting out there is that you’re not needy.
And the magic is that this is actually an attractive trait.
By putting yourself out there with no excuses, you repel some girls. And you’re fine with that.
But to the girls that are predisposed to be interested in you, you will be even more attractive to them.
For marketers and copywriters and advertisers the lesson should be clear.
But if it’s not, let’s double down on some more controversy.
The title of this piece is about the Italian, fascist, dictator Mussolini and his take on how to woo a mob.
To make it easy for the non readers out there, let’s bring the example into our era.
Enter, Donald Trump.
The guy won two elections (maybe even three) by being polarising.
Literally, close to half of Americans (and a lot of the rest of the world) hated him. They couldn’t stand him. Lost their fucking minds everytime he spoke.
But what was the flip side?
He had the MAGA movement. A cult like following of die hard supporters who hung on his every word.
And turned out in their millions to vote for him. Bought the red hat and everything.
That’s the power of polarisation.
Most marketing now is obsessed with not offending anyone.
And like the guy that girls are indifferent to, it doesn’t land with its audience.
Or, to be more crude:
It don’t sell shit ‘cause it’s boring as fuck.