At my first Beer and Blog last Friday I had a brief conversation with Brittany Sims about originality; while monitoring conversations in her employer’s space Brittany noticed a lack of original content on marketing blogs. I took no offense at the inclusion of mine in that category, but it got me thinking whether originality of content is possible or even desirable.
Is originality possible?
That originality may not be possible is, of course, an unoriginal idea. I recently read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People for the first time, and it struck me how many of his ideas and recommendations I’m reading on marketing blogs 70+ years later (yes, even Seth Godin). Dale Carnegie freely admitted to borrowing his ideas from thinkers past.
- Asked whether my proposed graduate thesis was going to work just building upon a previous paper, my graduate thesis supervisor at Leiden University said, “That’s the definition of progress.”
- There are only 7 (or 3 or 20 or 36, depending where you look) basic plots in literature. We all tell the same stories, over and over and over. And over.
- Sustainability, which appears as a hot new trend to the mainstream has been around for a long time, in and out of popular consciousness in different forms; the currently accepted definition has been around for only 20 years. We’re in the recycling mode.
Is originality desirable? Implications for sustainable marketing
Here’s where it gets a bit more complicated. Just two thoughts from among many:
- “The simplest way to solve a problem is to borrow an existing idea. The simplest way to invent a new product is to adapt an existing idea.” –Jack Trout on Brand Strategy Insider. Invention may be the holy grail of business, but in the contest between invention and innovation, the latter prevails. Is innovation any less original? “Simplest” is the key word here. Adopting and building on what’s already out there speeds up the business cycle and prevents duplication of effort; think the reuse and recycle pillars of environmental sustainability. It’s what sustainability in the 21st century is about: we aren’t inventing anything new, we’re building on what’s already been done. Similarly, if the result reflects what’s special about you or your company, what special experience or expertise you bring in to the product or service, you’re fine. “Everybody has something that only they know”; use it and let it be helpful and shine. So, striving for originality can be inefficient.
- “The best stories don’t tell anything new. They make the audience feel smart and secure by reminding them how right they were in the first place.” –Seth Godin. Humans are wired to accept ideas that reflect what they already know or believe. This implies finding the right community (tribe) for your product or service, instead of being all things to all people, and satisfying their need with whatever satisfies their need. Originality would equate pushing something that satisfies no corresponding need (there is something to be said about creating new markets, which is where Seth Godin may be contradicting himself). You don’t need original content to create an emotional connection with your audience. You don’t need to be original to gain the ultimate credibility of ethos. So, striving for originality can be misguided.
What do you think? Should bloggers or sustainable businesses strive to be original? Are we settling for less when building on others’ ideas?
