NOT BORING: THE MANIFESTO

“You cannot bore people into buying your product; you can only interest them in buying it.” – David Ogilvy

I. SOFTWARE IS A COMMODITY.

More software will ship in the next five years than the last fifty combined.

The barrier to creating software has collapsed in ways that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago. What once took ten person team months can now be built by three engineers in a few days. This is incredible for innovation. It’s also terrifying for differentiation.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: software is becoming more like insurance, athletic shoes, and coffee.

Geico and Allstate offer nearly identical policies. Nike and Adidas make functionally similar shoes. Starbucks and Dunkin’ serve the same drinks. The products are commoditized. So how do they compete? The gecko. “Just Do It.” Ben Affleck.

They compete on brand, attention, and being interesting.

Software is following the same path – productivity tools are identical, every CRM enables the same automations, and dozens of spend management tools are sprinting towards feature parity.

Having a great product is table stakes. Winners are determined by who demands attention.

II. YOU HAVE TO EARN ATTENTION.

Views and clicks can be bought, but attention must be earned.

And earning attention is hard. When there’s an infinite amount of content available to consume, it’s difficult to get someone to pay attention to yours. While it’s technically true that attention spans are shorter than they used to be, it’s more accurate to say we’ve become more efficient at spending our time. Why watch the ad playing on TV when you get more dopamine from scrolling TikTok on your phone?

Every piece of content you create is competing against the infinite scroll.

And while big media budgets help, there’s a massive difference between someone seeing your ad and someone taking the time to understand what you’re selling. Everyone who has scrolled past thousands of posts today intuitively understands this. How many do you remember?

If you’re fortunate enough to have a big budget, winning the attention game can make every dollar you spend 10x more effective. If you don’t, your only choice is to earn it.

III. SIMPLIFY OR DIE.

Winning the attention game is especially hard – and especially important – for complex businesses. It’s very easy to get caught in the weeds trying to explain exactly what your product does.

But when your audience is scrolling on their phone while half-listening to a podcast, thinking about dinner with seventeen browser tabs open, and twelve unread Slacks – they don’t have the mental bandwidth to figure out why your product is relevant to them.

Apple’s famous campaign is “think different” not 3200 MHz and 16 gigs of RAM.

It is equally as important to simplify your objective. Even if your product is capable of doing everything for everybody, your marketing should focus on solving specific problems for specific people.

This is counterintuitive for founders of complex businesses. You’ve spent countless hours building something sophisticated. You understand every technical nuance, every edge case, every competitive advantage. Your instinct is to explain all of it to everyone – to show how comprehensive your solution is.

Resist this instinct. It will kill you.

IV. SWING FOR HOMERUNS.

Marketing tactics can be sorted into two buckets: floor raisers and ceiling raisers.

Floor raisers deliver linear revenue growth. Things like improving the CTR on your landing page, optimizing abandoned cart flows, or tweaking Google search ad copy. Floor raisers are important, but there are diminishing marginal returns to the time and money you spend on them.

Ceiling raisers are different. They give you a chance at the crash your site but still manage to double your user base overnight growth that marketers dream about. A cinematic launch video, a pop-up with lines around the block, or a well timed meme. Ceiling raisers give you the opportunity to achieve exponential returns on the time and money you invest in them.

Identifying your opportunity to hit a homerun is the easy part. Taking the swing requires actually SAYING something and being willing to alienate some people in order to resonate deeply with others. What you say can turn a single into a homerun.

And while swinging for the fences can lead to some strikeouts, in the age of algorithm-driven power law returns – you can’t afford to bunt.

Don’t be boring.