ChangeThis
ChangeThis is our weekly series of essays from today's thought leaders that are meant to evoke conversation by bringing forth new and unique ideas.
ChangeThis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Beware the Gender Trap: Marketing to the Twenty-First Century Gender Neutral Consumer
By Porchlight
"If marketers continue to create campaigns based on thinking that 'men always do this' or 'women always do that,' they are going to fall into a gender trap. In this era of the much more diligent shopper, we just can't make assumptions about how gender influences consumer behavior. Those marketers that do risk irrelevance in a very demanding marketplace. Those marketers who avoid the gender trap and instead serve the highest consumer standard represented by 'women's ways' but serving everyone, will reap immeasurable and lasting brand love."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Do you Market like Led Zeppelin or The Grateful Dead?
By David Meerman Scott
"...Measuring success by focusing only on the number of times the mainstream media write or broadcast about you misses the point. If a blogger is spreading your ideas, that's great. If ten people email a link to your information to their networks or post about you on their Facebook page, that's amazing. You're reaching people, which was the point of seeking media attention in the first place. But most PR people only measure traditional media like magazines, newspapers, radio, and TV, and this practice doesn't capture the value of sharing. To create a World Wide Rave, forget about sales leads and ignore mainstream media. Instead, focus on spreading your ideas. Make your information totally free, with no registration required."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Is Progress Possible?
By Porchlight
"I believe in progress. I believe that our contribution to the progress of civilization is a good measure of how well we have used our lives. Humankind has had writing for about 13,000 years. Books got pretty cheap around 600 years ago when Gutenberg created movable type. The Internet has made access to good ideas almost free for billions of people. So why aren't the vast majority of us happy and healthy by now? Where is progress?"
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Creating Widespread Empathy
By Dev Patnaik
"This manifesto is dedicated to what ought be a mind-scorchingly obvious idea. An idea that every successful company ought to know and understand in their bones. An idea that the vast majority of companies nonetheless fail to get. That idea? That empathy equals growth."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Catching Zebras: Tranforming Your Sales Force by Shifting Your Focus
By Porchlight
"The Zebra concept itself is simple. Create the profile of your perfect prospect and measure all other prospects against perfection. Zebra score every prospect, decide your tipping point and don't go over it. This is the hard part. Saying no for sales people is very hard. Yes is in their vernacular. No isn't even in their DNA. So when we tell you that part of the success of this process is to say 'no,' you'll understand this process will take some inspection to ensure it succeeds. Someone once said you can't expect what you don't inspect. Inspection is necessary for the Zebra way to succeed. You can drag a Zebra to water... you get the idea."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
On the Road from Dreams to Destiny: There's a Monster in There!
By Porchlight
"The lessons I present call attention to all the ways we can take control of our destiny, with special emphasis on becoming aware of our actions in situations that we commonly confront in our everyday lives. We face constant choices. Our decisions can move us forward towards our goals or shift us into reverse. So many of our negative choices and behaviors start in a mindless and almost automatic fashion. Each of the stories I tell gives you a strategy for taking positive action and eliminating the harmful patterns we commonly fall into that are preventable if we're tuned in."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Economy Survey
By Porchlight
In November of last year, we sent out a survey to gauge the mood of ChangeThis readers and see if you could help provide some solutions and encouragement for ourselves and eachother. After many months of immense change, both in the country as a whole and within our small company, we have finally finished sifting through those responses. We made the following three inquiries: "In one word, sum up how you feel right now;"How is this affecting you. " and; "What are you choosing to do about it. " The 1400 replies we received to this survey are further proof, beyond the intuitive, that work is life and that the personal is the professional. Some people used creative metaphors to express their situations. Others used humor. Some enumerated their action plan. Some ranted. Some marveled. Some refused to accept a doom and gloom outlook and endeavored to see the possibilities that come with change. There are some trends, of course, and there were ample frustrations—with capitalism and ageism, with excess and politics.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Live the Juggle Life
By Ian Sanders
"In this scrambled up world of work there are no rules and few walls. And that means the key to business success is totally up for negotiation. It's time to rethink the best skills to have in any executive or entrepreneur's toolbox. Forget an MBA from a flash business school, a talent for spreadsheets, or an aptitude for social networking. Think Juggle!"
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Stories, Storytelling, Story-Selling in Business
By Porchlight
"Good stories fascinate us all. They always have. They always will. At this moment in our nation's history, we are seeing two epic stories evolving—in terms of our new President, and in the state of our economy. The story of Obama many believe is epic, and certainly the story of our nation's recession and economic downfall is also a burgeoning epic tale. Stories move societies forward. They inspire, engage and initiate change through their telling and re-telling. Basically, there are two types of stories: Truth Stories and True Stories."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
A World Without Surprise
By Porchlight
"The ChangeThis instructions read: 'If you have a book... please use it only as a jumping-off point from which to isolate a particularly intriguing idea.' Well, I have a book. It's called Pow! Right Between The Eyes! And its particularly intriguing idea opens mouths, pops eyes and, may I say, whups ass. While potent and influential, it is also the most bullying of ideas; taunting me, challenging me, expecting me, every time, to do something different. [...] I considered putting the words into song, but given a vocal range better suited to the dulcet tones of thrash metal, my message would've been distorted and muddied. So I did the next best thing. I think. May I present, the apocalyptic poetic vision of... A WORLD WITHOUT SURPRISE."
Categories: changethis
The original idea behind ChangeThis came from Seth Godin, and was built in the summer of 2004 by Amit Gupta, Catherine Hickey, Noah Weiss, Phoebe Espiritu, and Michelle Sriwongtong. In the summer of 2005, ChangeThis was turned over to 800-CEO-READ. In addition to selling and writing about books, they kept ChangeThis up and running as a standalone website for 14 years. In 2019, 800-CEO-READ became Porchlight, and we pulled ChangeThis together with the rest of our editorial content under the website you see now. We remain committed to the high-design quality and independent spirit of the original team that brought ChangeThis into the world.