I just finished reading a great little marketing book by Tom Asacker called “A Little Less Conversation”.

It it, he talks at one point about how brand success is partly about being interesting. It’s not about “what people think about you or your company”, it’s about how you make people feel about themselves and their decisions in your presence”. Here’s more (my bold):

“Being interesting helps people feel alive through their association with you and your brand. When you’re interesting, they feel interesting because of their association with you. [...] Being interesting should flow through the value components you’ve chosen to strategically weave into your brand. Being interesting isn’t simply about being clever and creative. It’s about being wherever and whenever your audience is most receptive to your components, and understanding and appealing to how they’re feeling at that moment. It’s about being interested in them and their lives and proving that you have their best interests at heart by doing interesting things that add value to their lives. It’s about incessantly delivering value in exchange for their time and attention…”

When Scott Briscoe asks in Acronym, What is the future of membership? I wonder if the answer lies in here somewhere. ASAE, for example, gives me this. It’s an organization that seems to me to be “interested in me and my my life” by adding value to my work and helping me expand the reach of my work (intellectually, professionally and socially). And I’m willing to pay (in money and in volunteering time) for that value.

Could I foresee a time when I’m not willing to pay for that, because I can get the same “value components” in other ways and through other connections? Sure, it’s possible. But I think an organization like ASAE can potentially stick around a long time if they continue to lead the way (as best they can) in listening and being interested in what is important to their members’ lives – in being interesting. Definitely in being about more than commodities.

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