Seeding is very similar to being a copywriter. You are asking a person to spend time with something, most people actively try to avoid. The book contains loads of little gems of wisdom. Luke’s well-used gem was ‘keep it simple’. So I will sum up the challenges of seeding by sharing with you my favourite advertisement.
Lüzer’s Int’l ARCHIVE Vol.6-2002
I’d like to say, it’s good to be back as a Rubber office regular, rather than a sporadic part-timer. As a musical bunch - with music tastes and itunes playlists as slick as crows ankles - I duly dedicate this tasty number to you all.
After a spell of living in Cornwall, my family and I moved to Plymouth. My parents bought an ordinary end terraced house halfway up a hill, on one side of a valley.
My father decided to paint the house, so he painted it pink, baby-doll pink with postbox-red window frames and door. My school was at the top of the hill across from my house. The hill was high and once you reached the top it afforded a view of the valley. My house stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the grey brick and pebbledash. When I was asked where I lived, I just had to say the pink and red house, it was for a while an icon on the landscape, I even used to get post from my school friends addressed to ‘the pink and red house’. I think Gordon the Gopher was having the same problem.
After a while, another pink and red house appeared, and soon the Royal Mail sorting office in Plymouth was also pink and red. Slowly, over the next year, coloured houses started to appear all over the valley. One day, I turned around at the top of the hill and the valley was a wash of colour. What I was fortunate to have was a visual example of a tipping point; I would like to think my dad started the small phenomena.
Whatever happened, something had changed in the landscape of our small area of Plymouth. Malcolm’s book is about change and how, even though our world at times may seem unmovable, a social epidemic can spread. My dad was not trying to make the valley more colourful or working for a paint company trying to boost sales of exterior house paint in Plymouth, but what if you wanted to spread your message or make a change?
The Tipping Point gives loads of examples and anecdotal stories, much more accurate and relevant than mine, to provide an insight into how social epidemics can be achieved, and with much more hard work, belief, intuition and reflective research that my dad would have ever intended.
We Are Team Rubber