There’s always something to howl about.

The Odysseus Medal: Art and omission — when in doubt, leave it out

I have a long-time investor client — he happens to be in town right now — who delivers his most effusive praise by exclaiming, “Outstanding!” I think this is a valuable exhortation of a valuable idea: It denotes appropriate enthusiasm for the most profound kind of excellence. When I selected the short list of Odysseus Medal nominations yesterday, I thought they were all very good. But when I looked them over this morning, there was nothing that made me want to shout, “Outstanding!” In consequence, I’m not awarding the Odysseus Medal this week. The posts are good, unassailably good, but nothing spoke to me of the sublime. Next week we’ll do better, I’m sure.

Gary Elwood wrote a post this week called The 3 Commandments of Online Marketing You Must Obey. I thought it was very good, but I think it was eclipsed by Bill Leider’s What Is A Brand?, winner of this week’s Black Pearl Award:

I believe your Brand is a widely held set of beliefs and expectations about what you deliver and how you deliver it. That applies whether you’re an individual or a multi-national organization. Your Brand is strengthened or weakened by every person in your organization and every function performed that directly or indirectly touches anyone. It embraces things like (and this is not an all-inclusive list):

  • Name recognition
  • Expectations held by the vast majority of people who will or might do business with you about what they can expect from you.
  • The experience(s) that people have when they deal with you. Do those experiences exceed, meet or fall below their expectations.
  • The consistency of many experiences.
  • How you deal with people after the sale: customer service and how you solve problems.
  • How and how well you maintain continuity of relationships with customers and potential customers.
  • The perceived value received for the price paid.

Read both posts, though. They reinforce each other.

The People’s Choice Award this week goes to Chris McKeever for A [HAR]d Lesson:

We are in a period where listings are flying everywhere. You post a listing in one place, it appears on several others. Some you may not even realize you are listed on till you get an inquiry.

Recently, there has been much concern that many of these listing syndication/aggregators are actually using your data to make money off you. And if they aren’t today, they probably will tomorrow.

However, think about this: If everyone buys the up sell, won’t everyone be back to a level playing field with less money in their pockets?

Nota bene: If you didn’t check out this week’s nominees for The Odysseus Medal, you should. Nothing was insanely great, but everything was very good. And as always, if you catch a fleeting reflection of the gods, nominate it.

Deadline for next week’s competition is Sunday at 12 Noon MST. You can nominate your own work or any post you admire here.

Congratulations to the winners — and to everyone who participated.

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