This story has a point, please bare with me.
I sometimes get a strange idea into my head and then feel compelled to follow through with it. Yesterday was such a day. In fact, I had had this idea for a while now and my wife had already given up on me. Then yesterday morning I decided to do it – to walk the length of Dubai, from Dubai Media City to my favourite Dubai restaurant – Ravi’s.
We are not the bearers or bad news – just the truth. Things have changed. Everywhere. Period.
As humans we are creatures of habit, even writing that phrase ‘creatures of habit’ is… well… habit. We are used to being in our zones of comfort. We use clichés and repeat pep-talks, like “It has too end some time!” or “We’ll all be stronger for it afterwards!”. We are happy in our comfort zones and unless we really (really!) have to, we’d prefer not to leave them.
Seth Godin, in his blog post “Sixty to Zero“, makes this prediction:
“90% of your sales will come from word of mouth or digital promotion by 2011.’
And he continues by asking “How do you change what you’re doing today to be ready for that?”
We would like to congratulate him on this prediction, because we share this view. We would also like to ask you, our clients (if you are not yet our client please give us a call), the same question. And consider this, change needs time - so waiting until late 2010 to be ready for 2011 is not going to work. What have you done recently that is worth spreading by word of mouth? And how was that underpinned by digital promotion?
We are in a recession, or in the midst of a ‘market correction’ if you read the papers in Dubai, there is no getting away from that.
There is always the option of sticking our head in the sand (especially if you’re in Dubai), or you could wake up and smell the coffee. Ignoring issues is never a good idea and if the ‘issue’ is big enough to be felt around the world it definitely requires our immediate attention.