This Is Marketing by Seth Godin

This is semiotics. Flags and symbols, shortcuts and shorthand.
Do the flashing lights at an arena rock concert change the way the music sounds?
Perhaps they do, because they remind us we’re at an arena rock concert.
When we hold a newspaper, it feels different than a tablet, or a comic book, or a Bible.
The form changes the way the words sound.
A chocolate bar presents itself differently than a chemotherapy drug.
When we walk into a medical office that feels like a surgeon’s office, we remember how
that surgeon helped us . . . even if this office belongs to a chiropractor.
When we pick up a book that feels self-published, we treat it differently than the book
that reminds us of a classic we read in high school.
When we get a phone call and hear the telltale clicks and pauses before the stranger
begins to speak, we remember all the robocalls and phone spam we’ve gotten and hang up
before the caller even utters a word.
And when the website is designed with GeoCities and flashing GIFs . . .
If you remind me of a scam, it will take a long time to undo that initial impression.
That’s precisely why so many logos of big companies look the same. It’s not laziness. The
designers are trying to remind you of a solid company.
That’s the work of “reminds me of.” You can do it with intent.
Hiring a professional
The internet is littered with websites, emails, and videos made by amateurs. Amateurs
who made something that they liked.
Which is fine.
But what a professional does for you is design something that other people will like.
They create a look and feel that reminds people of their sort of magic.
There’s not one professional look, not one right answer. A summer blockbuster gives
itself away in four frames of film—it’s clearly not a YouTube video from a teen makeup
guru.
Every once in a while, the amateur happens to find a vernacular that reminds the right
people of the right story. The rest of the time, it’s best to do it with intent.
Imagine that world . . .
Don LaFontaine made more than five thousand movie and TV voice-overs. It’s not
because he was more talented at speaking than anyone else, or because he was the
cheapest. It’s because his head start compounded, and if a studio chief wanted to remind
the audience of a big-time movie, his voice could do that, precisely because he was
reminding you of his earlier work.
It’s important to remember that it doesn’t matter what you, the marketer who created
it, is reminded of. Semiotics doesn’t care who made the symbol. The symbol is in the
mind of the person looking at it.