Pick Your Battles

Once again, Seth Godin takes a small observation about marketing and makes it stand for a much larger point.
The point of Seth's blog post "Most and Least" is that most of the time we do the least that is required of us. It is virtually impossible to always do the MOST that you can do.

Even if you set out to do the most, you will have to pick the times when you really push it and do the most. The rest of the time, you are just getting the job done.

One observation I have, however, is that whether you are an individual or a company, once you get in the habit of doing the least (just getting by), it is hard to flip the switch and suddenly do the most remarkable stuff.

When you are doing the least, your perception of the Most is diminished. For a company, that is when you start thinking that offering the red fishing pole would have made all the difference over the brown fishing pole, or that the pale blue background on the banner ad was less successful than the dark blue background.

From an interactive marketing standpoint, I think that Seth's post is a cry for authenticity.

Here is the post: Most and Least from Seth Godin