Convergence Marketing: Combining Brand and Direct Marketing for Unprecedented Profits

10

ZEN AND THE ART OF . . . THE MOTORCYCLE STORY

 

 

 

When I was very young, fearless, and in love with going fast, I raced motorcycles. Back then I got my kicks out of going 130 miles per hour down the back stretch of the raceway in Loudon, New Hampshire. Occasionally, I’d end up piled into a corner with 20 other bikes, which was not so much fun.

Getting ready for a race was no small task, and one day in particular I was having a problem getting my bike as perfect as I needed it to be. In the process of fine-tuning every detail to achieve maximum speed with safety and everything in perfect order, I had somehow missed the concept of balance. Missing this minute detail caused me to go into a speed wobble. Imagine flying down a racetrack at incredible speed when all of a sudden, at about 115 miles per hour, the bike starts vibrating and shaking into an impossible-to-control wobble that nearly threw me off the track. It was, to say the least, scary. I did everything I could to make every part of my bike perform at its best, but I learned later that day that my back and front tire were not perfectly balanced. Had I balanced my tires individually and then together, I would have been able to reach my optimum performance.

WE CAN FLY

This is the perfect analogy for the struggles we face in our silo culture of marketing and advertising. We can move at a low speed, and we don’t experience any real problems. But if we rev things up to a higher performance level, we experience all sorts ...