The unlikelihood of anything cool happening.

What percentage of the things we see or hear during the day are all that interesting, really?

Yes, yes, we have some sort information overload. And yes, yes our default position is skepticism and avoidance.

But no matter how busy any of us are, we like to do cool stuff. We watch things that are interesting. It’s just that usually when we’re dealing with anything to do with marketing, our inclination is to assume it’s not worth our time. We’ve been proven right so often, it’s generally a safe bet.

And then when industry types start making these advertisy things, we assume that people are these disinterested beings. We assume that we can’t expect anything. We take the default position as the only possible position.

And just like that, we’ve argued ourselves into treating the audience in a way that reinforces a posture that doesn’t help us and bores the hell out of them.

It’s a rather destructive cycle, no?

But there are so many times in my day where something cool is so unlikely to happen. Standing in line at the store, the rare television commercial I actually see, sitting in dead stop traffic. And these are extreme examples. I can go days without anything all that cool actually happening, which is either sad or normal, not sure which.

So instead of assuming that the audience is overwhelmed and unlikely to take a few steps towards you, maybe we can fill up all that monotony with a wholelotta cool. Because cool will only be unlikely as long as we let it stay that way.

photo via the fantastic yyellowbird