Whenever I see links with titles like “10 ways to get…” or “6 proven tactics to achieve…” I shudder. Same goes for diet books, career advice sites and any lists that try to tell you what to do. Media conferences are filled with case studies, successful implementations and amazing success stories. When Old Spice works, hundred of copies will be launched a month later. When one movie hit comes out of nowhere, hundreds of quasi-sequels will find their way to the screen quickly. Vampires everywhere, housewives everywhere, American Idols everywhere.

Have you ever copied the copy of a copy of a copy?

It doesn’t look fresh, it’s hard to decipher and feels tacky. That’s how customers feel when you follow the rules and copy the copy of a copy. When everybody copies each other, the original always wins. And the copies are just that: copies.

20 years ago, advertising had only one option to differentiate: through the creative. The channels were pretty much set, not many options to have meaningful impact through radical changes in the media mix.

20 years later, we have millions of options to connect a brand with a customer or prospect. Still, the majority of marketers continue to rely on proven tactics and copying success stories of their competitors. What does it mean to your brand when your competitor was able to lift sales by 50% through a Foursquare promotion? What does it say about your brand that your competitor has 50,000 more followers on Twitter than you? What does it say about your company when your competitor deployed sophisticated, behavioral targeting to lift engagement rates by 25%?

Nothing. Nada. Nichts.

Just because your competitor or any brand was successful with one specific tactic or media plan, doesn’t mean a carbon copy for your brand will produce the same results. More likely than not, the results will be way below your expectations.

I get it: You want to beat the competition, want to win, sell more than ever before. Following your competitors or act based on past learning is a losing game. Next time, you start a marketing initiative with a competitive review, why not focusing on doing the exact opposite? Why not staying away from implementing another average Facebook page and, instead, becoming the leader on a different platform? Why not implement a display campaign exactly the opposite way than your competitor? Following the rules has lead to bloated web pages, irrelevant Social Media initiatives, underperforming display ad campaigns and less than mediocre results.

Following the rules was a winning strategy in the industrial age. Breaking the rules is a winning strategy in the information age.

There are many terrible DJ’s out there. I know, because I am one of them.

What makes a terrible DJ?

When you start out as a DJ, nobody pays attention to you. You play at times when nobody wants to dance and everybody just wants to drink and socialize.

What do you do?

You push the power button to 150%. You play hits, bang it out. No interludes. No build-ups. No rest. Bang. Bang. Bang.

The result? You tire out the audience, they’re spent by the time the main act starts, and your reputation is ruined forever. Everybody can bang out hits after hits. That wasn’t your job. Your job was to take people on a journey, to get them ready for the main act. The empty dance floor pushed you to a place you didn’t want to go to. But you did.

In the digital marketing world, we all face this dilemma.

Both work.

You can put the pedal to the medal and try to get as much attention as possible. No matter what people say, it works. Over time, the returns diminish and you have to push harder and harder. Louder and louder.

Or you can start your marketing performance, wait for somebody to listen and take this person on a journey. Others might stop and listen. That’s secondary because your goal is to seduce one. And let them spread the word for you.

Unlike DJ’s, there’s nothing wrong with either approach. However, you need to stick with your choice. You can’t transform from a coffee house into a rave club. Or vice versa.

Just look at your brand and ask yourself: Do I want to get as much attention as possible? Or, do I want to give as much attention as possible?

Only you can answer that.

Joe Kraus makes good points and asks important questions in his speech:

- We are creating and encouraging a culture of distraction where we are increasingly disconnected from the people and events around us and increasingly unable to engage in long-form thinking. People now feel anxious when their brains are unstimulated.

- We are losing some very important things by doing this. We threaten the key ingredients behind creativity and insight by filling up all our “gap” time with stimulation. And we inhibit real human connection when we prioritize our phones over our the people right in front of us.

- What can we do about it? Is this path inevitable or can balance be restored?

His conclusion:

“Imagine the world 10 years from now. My third grader will be graduating high school. What does that world look like? I’d guess that it’s going to be more fast paced than ever. That people are going to be even more distracted, even more unable to pay attention to things for any length of time. Even less able to tolerate boredom. Even less able to pay attention to one another.

Now imagine your own child in stark contrast to that culture of distraction. Technically literate, but also balanced. A calmer presence. Not distracted. Not constantly seeking out mindless stimulation. An ability to make real human connection by not signaling that there might be something better on his smartphone to look at. An ability to pay attention to a problem for a long time.

I believe that the biggest gift we can impart on our kids is the ability to be mindful – to pay attention to the things and to the people that are actually around them. In 10 years, that’s going to feel VERY VERY different than the norm.”

Network visualization has experienced a meteoric rise in the last decade, bringing together people from various fields and capturing the interest of individuals across the globe. As the practice continues to shed light on an incredible array of complex issues, it keeps drawing attention back onto itself.

Manuel Lima is a Senior UX Design Lead at Microsoft Bing and founder of VisualComplexity.com, and was nominated as ‘one of the 50 most creative and influential minds of 2009’ by Creativity Magazine.

He visited the RSA to explore a critical paradigm shift in various areas of knowledge, as we stop relying on hierarchical tree structures and turn instead to networks in order to properly map the inherent complexities of our modern world. The talk showcased a variety of captivating examples of visualization and also introduce the network topology as a new cultural meme.