I am a sucker for the referred fly.

That’s fly as in “fly fishing.”

I just returned from my annual fly fishing trip with a friend of more than 30 years. We fished the Lower and Upper Madison, the Missouri, and the Gallatin rivers near Bozeman, Montana.

Every year, I swear that I will not buy any more flies. Of course, the typical fly fisher has hundreds (thousands?)  in his or her vest. At $2 a fly, the excess inventory adds up.

Truth be told, when nymphing (fishing wet flies on the bottom of the river), I rotate between five to 10 flies. Period. Maybe that accounts for my (lack of) success.

Yet, every time I walk into a fly shop, I am suckered by the kid at the counter, usually in his mid-twenties, who recommends a new fly, whether a nymph, streamer or dry.

The conversation goes something like this:

“What are they hitting on?”

“Well, what really works for me is this yak-bug  You can use it as your top fly and dead drift it or strip it across the river.”

A few minutes later, I walk out with two or three yak bugs, plus a couple more flies just for good measure.

I try the new fly. It never really works, and then I switch back to what I know.  The asset also known as my fly vest grows in value. I wonder if Lloyd’s of London would insure it!

The engine of new business

Cold-calling and its first cousin, direct mail, have their hallowed place in the world of marketing, as, now, does social (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc).

But in a world of a million imitations and possibilities, and inane status updates, “What really works for me …” will always be priceless.

It will always make me buy another fly.

In this exclusive CZ interview with marketing expert Seth Godin, internationally bestselling author of All Marketers Are Liars, Free Prize Inside!, and, among others, Purple Cow, he suggests the world has changed, but our organizations haven’t changed along with it. Good enough won’t cut it anymore in a world of noise, clutter, and overblown expectations.

B&S: Are there any common characteristics among those who achieve remarkable, as defined by the contributors to your latest book, The Big Moo?

Seth Godin: I think the biggest shift is this: once you realize that being safe is the riskiest possible strategy, being remarkable is pretty easy.

How do you go about awaking people to how the world has changed, especially if the bottom line isn’t all that bad at the moment? How do you teach the need to be remarkable?

Seth Godin: How do you teach people to show up for work on time? To not steal office supplies? To not forge expense reports?

It seems to me that once you decide it is important and you reward people for it, it’ll start to happen.

What do people “miss” when you talk about being remarkable? That is, what do they overlook or not really get?

The giant thing is that they think they get some sort of say over whether someone thinks a product or service is remarkable. You don’t.

Can people inside an organization even recognize when something is remarkable? Can you train people to recognize remarkable?

Seth Godin: This is much harder than it sounds. Mainly because it doesn’t matter if YOU think it’s remarkable. It matters what the person you’re selling to thinks. My best advice is to try and try and try and sooner or later, you’ll make something that works.

Think back to a time when someone tried to change a belief (worldview) that you felt strongly about.

B&S: In All Marketers Are Liars, you talk about worldviews. How does one go about snooping to identify the soft spots in someone’s worldview? Any tips on how to listen and gather valuable information from one’s client list or student body?

Seth Godin: What a great question! I don’t think a worldview has “soft spots” though. Instead, I think there are hot buttons, places where people really want to tell themselves a story. The easiest way to do this is to watch which OTHER stories are appealing to this audience. People are very bad (and very ornery) about talking about an irrational worldview. But you can watch them all day and see what they choose to believe.

Colleges often use the storyline, “We’re ranked 23rd in U.S. News & World Reports Best Colleges in the Midwest” as the basis for their plot. Is that compelling?

Seth Godin: I’m not sure that this story is ineffective for the worldview of typical high school senior. The challenge is to identify a unique story that can find room in a brain that’s heard the “top college” story since 1652 at Harvard. One way is with sports. Another more productive and ethical one might be to obsess about a particular department.

In your book, you mention your Purple Cow concept. What if an organization doesn’t really have anything that spectacular to showcase—something that turns people’s heads?

Seth Godin: I’m saying that a Purple Cow is just a stand-in for the phrase “something about your product or service that your users will decide is worth talking about in a positive way.” Your story can be very compelling and it might sell me, but that doesn’t mean it will spread. That’s okay. You can use other techniques to get attention, as long as your story is compelling enough to get people to change their minds.

How does storytelling integrate with branding for smaller firms?

Seth Godin: Branding, it seems to me, doesn’t mean much any more. By obsessing about the story, an organization (of any size) can augment and leverage their brand.

No where are the stakes higher for parents and colleges than in thought-processes of a 17-year-old choosing a college. Often, there is no thought process. It’s an emotional, arbitrary decision: “A bunch of my friends are going there.”

The biggest challenge for small liberal arts colleges and large universities is the same: communicating their differentiation. CZ’s Dave Goetz recently interviewed Seth Godin, the author of the runaway best-seller, Purple Cow, and consultant to Fortune 50 companies, on “getting different.”

B&S: There are a zillion colleges, and no matter the “elite quotient,” their marketing materials look just like the community college in my area: viewbooks with copper leaves and cobalt skies and shiny-faced kids on mountain bikes. How does a university get different?

Seth Godin: The biggest challenge is realizing that, and accepting the fact that students don’t care about you. They care about themselves, not how old your institution is or how hard you’re working to get them to apply.

So how do you “Purple Cow” the recruitment process?

Seth Godin: And the answer is not to talk to them. The answer is to get them to talk to their friends. The answer is to create a fashion, an idea worth sharing. People don’t read brochures. People listen to their friends.

How do you create a message of differentiation when you really aren’t that different? How do you begin now?

Seth Godin: You get different. Different doesn’t have to be a new student center. Different could be a different application date or a different application or off the wall questions or a different tuition system or an interview system that works in groups or … or … or.

Why not have a varsity math team?

Seth Godin: You’re not nearly as limited as you think you are. Only when you do the insanely risky strategy of resorting to a four color brochure (which feels safe) are you doomed.