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How did the movie The Shawshank Redemption fail at the box office but go on to gross more than $100 million as a cult classic?
How did The 48 Laws of Power miss the bestseller lists for more than a decade and still sell more than a million copies?
How is Iron Maiden still filling stadiums worldwide without radio or TV exposure forty years after the band was founded?
Bestselling author and marketer Ryan Holiday calls such works and artists perennial sellers. How do they endure and thrive while most books, movies, songs, video games, and pieces of art disappear quickly after initial success? How can we create and market creative works that achieve longevity?
Holiday explores this mystery by drawing on his extensive experience working with businesses and creators such as Google, American Apparel, and the author John Grisham, as well as his interviews with the minds behind some of the greatest perennial sellers of our time. His fascinating examples include:
• Rick Rubin, producer for Adele, Jay-Z, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who teaches his artists to push past short-term thinking and root their work in long-term inspiration.
• Tim Ferriss, whose books have sold millions of copies, in part because he rigorously tests every element of his work to see what generates the strongest response.
• Seinfeld, which managed to capture both the essence of the nineties and timeless themes to become a modern classic.
• Harper Lee, who transformed a muddled manuscript into To Kill a Mockingbird with the help of the right editor and feedback.
• Winston Churchill, Stefan Zweig, and Lady Gaga, who each learned the essential tenets of building a platform of loyal, dedicated supporters.
Holiday reveals that the key to success for many perennial sellers is that their creators don’t distinguish between the making and the marketing. The product’s purpose and audience are in the creator’s mind from day one. By thinking holistically about the relationship between their audience and their work, creators of all kinds improve the chances that their offerings will stand the test of time.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
July 18, 2017 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781101992142
- File size: 2238 KB
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781101992142
- File size: 2158 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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April 24, 2017
Following in a long tradition in the self-help genre, Holiday (The Obstacle Is the Way) brings a contemporary sensibility to the subject of making and marketing creative work. In clean, inspiring prose he lays out a process of setting goals, being diligent, making the product sell, and building a career out of what you love. Throughout the book, Holiday presents a playfully varied slate of examples of success: Seneca, Winston Churchill, Iron Maiden, and Kanye West, to name a few. Seeing Holiday’s ideas presented in a logical, step-by-step fashion is tremendously helpful. His injunctions include the following: be clear about what you are doing and what need it meets; think long-term, not short-term; pay attention to detail; be open to criticism; and test ideas. Creating is only the beginning and taking charge of marketing is just as important, he insists. The key here is building a “platform” for reaching an audience, which can mean anything from performing in small clubs to doing an author tour to compiling an email list. Holiday has a tendency to be repetitive and drift into buzzwords and cliché—“be your own CEO,” “an unaimed arrow rarely hits a target”—but he builds a compelling road map to sustainable creativity. -
May 15, 2017
The saying goes, "if you build a better mousetrap...." What's not said is that this doesn't happen by itself. That's where Holiday's (founder, marketing firm Brass Check; The Obstacle Is the Way) book comes into play. In four parts, this work covers the basics: creating, positioning, marketing, and platform. This is not especially new ground: Jim Collins dealt with similar material in Built To Last, and a more academic approach can be found in Clayton Christensen's Seeing What's Next. Most of the examples here deal with consumer products and services. The one weakness concerns the implications of path dependence. On the plus side, Holiday understands the new world order of marketing in a social context. Buzz doesn't happen by itself. However, unlike the proverbial shoemaker, Holiday uses the methods he promulgates. While politics aren't a focal point, there are significant implications for political contests offered. VERDICT The world order has changed--old school marketers take note.--Steven Silkunas, Fernandina Beach, FL
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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