The Art of Evangelism – Guy Kawasaki at Gnomedex

August 11, 2007 | Marketing

Guy Kawasaki is the original tech evangelist online. He came to Gnomedex and did a great talk. Guy is a fantastic speaker. He knows what he’s talking about, and he communicates in a clear and humorous way. He had the crowd in stitches several times. The topic of his talk? The Art of Evangelism.

The word “evangelism” comes from a Greek word meaning “Bringing the good news”. A tech evangelist is a person who promotes and talks about technology, usually new technology. What’s interesting to me is if you Google search for “tech evangelist”, you see a lot of the names pop up who are here at Gnomedex. So, Guy defined 11 points to the art of successful evangelism:

Make Meaning
Make Mantra. It is a huge mistake to create a “mission statement”. Huge buzzwords, and they mean nothing and generally suck. Guy gave the example of the mission statement of Wendys. It reads: “The mission of Wendy’s is to deliver superior quality products and services for our customer and communities through leadership, innovation and partnerships.” OK, it’s buzzword heavy, but seriously, has any trip to Wendy’s had you thinking of these words? Probably not. If anything, I’m thinking “this looks nothing like I see on TV”. Guy says to, instead, use 2 or 3 words. Wendy’s would then read: “Healthy fast food”. Nike: “Authentic athletic performance”. Fedex: “”Peace of Mind”. Ebay: “Democratization of Commerce”. Check out the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator for a good laugh.
Roll the DICEE. Deep, Intelligent, Complete, Elegant (like Apple), Emotive. Guy’s golden touch: “Whatever is gold, Guy touches”. Make something work evangelizing.
Niche Thyself. You don’t want to do what everybody else does. You also don’t want to do what nobody is doing because it won’t make any money (in other words, it’s stupid). Instead, you want to do something that nobody else is doing, but truly offers value to the user and is, thus, worth money.
Let a hundred flowers blossom. Meaning, make it flexible and don’t build yourself into a box.
Make it personal. Ever think about HP’s recent ad campaign that reads: “The PC is Personal Again”?
Find the true influencers. The higher you go in an organization, the thinner the air. Find the TRUE influencers, which is usually the people further down the hierarchy. Bloggers, anyone?
Enable test drives. You WANT people to test your products and your ideas.
Look for agnostics, not atheists. In other words, you can’t necessarily sell to somebody who is against the concept, but you can sell to somebody who is not familiar with it at all or is a bit of a doubter.
Provide a slippery slope. Allow your product to lead into others. Easily.
Don’t let the bozos grind you down. There are going to be some who say you are dumb for doing what you’re doing. Guy brought up a quote of his own when he turned down an opportunity to interview for the CEO position of a little known company called Yahoo. Yeah, that worked out.

Lastly, when it comes to developing a new product, Guy has a very memorable motto: “Don’t Worry be Crappy”. In other words, don’t wait to launch. All first products have some bugs. People will accept some bugs for something innovative. If you wait until everything is perfect, others will surpass you quickly.

While Robert Steele brought Gnomedex 2007 out of the gates with an overly political, pompous smart-ass soapbox speech, Guy Kawasaki made a truly useful speech which was a real pleasure to listen to.

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