People Like Us

Marketer and author Seth Godin has a beautifully simple definition of culture:

"People like us do things like this."

So much of our world is shaped by our powerful drive to organize into groups and align our behavior with one another.

Sometimes when I'm talking to a new customer at the non-profit I work for just outside of Chicago, I ask them how they heard about us. My favorite answer?

"Oh, I live in Evanston."

I love this response, because it suggests that everyone in my employer's city has heard of us. It means that among certain social circles, people assume that you know about this organization.

People like us do things like this.

As a marketer, my job is to grow the number of people who see the work that we do as intrinsic to their community. To continue nudging the culture towards a world where "I live here" is synonymous with engaging with the work that we do.