Z.E.R.O.: Zero Paid Media as the New Marketing Model

CHAPTER20

That's Great . . . Now What the Hell Do I Do Next?

What's next? The short answer: anything. Something. The longer answer is to make a genuine and earnest commitment to change. Make a pledge or take the pledge to Z.E.R.O. Embrace your heresy. Define your legacy. Challenge your internal team, your constituents, and your external partners to bring new ideas to the table, to fire themselves before you fire them, to reboot as Mitch Joel would have you do.

The opportunity cost of doing nothing is armageddon. The stakes are ultimately survival, but death by a thousand paper cuts—or, in this case, a thousand thousandths of a percentage point of market share translates into millions of dollars of revenue lost.

Hey, Chubby, Get into That Gym

This book begins by discussing the obesity epidemic, and here we are at the tail end of the book talking about your seat once again—the seat of your derriere, the seat at the strategic and decision-making table, and the seat at your consumer's consideration set table.

Paid media's waste has become nuclear, and it's time to figure out ways to address the problem and concoct a series of triangulated solutions, be they defensive (“What if we're wrong?” aka protecting the cash cow) or offensive (“What if we're right?” aka sacred cow burgers).

We chose to go straight for the jugular instead of pussyfooting around the elephant in the room. We aren't doing you any favors by telling you what a great job you're currently doing. (By the way, have you ...