A Point on Presence

"Eighty percent of success is showing up."

--Woody Allen

The inverse is also true: eighty percent of success is getting someone else to show up. When you boil it all down, that's what marketing is all about -- high-tech, consumer, strategic, or otherwise -- it's to get someone present.

In that context, the word is not just a metaphor. Even if someone is physically in the same room with us, we know that what really counts is whether they are really there or are thinking about something else. Furthermore, even if the "room" is virtual (like a website), a person's decision to be present is no less critical.

Presence is perhaps the most important thing people own -- even more than money. That's why victims of assault often take themselves out of the moment if they have no other escape. It's not just to avoid trauma, but also to withhold value.

That's also why getting someone's presence is harder than getting their money -- although the two events often go hand-in-hand, but not always. As Owen Thomas points out in today's CNN Money site, few people who upgrade to Vista will spend much time thinking about it. They'll simply acquire Vista as a byproduct of their next PC purchase. Microsoft may have our money, but does it really have us? Does it matter?

For most of us, however, getting paid means getting other people to show up when we offer them that opportunity. That's why the recent rush to build physical bank branches is so interesting. Physically showing up someplace is the literal definition of the word presence. This is not just "eyeballs" or share-of-mind. This is the real thing. And it obviously has to do with factors other than the product, which is a commodity.

There are, no doubt, a consistent set of universal factors -- some subset of which are involved whenever people volunteer to physically show up. If you know what those are, and can control them, you can probably get people to show up whenever you want. That would make selling anything -- even when physical presence is not technically required -- a lot easier.