Change Agent - Issue 45

There's one other thing that you can do if such approaches fail: Get out of the wrapper business. Rededicate your company to making things that do something better. Because, while wrappers are fun, sexy, and media-worthy, you'll never go hungry in the long run if you can offer people something that is really and truly better. After all, as Freud once observed, a cigar may be just a cigar. But no one thinks twice about the cellophane wrapper.

Seth Godin (sgodin@fastcompany.com) is the author of Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends, and Friends Into Customers (Simon & Schuster, 1999) and Unleashing the Ideavirus (Do You Zoom Inc., 2000). Get his latest book for free on the Web (www.ideavirus.com).