I just watched The Big Lebowski again.  It’s not for everyone; it did terribly in the box office back in 1998.  Now, it has a massive following worldwide.  There are festivals, message boards, even a recognized religion with an official website for followers of dudeism.

The Dude talks of takin’ it easy, man.  What will come will come, and when it comes – you just take it and move on.  It’s a philosophy that has served me exceptionally well during my years in marketing.  There’s a lot of literature out there talking about what works in marketing, where it works, what doesn’t work, what works to what degree.  There are hundreds of discussions debating the validity of one method over another.

Debating the validity of one method over another is, well, kind of pointless and not dude-like at all.  Everything works.  If it didn’t work, it probably wouldn’t exist.  There are varying levels of effectiveness, though I don’t think one can debate what that is without trying it.  It’s a marketer’s responsibility to learn and experiment with whichever disciplines they want to specialize in, because when you can prove your answers to the questions of viability it’s easy to get work.

If you don’t know the answer to a marketing question, it’s ok.  Have a seat, take a sip of your white russian and think about your options in terms of  time, money and risk.

If you have the time, you can do the thing yourself.
If you can’t do the thing yourself, you’ll need to scrap the idea or pay someone else.
If you find a cheap and fast solution, it will be accompanied by a massive risk.

There’s nothing wrong with risk, or spending time or money.  If black-hat SEO didn’t work (cloaking and scraping for example) people wouldn’t keep doing it.  Sure, it’s insidious, but it works.  It works most effectively when seasoned hatters sit at the helm of the spam-train.  It works least effectively when you have to search for “how to do black hat SEO”.  It will probably destroy your brand and your reputation, but it definitely works to generate revenue.  White hat SEO takes a long, long time but there’s virtually no risk and the payout always happens, eventually.

This is where Dudeism is helpful.  There is a path of least resistance, and there is a path of utter improbability.   The path of utter improbability contains great treasure and great rewards but is a hard and dangerous journey.  The path of least resistance is cool, meandering, easy and breezy but the pay is terrible.

What about you?  Would you rather take massive risks for a possible quick payout?  Would you rather pay for perfection?  Or take the time and do it yourself?  Whichever you choose, the Dude abides.