The Thing About Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban seems to be a very polarizing personality. Everything he does, everything he says, seems to get blown up in the news.

But here's the thing.

Love him or hate him, he draws attention to the things he talks about and cares about. There's a little rule about marketing and sales that many people fail to understand:

DON'T BE AFRAID TO POLARIZE PEOPLE WITH YOUR PRODUCT. Trying to please everyone guarantees your mediocrity.

Think about TIVO, Scion XB from Toyota, think about Apple Computer, the list goes on and on... add some of your own to the list. You love them, or you hate them.

People think that if you use polarizing speech and marketing techniques, you're doing yourself a disservice. That's not true.

I think Cuban is a very smart person. Granted, he's been in the right place at the right time, a lot of times in his relatively young career. But is that all by accident? I think not. Some people have the ability to create The Perfect Storm around them, consistently.

He's done it at least three times, in a major way, starting when he was 21.

Marketing and sales departments would do well to find these types of people and hold onto them. Trouble is, these types aren't typically going to be satisfied with a corporate gig. That is, unless they see an opportunity to take over the entire company. Then they'll stick around.

Just a thought. A random one.