So. We *are* all weird. And we should celebrate that.

That familiar saying, “the average person things they are not average, thats what makes them average”, kept popping into my mind when I read this book. It makes an interesting read around the idea of personal choice, of treating different people differently and feeds into other large ideas such as leverage and scale.

This book felt like a war cry of “be ok with who you are”, on many levels fro the stuff we buy to the people we believe we are. Certainly in the world of consumerism, things were easier when we were all lumped together, right there in the middle of the bell curve. It was easier to reach us all that way, so there we stayed.

But, things are changing, fast. Conformity is out, and the kaleidoscope is in. Weird doesn’t mean oddball (although it certainly can!), it simple means choice. Being able to choose is at the core of feeling rich. And it’s available to us all.

This book very much reminded me of Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail”, and exists as a nice companion piece to that body of work. The idea of smaller and smaller interest groups has a huge pact on the role of marketing, of mass communication and society at large. We see it every day online and to have it pointed out in such starkness, to really understand that it’s actually in front of us, is a shot in the arm.

We are all Weird is a quick read, and very much worth it even to get a fresh perspective on understanding the myriad ways in which we are different, but kind of the same. If marketing is your thing, it’s a must-read.

Next Up: The Icarus Deception