The day of the low-hanging fruit

Putting effort into something, sinking your teeth into it, making an effort, is basically of all times. To find out about something. To discover something new. Changing the world. Or if necessary, to simply move up a rung. Achieve a result. It has brought us a lot. But recently there has been a real shift in attitude. Making an effort for something is not so obvious anymore. ‘Low-hanging fruit’ is the bomb. At least, in many marketing departments.

Sure you have to be smart about budgets. Divide tasks well. Prioritizing. Occasionally a quick win. But there is a limit to low-hanging fruit. And it is literally at kitchen stool height. What am I saying, if you want to stand on your toes, you are already too far. Putting in the effort to make a product or service a success is no longer an option. So it seems. Efforts to take the organization’s branding to the next level? What about with strategy, don’t you have a Tinder-like app for that?

“There is a limit to low-hanging fruit. And that
is literally at kitchen stool height.”

Slowly but surely, the for-one-double-upon-the-first-row mentality is taking over. ‘With a mere Facebook like and one share, I can win three weeks of luxury villa on the French coast, right?’ The call for low-hanging fruit. It’s the first fifty square feet on the beach where everyone plops down to have the beach bar at their fingertips for the rest of the day. Low-hanging fruit. It is your book list filled with mere excerpts. The prepackaged pancake. It is the Kijkduin for Pokémon hunters. It is Trump who shouts that there is no climate problem in order to score in the short term. And then puts the problem on someone else.

Low-hanging fruit will not get you anywhere, will keep you stuck in the gray fog. With the prospect of a quick advantage. And because it comes to blows, is for little, or is free, all the competition hangs out there too. A good time to stick your neck out and work on your distinctive character, you might say. But no. Your boss signed you up for “The Day of the Low-Hanging Fruit. A seminar where you will learn all about “smarter,” “more,” “faster,” and most importantly, “free. However, the seminar itself costs one thousand euros. But with lots of cheap marketing on the horizon, your boss has that going for him.