I just threw my newsletter into the Mississippi River

Lateral Saturdays: Messages-in-bottles, do people even read 'em anymore?

Word-of-mouth remains one of the strongest forms of marketing.

I don’t know if messages-in-bottles are a close runner up or not.

But I aim to find out.

The afternoon of November 4, I threw ten bottles into the river to see where they’d go.

On Sunday, the full backstory will be released on my YouTube channel — you can subscribe and get notified when that happens.

Really, this is only “marketing” on a surface level.

I want this to be about human connection.

For the past two days, I have been organizing a campaign to reach people — to share my fascination with creativity.

Why not take a medium like messages-in-bottles and use that to reach new readers?

This, like what I hope to do more of on my channel, is an experiment.

God forbid it sets any trends…

Finding media that circumvents the web — that enables that word-of-mouth — is a key way I believe we rise above the noise.

Sure, there will always be noise.

But this is the dolly-zoom of noise — the background recedes and the foreground is emanant.

What brings a filter for the noise?

Community.

The right idea reaches the right people, connecting each of them together around it.

The experiment is really just a matter of highlighting the abstractions in strategy that are necessary to finding community.

To find community, you have to find the people you resonate with.

It’s like… clanging two metal sections of furniture together accidentally and realizing you’ve just found a pitch.

That’s what communicating a meaningful idea is like.

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It was a gorgeous day to be out by the river.

Subscribe to my YouTube channel and get notified when the video premieres Sunday afternoon.

What do you think?

Will it work?

I had my doubts, but I spoke to some college students down by the river.

They seemed excited about the idea.

Gives ya some hope.

Ridiculous?

Probably.

But that’s just what’s on the menu here.

-Clayton

I’m interested to see what effect the river levels caused by the drought will have on the travel of the bottles.