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You already know the answer. So what are you waiting for?
A couple of years ago, I decided to have my business cards revamped. There was nothing wrong with the old ones, but I still had 500 sitting in a box between my stress-reliever balls (don’t ask) and a pile of scrap paper.
I’d just grown tired of them, so it was time for a change.
And then I hit on a great idea: a business card with my photo on it. I’d never seen one before, and thought it would be a novelty.
And novelty gets noticed, I told myself. (In fact, I was so pleased with the phrase, I briefly contemplated putting an (R) after it.)
And so my new cards were born. Several shades of green, just enough Verdana to look classy, and lots of white space. Plus a not-so-bad mugshot of me.
The following Monday, I went to visit a new client. And I was all stocked up with a wodge of business cards. As I took my seat in their swanky offices, I extracted one and slid it across the table.
The client smiled. I’d obviously made an impression – but it wasn’t the one I thought.
He scooped up the card, peered at it and said, “Ah – another business card with a photo. Look, Andrea!” he said to his marketing manager, who was joining us. “Just like whatsisname – you know, the accountant guy.”
He turned to me, and smiled. “He’s such an idiot. And ugly too.”
First among equals
You’ve guessed it – the way to get noticed is to be different. But if you’re going to be different, you need to be first.
And that’s not always easy. I’ve written about bandwagons before. By the time you know they’re around, it’s already too late.
You need to think one step ahead. What would get you noticed right now? This very moment? What is nobody else doing?
And if you can’t work that one out, tackle the problem from the opposite point of view: what’s everybody doing?
Figure it out, then do something different. It’s really not that hard.
When websites are getting more and more complicated, with flying menus, in-your-face Flash animations and ads everywhere, think simplicity.
There’s a reason why Google’s home page is so bare. And why Craigslist, the 47th most-visited site in the world, is so plain. Encyclopedia Britannica has lots of stuff on the home page. That’s one of the reasons why Wikipedia doesn’t.
Plane crazy
When you last flew, did you take any notice of the safety demonstration by the cabin crew? Of course not – because you’ve heard it a hundred times. It’s boring.
A flight attendant on Southwest Airlines realised just that, so he delivered his talk with a twist: he rapped it.
Suddenly, he had people’s attention. One of them even videoed it and put it on Youtube. The Rapping Flight Attendant clocked up 100,000 views in next to no time.
Of course, if all flight attendants start rapping, then we’ve got a problem. But somehow I don’t think that’s on the cards.
I did it my way
Doing what everybody else is doing will never get you noticed. There are millions of blogs out there, so what makes yours different? Are you just aping somebody else’s style in the hope that you can garner some of their success?
You can’t. And for one simple reason: they were there first. So do something else instead.
Like Darren Rowse over at Problogger. He’s been putting videos on his blog every week for the last year, which is just one of the reasons he’s on my must-read must-view list.
So the message is simple: be different, be bold. But above all, be first.
Now I wonder if anybody is using rapping business cards? If they aren’t, then that may well be my path to success.
Or maybe not. I’ll have to give it some thought.
Not every craze is good. Some are just crazy.
Do you tweet?
I don’t. I almost did – last year, carried along on a wave of enthusiasm for Twitter, I signed up for an account.
Imagine if somebody had come to me five years ago and said they had a great new idea. From my mobile phone, I could send frequent updates (but no longer than 140 characters) to a public site, listing my most insignificant daily doings, my moods, my highs and lows, and my innermost thoughts.
I’d have thought they were one bit short of a byte. So would you. So would we all.
But then along came Twitter. And lo, people tweeted.
So by last year, I was in good company. After all, if Barack Obama was doing it, there had to be something in it, right?
Not necessarily. But it does tell us something important about the human mind.
If you’re the only person doing something, it takes a lot of strength of character to keep it up. But if you know that thousands out there are doing the same, you can go to bed happy at night.
Just think about it.
10 years ago, men wouldn’t have gone around with plastic Alice bands in their hair – they just wouldn’t. And then footballers started doing it, and it became socially acceptable.
The same goes for jeans worn at half-mast. It’s not practical (they keep falling down) it’s not stylish (your underwear spills out over the top) and it’s not attractive (especially viewed from behind, going up steps).
So why do people do it?
Peer pressure. Social acceptability. The desire to fit in with the crowd.
Also, the desire to be different. There’s just one hitch: if lots of people are doing it, you’re not a rebel.
You’re a conformist.
Facing the music
Here’s the thing about Twitter and Facebook: they require lots of time and even more thought. And you need to think very carefully first what it does to your corporate image.
Early last year, a friend sent me an email that was brimming over with exclamation marks. Look what he’d found! A business associate’s Facebook page.
So what, I thought? Lots of people use Facebook in a professional capacity. Then I had a look. My eyes widened, and my jaw dropped.
This senior director of a large international organisation had slung all his dirty laundry on his virtual clothes-line. Photos, compromising detail, names, dates, places. Everything on public show, in the public domain.
All you had to do was Google his name and you’d go straight to his Facebook page.
A week later, I checked back for more juicy details, but the page had vanished. Good sense, it seems, had finally prevailed. Nonetheless, the damage was done.
Look before you leap
Not all crazes are bad. Nor are they good. The important thing is to stop, think and ask yourself why you’re considering jumping on this particular bandwagon.
The key here is authenticity. If it doesn’t feel right for you, don’t do it. Just like Cinderella’s ugly sisters, if the shoe doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit – no matter how many times you try it on.
So what does all of this have to do with business?
Everything.
For just as we decide to stick Alice bands in our hair, let our jeans hang low and sport a stud in our eyebrow, so every business decision we make is subject to the pull of the crowd.
- Do you really need to put Flash on your site? Why? If nobody was doing it, would you?
- Do you absolutely have to blog? Yes, corporate blogging’s the Next Big Thing, but can you keep it updated day after day, week after week?
- Do you need a mission statement? (Let me answer that for you – no. When they were new, they were new. Now that they’re old, they’re old. Dump it, and do something different.)
- Is a focus group really better than your gut feel? And if they come back with something you think is wrong, who’s right?
The list is endless. But the lesson is simple: whenever you see a bandwagon go by, ask yourself if you know where it’s going. And whether the journey is worth it.
Because not jumping on it might just make you stand out from the crowd.
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We all do it – so why not use it to your advantage?
Did you blow out over Christmas? Wine, beer, sherry, turkey, mince pies, Christmas pudding, cakes, chocolates, and lots of yummy cheese?
If you did, perhaps you’ve blown up too. And you’ve seen the inevitable New Year, new you! headlines in the glossy weekend supplements. So maybe you’re thinking about turning over a new leaf.
And what better way to do it than a detox?
Well here’s a newsflash: detox doesn’t exist.
UK charitable trust Sense About Science recently investigated 15 detox products from bottled water to face scrub. And their conclusions? The detox claims, they said, are “meaningless”.
We’d be better off, according to them, eating healthily and getting a good night’s sleep.
Their claims caused a furious debate. I heard one myself, on BBC radio.
On one side, a spokeswoman for Sense About Science. On the other, a woman who’d been through a five-day detox, and said the results were amazing.
So who’s right?
They both are.
The scientists are right because the science is undeniable. But the detox fans are right because they believe they’re right. They’ve told themselves that detox exists – so it does.
It’s their story, and they’re sticking to it.
Tell (a story), don’t show
We all tell ourselves stories.
I do (I’ve even got some ‘detox tea’ in my cupboard to prove it). You do. Everybody does. It’s part of who we are and how we function.
It’s something Seth Godin explores in his addictive (in a good way) book All Marketers Are Liars. It’s packed full of examples of how we tell ourselves stories about everything. That’s our way of justifying purchases, cutting through the clutter of choice, and making ourselves feel good.
Often, we use stories to deceive ourselves. Here are just a few examples I picked up on recently:
- A woman at my gym who spends £30 an hour (her membership only costs £35 a month) once a week to chat to her personal trainer. She’s told herself she’s working harder, that it’s easier when you’ve got somebody motivating you, that it gives her structure and purpose. But it doesn’t. In six months, to my inexpert eye, she’s lost no weight. If anything, she’s gained weight.
- Two acquaintances of mine who proudly announced that they’re self-diagnosed dyslexics. Their spelling is pretty bad, but it’s easier to blame it on a medical condition than do something about it.
- An art gallery in Melbourne that gushed with enthusiasm over a new artist, until they discovered she was only two years old.
OK, these examples are frivolous, but they prove a serious point.
People aren’t looking for facts. They’re looking for a story. And it’s a hugely powerful marketing tactic you can use to your advantage.
The plot thickens
Let’s be clear here: we’re not talking about deceiving people. If you market something using deceptive practices, you’ll be found out – every time.
Instead, what you need to do is put yourself inside the mind of your potential customer. What stories do they tell themselves? What, in the words of the Wise One (Seth), is their worldview?
Find out that, and you know how to talk to them.
Why do people pay what they do for works of art? An art dealer friend put it very succinctly to me:
“Art isn’t ‘worth’ anything,” she said. “It’s simply an agreed point on a spectrum, usually midway between the buyer and seller.”
In other words, they tell themselves a story. If they didn’t, how would they justify paying (or charging) a fortune for pickled sharks and unmade beds?
Baby on board stickers work because it bypasses the need for speed and appeals to people’s parental instincts. The same goes for safety cameras (the new name for – you guessed it – speed cameras in the UK).
Once you know what’s important to people, you can look at your product or service from their point of view – using their vocabulary and terms of reference.
Or put another way, tell them a story.
So what’s your story?
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The good, the bad and the very bad
Another year rides off into the sunset, and a new one dawns. But before it does, here are the highlights of my blogging year:
And that’s it. See you in 2009.
Find it, position it, sell it
Last year, somebody sent me flowers for my birthday. It was a lovely gesture, but it’s not the flowers that stick in my mind. Instead, it was the way they were delivered.
Not by a surly, shaven-headed driver in a white van. But by a fresh-faced young guy with a broad smile and an unusual mode of transport. For Outspoken Delivery have no vans at all – just a fleet of strange-looking bicycles.
They claim they’re ’100% emission free (excluding a little hot air)’. And one of their testimonials says “Don’t use this business! They’re so good, I want them all for myself”.
How could you not like them?
They may not be the fastest. They may not be the cheapest. But they’re certainly the most different. And that’s why I’d use them.
Wouldn’t you?
Stand out or stand down
We all like to think we’re different. We tell our customers we’re different. We say it so much we actually end up believing it. But we’re often just deluding ourselves and the customer sees right through it.
Being different means really being different. Like woot.com. They sell stuff on the internet. So what?
Well here’s the difference: they sell just one item a day – until midnight, or until their stock runs out.
Today, it might be a vacuum cleaner, tomorrow a USB heated coffee mat. And when the clock strikes twelve, they move on. It doesn’t matter that they could have sold another 500.
When it’s over, it’s over. It’s a silly, irrational, counter-intuitive idea. And it’s wildly popular.
A sideways view
We can’t all turn our business model on its head, or turn to pedal power when it doesn’t make sense. Wacky is good, but only if it makes money.
But we can step back and take a different view.
Tom’s of Maine manufactures toothpaste. So how can they take on the giants of the toothpaste world?
Simple.
By telling a story, and making it personal. Check out their website, and you’ll see no corporate double-speak. Behind Tom’s of Maine is a charming, smiley couple called Tom and Kate.
Their toothpaste isn’t cheaper – in fact, it’s much more expensive. And it’s not everywhere – they sell mainly through health-food stores.
But it’s very, very successful. And from toothpaste they’ve expanded to a whole range of healthcare products.
Different is memorable. Different sells.
Different is what makes the difference.
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