Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
It’s an easy to understand, difficult to produce strategy. You want to blow someone’s mind, you want to give a customer the greatest experience they’ve ever had, you want your book, your blog, your tweet to impress and influence people in a way they’ve never felt before. Two steps. That’s all it takes.
1. Set expectations high.
2. Overdeliver.
Stay Positive & Are You Giving More (Way More) Than What You Promise?
My ego and I… we’re not on good terms right now. I sold my ugly baby today, four years later than I should have. Of course, not my actual baby (I don’t have one). I sold my Corvette, the first car I ever bought. Steven Dennis reminded me my baby is was ugly. So I did what any leader, any strategist needs to do with their ugly baby… get rid of it.
It’s an attitude I’m proud of acquiring. Remarkable PR folk can’t be remarkable if they hold on to their own (and usually old) ways. Strategists can’t outgrow themselves if they don’t make room to grow. And you can’t be a better you if you don’t let go of what works for what might work a lot better.
Stay Positive & Turn Water Into Wine
Hate may produce some awful things in this world, but we can’t deny it gets the work done.
“If you want to feel ten feet tall and as though you could run a hundred miles without stopping, hate beats pure cocaine any day.” – Kurt Vonnegut
Hate is often confused with passion. You can’t be fueled by hate and be passionate at the same time, they are opposites, they are different means for meeting the same goal. So I offer the discontent transition. The trek from hatred to passion.
step 1) What is it you want?
step 2) Make sure it’s something positive. Wanting to crush your competitors in the market is negative. Wanting to have a strong share in the market is positive.
step 3) For everything you hate along the way, refer back to step two.
Discontent is the path from hate to passion, and it’s all a matter of how you look at things.
Stay Positive & Feel The Passion
Television commercials for kids toys work great because of the TV shows that surrounds them. Fun, goofy, colorful. Put an ad for smoking between, it may not work great, but it will work because kids love the programming around it.
Beer commercials on the radio country station work great because of the music that surrounds them. Put an ad for a new pizza cutter in there, it may not work great, but it will work because people love the music around it.
Random ads on your blog work great because of the content that surrounds them. Crafty, perhaps, or motivational or delicious – whatever feeling you’re expressing on your blog. Put an ad for potatoes on a crafts blog, a boat battery on a motivation blog or a new pen on a foodie page, it may not work great, but it will work because people love the content around it.
The only ads that don’t work in this world, are the ads that have nothing surrounding them.
The ads that work great, are the ads that have great content around them.
The best ads, though, is the content.
Stay Positive & What Are You Advertising (Around)
It seems fair and you might think it’s smart to wait to see if the newest social media platform works before jumping in, to wait to see if selling books in a milk carton is a good idea (it is) before you try something new with your book, to wait to see if the ad agency that focuses on a few perfect ads rather than a million mediocre ones will succeed before you adopt a similar strategy.
The only problem when you’ve waited too long to see if a risk someone else takes works out is when you finally take the risk yourself, you’re jumping into a bandwagon already filled with mediocrity. Different wagon. Same story.
There’s no shame in not being first, but there’s plenty in the middle.
Stay Positive & You Don’t Need 1,000 Success Stories, One Will Do
The chances are whatever you tell yourself they are.
Most great work never happens because there’s a chance of failure, there’s a chance someone might not like it, there’s a chance no angel will invest in it.
The innate decision to declare what the chances really are to you is what I dub Pulling Wisdom.
When you get your wisdom teeth pulled (it’s now seven hours post-operation for me), before any work is done the surgeon tells you all the risks. He even lays them out to you in a list you have to read and sign off. He says there’s a 10 percent chance of this happening and a 1 percent chance of that happening. You may feel drowsy and some people vomit after.
How is this process (that so many people go through) differ any from launching a new project, starting a business, writing a book, creating a new mobile app?
You can tell yourself there’s a 10 percent chance this particular group of people won’t like your art and a 1 percent chance that you will get an investor to fund everything you dreamed up. You may feel fear along the way, you might fail, and yes, some people vomit after.
Pull out your notes, write out the risks of your venture, state what the chances of this or that happening are and then sign off on it.
There may be people who are more qualified to be a surgeon than you, and I would never suggest you pull your own wisdom teeth out, but no one is better at getting what you want than you. No one is better at turning ideas into actions and actions into art.
The risks are the same for everyone. You just have to sign off on it.
Stay Positive & Keep Motivated With Lots Of Iscream Along The Way
I was 14 when I got my first pair of Nike Frees. I don’t remember seeing a TV ad or hearing a radio ad for them, I don’t remember any clerk selling me on them. I remember a sign right above the shoes at Dick’s Sporting Goods, it said “it’s like running barefoot.”
I didn’t need a salesman at that point, I didn’t need an elaborate YouTube video describing all the “special features” of the shoe. I knew it would make me feel as if I were barefoot… and I loved being barefoot.
A lot of products and services try to sell us stories, stories of high fashion, of playing like an all-star, of being more creative than others. Then there are the products and services that remind us of the stories we already tell ourselves.
The best brand strategy isn’t one that sticks to a wall, it’s one that throws itself at a wall that is already sticky.
Stay Positive & Welcome, Brand Journalism
