In Monday’s post we looked at some ideas to help keep your business “Curious, Cool, & Crazy” as prescribed by author Oren Harari. The main ideas were:  

1. having a culture of Disciplined Lunacy that keeps your customers, competitors, and community questioning your sanity, and
2. the importance of investing in design.

Here are two more ideas to add to your Blazing Cool Inferno:

Have a contrarian message

The coolest kids in school, it turns out, were the geeks, rebels, and comedians.  Most of those smarmy popular kids ended up as mediocre insurance salesmen, in a terrible marriage, or both.  

My friend & graphic designer Shawn Hesketh says it really well:  ”Observe the masses, and do the opposite.”  Great message!

The rationale for this is simple:  people and their businesses want to stand out, be cool, get noticed, and thrive.  You are their accessory.  Give them a reason to scratch and claw their way into your circle!  This takes a concerted marketing effort of risk, investment, and of course studying your competition.  

I sometimes deal with clients who want to do a low budget, snail-mail / postcard campaign.  My word of caution is always, “the more your mail piece is shaped like a camel, the better.”  Or, better yet, I tell them, “That’ll never work!!”

The problem is that they’re trusting conventional wisdom.

If conventional wisdom were accurate, everyone would make it and be wealthy. – Alan Weiss

Promise something outlandish

Have you ever promised “customer satisfaction”?  ”Amazing results”?  ”Honesty and integrity”?  ”Top notch service?” “To be the pre-eminent widget company in your area?”  

Forget for a moment that hardly any of those is measurable.  And don’t be like a politician, whose entire world is an outlandish promise.

But consider for a moment that “customer satisfaction” is a horrible metric for success.  

For example, the last time you picked up your drycleaning, were you doing cartwheels down the street, fully celebrating the fact that your shirts were cleaned, pressed, and ready on time?  No.  In fact, unless they do something fantastic (even something small) to make you their raving fan, they are in peril.  Why?  Because the first time they iron a hole into your Versace shirt, they’re toast.  You’ll vow to never go back to that god-forsaken drycleaner as long as you live.  

But, had they established more of a relationship with you, you’d be more likely to forgive the gaffe in favor of maintaining a thriving, reciprocal relationship.  The point is that OF COURSE you have to do things well (dryclean, fix sinks, treat patients, sell widgets).  But to survive in today’s Copycat Economy, you’ve got to really do something marvelous to get noticed.

So, businesses that want to get noticed will make an outlandish promise, and keep it.  

What’s yours?

Related articles:  Increase Your Response:  Make A Bold Promise by David Johnson (Epiphany Marketing)