Well regulars readers may have noticed that I have changed the name of my blog yet again . . . I am discovering more and more that my "stupidity" brand is really resonating with a lot of people, and, in following the 1st immutable law of branding, (i.e., BE FIRST), I am grabbing a fabulously unused bundle of universal energy (Stupidity) and making it my own.
Anyway, I have been reading this book by Al Ries (called the 22 Immutable Rules of Branding –he wrote a very similar book about marketing) . . . In it he makes a most enlightening point (as he foretold the ever decreasing market share of General Motors), which is, to make it in a major market, you must somehow distinguish yourself from the competition. If you aren’t the first one in, merely imitating someone else’s product or service, or just "being better" will never make you a major player. Instead, you must "own" a specific attribute of the product. Examples: Listerine tastes awful but kills germs. Scope tastes better. Same product, but 2 different attributes are emphasized, creating a "choice." And people like choices like that. He explains it in the book better.
In the world of cars, so says Ries, BMW owns the word "driving," Mercedes owns "Engineering" (like no other car in the word), Ford owns "tough," and Honda and Toyota own "dependable" . . But in a book written long before the current fiasco at GM, what, he asks, do GM cars stand for? Can you even tell a Buick from a Pontiac if you saw them parked side by side?
What Mr. Ries points out over and over is how people in high management positions rely far too much on generally accepted theory and research, and less on hard-earned personal experience. There is always always always always the tendency to "play it safe" and do what all the other "experts" are doing. Great companies are almost always started by maverick innovative thinkers who go against the conventional wisdom, but then at some point those companies start to be managed by business school graduates, and in most cases, those managers copy, mimic, and emulate. They make themselves, their companies, and their products ever more generic. This is all done in the name of gaining greater market share, but almost always, they end up losing market share by losing their unique market identity (or "brand").
Successful products certainly must offer intrinsic value, but once the competition starts grabbing your customers, you must show how you are different if you are to maintain customer interest and loyalty. And sadly, most people have a deathly fear of being different. Hence, this blog, my books, and me.
In doing this blog, my speaking appearances, and just generally advising people about my own experience of achieving success in competitive fields, I see folks making the same mistake over and over again, and it is a predictable one. We are all, for the most part, products of institutional education– 12-16 or more years of it in most cases . . And if you have ever read the Twelve Year Sentence, you know that American public schools were created, not to teach any particular academic skills, but to assimilate a huge immigrant population into "American" values and culture. That’s a polite way of saying the schools were originally designed to teach kids to conform, be obedient to higher authority, and be loyal to their (new) government. While it’s covered up now with a lot of ideological PR, that model and approach has never left us.
There is a lot to be said for going to school, but what gets left out is the need to take the fundamentals one learns in school and take the next step, i.e., use them to strike out in your own unique direction. After so many years of being endlessly rewarded for conforming to the institution’s ways of doing business, most people never develop their own originality. That intrinsic unique originality that you own was probably labeled as stupid by someone sometime, so I am grabbing hold of that word and hopefully turning its massive potential energy to your advantage.
What I am trying to do with this blog is not try to be a master of major corporate business practice, but instead share the lessons I learned about branding and marketing in one of the most competitive environments imaginable, i.e., the music business . . . and show people, who have had the advantage (or should I say, the disadvantage) of way too much school and conformity training, some basic techniques in daring to be different, on a gut level.
I use the word "stupidity" here to call into the open the dark fear we learn of being different. This is purely an emotional issue . . . and who better to deal with emotional issues than a musician? (I used to be ashamed of being "just a bass player"– now, amongst non-bass players, I use it as a brand identity advantage. You catching on yet?) And hopefully these little essays will give you some ideas on how to better embrace your own original unique self (or the originality of your product/service), and use those supposed flaws and imperfections and deviations from the norm to your advantage.
By the way, my appearance on Chronicle HD (on WCVB, Boston’s ABC affiliate) can be viewed online HERE
and of course, click on the book cover to order your copy!
© Justin Locke
