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Do Something Different Welcome to the DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT pages! If you have come to this section via reading my book, "Do Something Different", thanks for buying it! If not, hurry to your nearest bookshop (in the UK,) or buy it on line at Amazon.co.uk, because it features the 14 key principles of marketing yourself and your work, and offers you 100 case studies from which to learn. If you want to order it right now, why not use the Amazon.co.uk or Barnes and Noble links below?
On this site, we’ll be adding more inspirational case studies, guiding you to useful marketing resources on the Internet, and keeping you posted on other news and reviews. Please explore the rest of the BrainstormNet.com website, too—it offers lots of information on how to be more creative in all aspects of your life. Also, why not sign up for our creativity e-bulletin? It comes to you once a month, and we never sell or share our subscribers’ names. All you have to do is click on the link below, or send us an email with your name and e-mail address and the word "subscribe" in the message line or the text box of your e-mail. Now,
click on the links below and have a look around, and find out some new
ways to boost your business by doing something different! MORE INSPIRATIONAL CASE STUDIES OTHER NEWS AND RESOURCES YOU CAN USE
MORE
INSPIRATIONAL CASE STUDIES If
you’ve enjoyed reading the case studies in the book, Do Something
Different,” here are some more to inspire you. By the way, we welcome
YOUR success stories, and would love to add them to the site and the
next edition of the book. Just send us a summary of how you’ve done
something different to market yourself, your business, or your service,
along with your name and e-mail address so we can contact you for more
details if necessary. Now here are some to get you started: 1.
RHINO RECORDS: FOLLOW YOUR TASTE Most
people running record labels try to guess what the buying public will
like, and put their own tastes to one side. Not Rhino Records. It’s
gone from a tiny company to one that grosses over $70 million a year, by
following the tastes of founders Richard Foos and Harold Bronson (and
later the tastes of many of their 130 employees). In
“Success” magazine, Foos said, “We put out albums we would like to
hear.” Many of their albums are collections of archive material that
are hard or impossible to get elsewhere, and now they have expanded to
books and videos as well. Their
“do something different” philosophy definitely extended to some of
the crazy things they did to get customers in to their first retail
outline in Westwood, Los Angeles. They had Redneck Day, Polka Day,
Jewish Day, even Hassle the Salesman day. Eventually they sold the store
and started issuing novelty records that got airplay on alternative
radio stations. Next came re-issues of deleted albums that woke up
nostalgic feelings in the baby-boom generation. And
always the guys depended on their own judgment. Foos summarizes it well:
“We had the advantage of making it up as we went along. We weren’t
limited by the rules.” 2.
LIVING ARTS: DON’T LET
THEM WEAR YOU DOWN (WEAR THEM DOWN, INSTEAD!) Back
in the late 80’s, yoga-fan Steven Adams wanted to distribute his yoga
video in book chains like Waldenbooks. They thought the product was too
far out for their mainstream customers (many branches of Waldenbooks
were located in suburban shopping centers). In
1988, Adams flew East four times to make presentations to the
Waldenbooks head office. Finally they agreed to stock a massage video
fronted by Shari Belafonte—but not the yoga video. Still,
Adams didn’t give up. He showed Waldenbooks that his yoga videos sold
well through catalogues. Finally the buyer found it easier to stock the
videos than to keep listening to Adams. A year later, “Yoga Practice
for Beginners” became the chain’s best-selling non-theatrical video.
Now the video has sold over a million copies (from all forms of
distribution, and the company grosses over $12 million a year. 3.
U-SAVE AUTO RENTAL OF AMERICA: GO FOR SECOND PLACE! Tom
McDonnell, CEO of U-Save Auto Rentals of America Inc., is proud of being
number two. In fact, he plans on staying there. The market leader in
off-airport car rental agencies is Enterprise, with about 60% of the
market; U-Save wants to have 25%. McDonnell
says that following the leader has a lot of advantages. For example,
Enterprise spends a lot of money finding exactly the right sites. U-Save
doesn’t. As McDonnell told “Entrepreneur” magazine, “I tell our
people to locate as close as possible to an Enterprise store—directly
across the street, if possible.” With
his eye on profitability rather than market share, being number two is
just fine with McDonnell: “We absolutely believe it’s a key
strength,” he says. 4.
HENDLIN VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS: MAKE IT UP! Do
you know that the Minnesota Fighting Ticks, the state’s first
professional ice-skating team won the international ice-fishing
championship last year? You might have read or heard about it in
regional and national media. If so, you were had. Neither the
championship nor the team exist. They
were all a figment of the imagination of the Gary Hendlin and his team
at Hendlin Visual Communications, a marketing agency. They used it as a
self-promotion exercise, even designing a website, issuing sham tickets, and
eventually selling hats, t-shirts, and other merchandize. As
an attention getting device it really worked, even though a couple of
reporters were annoyed at having been fooled. 5.
OPENAIR.COM INC.: CALL YOUR CUSTOMERS Bill
O’Farrell, CEO of OpenAir.com Inc., a company that sells professional
services software, believes that it’s important to bond with the
customer. How to do it? Call them. In OpenAir’s case, that means
calling 200 new customers every day, which means that just about
everybody at the company has to get on the phone. COO
Morris Panner told “Fast Company” magazine, “These aren’t
telemarketing calls. There’s no script. It’s designed to be a
bonding effort between us and the customers.” The callers also spend a little time each day talking about the topics that come up in these calls—it’s an early warning system for topics that might need attention. It’s hard to measure the effect of these efforts, but the company’s executives feel they are vital to keeping information flowing and being responsive to customers. 6.
MILANO SERIES INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTS LTD.: PAY ATTENTION! Milano
sells desk accessories in a variety of colors for the last few years,
but when the iMac took off, they saw a chance to piggyback on the
colorful computers’ success. In the summer of 2000, they launched a
collection of translucent paper trays, pen beakers, and other goodies in
colors similar to that of the iMacs, and called it the i-Collection. The
company has not released sales figures just for that line (overall, they
gross about $160 million a year), but they report that giving it an
identity allied with that of the comoputers for people who ‘think
different’ has been a winner. We will add more case studies every month, so come back and check again for more ideas you can use!
The Internet offers a huge variety of marketing information. It varies in quality (some of the sites and newsletters really push the “hard sell” and thus are not so much fun to use). There is also a wealth of magazines that have useful marketing material, but it costs a fortune to subscribe to them all (I know, because I do!). I thought we’d get this section started with the Internet addresses of some of the best magazines with the best sites. As you’ll see, the usual suspects are listed here, but so are some magazines you might not be familiar with. All of these have useful archives you can access to find specific information. FAST
COMPANY – www.fastcompany.com This
magazine got fat when the dotcoms were on top, and it’s slimmed down a
little now that they’re not. Even so, it’s smart, positive,
motivational, and sometimes inspirational. It also has on-line
communities of subscribers all over America and the world, which afford
you an excellent chance to share stories and ask advice. RED
HERRING – www.redherring.com The
sub-head here is “the Business of Technology.” It’s less of a
cheerleader than Fast Company, and often covers the more technical
aspects of the state of technology. A good choice for anybody who has
limited time but wants to keep up. ENTREPRENEUR
– www.entrepreneur.com Both
the magazine and the website are looking much better these days, and the
quality of the writing has improved enormously. Both are concerned with
the problems of small businesses, and have an emphasis on franchises. FORTUNE
– www.fortune.com This
is one of the longer-established business magazines and used to have a
pretty traditional image. It’s not exactly wild and crazy now, either,
but it feels more modern. A good place to keep up with what’s
happening in brick-and-mortar businesses and their approaches to
marketing, customer care, advertising, and management shifts. FORBES
– www.forbes.com Another
more conservative publication, still in the hands of the Forbes family
(now would-be president Steve, rather than his late father, Malcolm).
One thing I like about Forbes is that when it gets things wrong (that
is, predictions, not just facts) it comes right out and says so. It will
give you a good overview of mainstream business, real estate, investment
strategies, and a few good life-style features, as well as insight into
marketing and advertising. INC. – www.inc.com Inc.
calls itself the magazine for growing businesses, and that’s who will
benefit most from their website, too. Whereas Entrepreneur feels like
it’s targeting the Mom and Pop and heartland small businesses, Inc.
seems to be going for the mid-size companies. The writing is concise,
the information useful. THE
FUTURIST – www.wfs.org This
magazine and site are much less known than the ones we’ve listed so
far, and not as obviously related to business. But the main subject here
is forecasts, trends, and ideas about the future—and no marketing
person can afford to ignore those. Reading this will keep you one step
ahead of most of your competitors. PSYCHOLOGY
TODAY – www.psychologytoday.com OK,
this isn’t a business site, but what’s more important than figuring
out how people (e.g., customers, employees, bosses) behave and why? This
site has excerpts from the current issue rather than archive material,
but the articles are usually very well-written and often easy to
extrapolate to business application. Next month we’ll be adding sites that deal specifically with marketing on the Internet. Please let us know your favorite sites as well!
OTHER NEWS AND RESOURCES YOU CAN USE ·
The
Brainstorm Monthly E-Bulletin – this is my own publication, and it’s
yours free upon request. Every month you’ll receive about half a dozen
items about how to be more creative, how to communicate more
effectively, and how to do something different. Just send us your name
and e-mail address and the word ‘subscribe’ in the subject line or
the text box. We never sell or share our mailing lists. And
here are some books you may have missed: SEND
‘EM ONE WHITE SOCK (and 66 Other Outrageously Simple, Yet Proven,
Ideas for Building Your Business or Brand) Stan
Rapp and Thomas L. Collins, McGraw Hill, 1998. You
can probably tell from the title that this book will appeal to anybody
into doing something different. One example: use dynamic in-store
displays (with an attendant) to get people to sign up for free
newsletters or club memberships as a way to build a database. EIGHT
GIANT STEPS TO GLOBAL DOMINATION Kenn
Viselman, McGraw-Hill, 2001 Viselman
is the Chairman of the itsy-bitsy Entertainment Company (which, after
establishing the Teletubbies, isn’t so itsy-bitsy anymore), and nobody
is likely to accuse him of false modesty. On the other hand, he’s done
well and has a lot of useful insights for anyone in any business.
Example: “Just like a person, a company cannot be everything to
everybody, but a ‘focused company’ can serve its market so well that
slowly and methodically it can take on more and more ‘adjacencies’
until it achieves global domination. POUR
YOUR HEART INTO IT (How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time) Howard
Schultz and Dori Jones Yang. Hyperion, New York As with McDonald’s, you probably either love Starbucks or hate it. Either way, you have to admit that its one of the most amazing business stories of the century. CEO Howard Schultz gives you the blow-by-blow account of how the business developed. It’s a practical illustration of principles including, “Care more than others think wise,” “Risk more than others think safe,” “Dream more than others think practical,” and “Expect more than others think possible.” THE
END OF MARKETING AS WE KNOW IT Sergio
Zyman, HarperCollins Business, 1999 Zyman used to be Chief Marketing Officer of Coca-Cola, a company that knows a thing or two about marketing (and the book contains a lot of stories about his time there). His premise is that a lot of what we think we know about ads is just plain wrong, and he explains how in provocative, down-to-earth, and amusing language. JAMMING,
The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity John
Kao, HarperCollins, 1996 Creativity
is easy to talk about, harder to do (that’s what this website is all
about, oddly enough…). Kao gives examples of how to foster creativity
in business (and some ways to kill it fast, too). Example: “Try to
pose questions that return the discussion to the state of the
beginner’s mind. Toyota uses its highly-regarded technique of posing
the five whys: you ask a question, get an answer, then ask why. Do that
five times, the Japanese say, and you will understand the essence of a
situation.” CREATING
EVER-COOL (A Marketer’s Guide to a Kids’ Heart) Gene
Del Vecchio, Pelican Publishing Company, 1998 If
you’re marketing to kids, this is ‘must’ reading. It takes you
into the world of kids—their fears, their hopes, and world in general.
It also shows you how to create ads and products that appeal to kids,
while maintaining an ethical framework. More resources, including tape sets and other formats, coming soon… |
