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Be Different With Your Marketing And Stand Out

January 8th 2019       Sally Ormond       be different, Dave Trott, Marketing
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A few years ago I wrote a blog about daring to be different.

It’s something you know you should be, but it takes a brave soul to go against their industry ‘norm’.

When Joe is looking for life cover, he’ll research loads of companies online.

The problem is, they all look and sound the same. They all talk about what they do, but none of them seems to give two hoots about the reader.

He wants to find a company that will show him why their cover is the best for him. He’s fed up of reading all the jargon and stale formal content; he wants something personal, fun, and that puts his needs first. If you’re brave enough to ignore the industry ‘norm’ and create an online presence that ticks all those boxes, he (and thousands just like him) will pick you.

Who wants to be a blue fish and you can be red?

Here’s the post I mentioned earlier in all its glory. It might be a few years old now, but it is still relevant.

Creative Thinking – Dare to be Different

Have you ever had an original thought?

Something no one else has ever thought of?

Probably not, after all, with the many millions of people in the world (past and present), it’s a tall order to come up with something completely original.

So where does that leave your marketing strategy?

Is it a bit predictable?

Well, now’s the time to do something about it.

Recently, I was lucky enough to hear Dave Trott speak at the Professional Copywriter Network conference in London.

He talked out how crucial it is to out-think your competitors.

For example, if your business has eight direct competitors (your products are the same) and your campaigns are very similar, there’s nothing for your consumers to distinguish between you.

The chances are your market share has stagnated or is reducing – neither of which is good.

So what do you do?

You have to out-think your competitors.

During Dave’s hugely entertaining presentation (if you get the chance to hear him speak, grab it with both hands) he illustrated the point with an example of one of his advertising projects.

A few years ago Dave was tasked with coming up with an advertising campaign to prevent chip pan fires.

Previously, the issue had been tackled by showing how quickly a fire could take hold, each incarnation more gruesome than the one before. But these tactics weren’t working.

It was time for someone to look at things differently.

Rather than taking the traditional view of ‘to prevent fires we must show the audience what will happen if they have a chip pan fire’, Dave opted to look at it from a different angle.

If there were lots of chip pan fires that meant the fire brigade would be called out to lots of fires. So instead of showing homemakers the devastating effect of fire, Dave chose to find a way to reduce those call outs.

Dave produced an advert that showed homemakers how to deal with a chip pan fire safely, therefore reducing the number of call-outs.

That’s (award-winning) creative thinking.

It’s not looking at the obvious need, but instead turning the problem on its head and looking for another, possibly easier, problem to solve.

So next time you create a marketing campaign, apply a different way of thinking. Look at every aspect of what you’re trying to achieve to see if you can come up with something that’s going to make you stand out.

For more about out-thinking your competition, Dave has a ‘must read’ book out called “Predatory Thinking – A Masterclass in Out-Thinking The Competition” (link to Amazon page).

 

 

 

Tags: be different, Dave Trott, Marketing
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