Whatever you are marketing, you are trying to get someone’s ATTENTION.
Whether you run an ad on TV, send an email or show up in person to a customer’s office, your goal is to get someone to pay attention to you. As a marketer, attention is the first square on your business board game. Start here. Do not go beyond this starting point until you get someone to listen or notice you.
Without gaining their attention, a customer will never hear what you have to say. But a successful marketer doesn’t need the loudest amplification system to reach customers; they need something more valuable.
They must have a solution to a problem at hand, and they have to find a way to break through the clutter and distraction that floods us each day. They gain attention by being different in a meaningful way and breaking familiar patterns.
Why You Must Break the Pattern
We notice disruption when it interferes with expectation. Here is a silly, beautiful example.
You don’t expect someone you hire to wash your windows wearing kilts. But that is what happens when 
you hire Men In Kilts. This window washing company requires the employees to wear green kilts.
Memorable. Disruptive. Fun. They got my attention, and their story takes something boring (washing windows) and makes it into something amusing. They take the ordinary and break a pattern. They got my attention.
Disruptive Marketing
The root of disrupting is a Latin word to break – rumpere.
Are your marketing efforts breaking the rules, bucking trends and stand out in a crowd?
- Most cereal comes as a bag in a box – who sells cereal in a wine bottle or a milk carton? If I ever started a cereal company, I would never package it in a box.
- Most vendors sell herbs fresh or dried, but who sells herbs frozen in ice cubes? There is an Israeli company that sells fresh herbs frozen in ice. They stay fresh until you need them.
- Most supermarket chains offer salad bars but what chain sells a Chinese food bar to bring customers into the store instead of ordering Chinese food for delivery? That’s different.
- Whose tea is packaged as a combination of infuser and stirrer in one, breaking the pattern of competitors? Check out Serengeti Tea.
Focus on Something Ignored – Break a Pattern
To be a disruptive marketer, you must understand the rules of your category and then, set out to break them. It is only through the unexpected and unconventional that you can stand out it a crowd. As Seth Godin says, can you be a purple cow standing out in a field of brown ones?
The trick is to break with tradition in a way that matters to your customers. Be disruptive to be part of your customer’s new story.
My advice – take something that everyone in the category does – and break it. Focus on something other’s don’t do and shine a spotlight on it.
- Be like IKEA, a furniture store who doesn’t assemble the furniture you buy. Unlike other furniture stores, they don’t deliver it too.
- Or be like Christian Louboutin who focuses on the color of the soul of shoes. (Louboutin Red)
The best book ever written on this topic is called Different by Youngme Moon, a professor at Harvard whose insights into this topic are rich with ideas and wisdom. Whenever someone asks for advice on marketing, this is the first book I recommend. It is that brilliant.
If you are in marketing and haven’t read Different, please stop reading my blog and buy this book. I don’t get a nickel in commission, but you will get an excellent lesson in marketing that is beautifully written and easy to understand. Different isn’t an academic book – but a clear way to understand what being different means, from a marketer’s perspective. Here is a trailer Youngme Moon created about her book.
Go ahead. Break a pattern. Be disruptive. Gain attention not by shouting louder than everyone else, but by whispering how you are different.
We notice differences. That’s one of the secrets of marketing.
Need to hire a marketing disruptor who understands how to break patterns? You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free, and we can explore if working together makes sense. Try my new chat feature on my site if you have a quick question.
