Logical Marketing, LLC

¡ January 25 is Opposite Day !

Sounds like an episode from Jerry Seinfeld. The one where George decides if he does everything opposite from how he normally does things, life gets better.

A different perspective

You have done this before. You drive the opposite way home or to the office and the road looks different (e.g., when driving south, I nearly always miss the turn into my neighborhood because it looks so different). You sit in the passenger seat and see businesses you had not noticed before.

What could you do to get a different perspective on your marketing strategy? your customer segments? your partners in your target market?

The “Tiny House” movement is an Opposite Strategy to home ownership.
The “Cut the Cord” movement is an Opposite Tactic for reducing entertainment costs.
“Minimalism” is an Opposite Way of Life for reducing clutter, right-sizing costs, and improving quality of life.

If you buy, sell. If you sell, buy.
Work on the floor.
Run a focus group with past customers.
Do something that is different to see your world, your business, and your strategies from an entirely different perspective.

Change it up. Examine the “we always do”

In a Netflix movie on Queen Victoria, Prince Albert walks into a room to see the staff setting the table to serve a meal for a king who had been dead for 20 years. Because “that’s how we always do it.” No orders to stop setting the table, so the table kept getting set for 365 days for over 20 years. That’s 7300 uneaten meals.

You may think your organization is not quite as silly. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t.

I am sure there are things you do that should be re-examined, questioned, and either improved or stopped.

Blue ocean strategy

A good read, “Blue Ocean Strategy“, gets its title from a strategy of sailing into “clean” air. When you sail as part of a pack, only the lead boat gets good wind. Everyone else gets what is called “dirty air”.

Dirty air is slower.
Dirty air comes from a less preferential angle, influenced by the sails it hits before yours.
Dirty air is more turbulent.

The lead boat gets good wind. To get out of “dirty air” one must sail away from the pack.

Are you doing what everyone else is doing?

Is it time to sail away from the pack?

An excellent tool to examine how you might find new opportunities and sail away from the pack is to use Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas to examine your model versus what your customers may want.

Change up a revenue source (rent versus sell, pay per use, subscriptions)?
Change up a distribution system?
Change a partner or supply chain?

If you see your glass as half empty, pour it into a smaller glass and stop bitching.

Half empty

In the past three years alone:

my accountant passed away from pancreatic cancer
my photographer passed away from too many cancers to count
three close neighbors died from heart-related surgical complications
my dad had a catastrophic heart attack and died instantly
my in-laws passed away within 24 hours of each other from dementia
my 95 year-old grandmother passed away in her sleep
a client passed away from a neuro disease
several former colleagues passed away
we experienced a flood that caused extensive, expensive damage
three computers have fried or melted their hard drives
my doctor threatened me with a statin

Time for a new glass

Appreciation time. My neighbors, Roger and Diane, were lovely people. They had lived in China, Turkey, Finland, and Nigeria. They survived coups, Russian wire-tapping, amputations, and the death of a child.

They hung out on their porch, invited neighbors for a glass of wine, and eventually started a weekly Friday-after-work bring your own wine and tapas tradition. They worked hard to appreciate what they had, their neighbors, and their family.

While my recent three years have been spent on appreciation exercises and expeditions to visit people who have been important in my life, your appreciation time can be with customers, potential customers, past colleagues, or influencers.

I had a colleague once tell me that our most difficult customers made us better. He was right. Appreciate the customers who make you better. The bosses that made you work hard. The colleagues who were difficult.

Be funny. Be memorable. Ed, a client who recently passed away, once told me that I was really funny. He thought his organization needed that humor because he thought that humor would be memorable. We remember humor:

Where’s the beef?
We’re gonna need a bigger boat!
Queen Elizabeth II parachuting into the Olympic Games.

Injecting a bit of humor if your brand can tolerate it (if Queen Elizabeth can be funny, probably everyone can be) is a great way to become memorable.

Do your best, even when you think no one is looking. Actually, Stu Schmill, Varsity Lightweight Men’s Coach used to shout, “Do not allow yourself the luxury of pain.” The first time I heard that I was sitting in the stroke seat of the Women’s Varsity 8 for the very first time. It was a cold, rainy, grey (did I mention wet) morning — I was trying out for the stroke seat, completely nervous (wet and cold) and afraid of failing. Melissa Norcross, the coxswain of our boat, dutifully repeated the chant: “Do not allow yourself the luxury of pain.” Years and years later, at a master’s rowing event, “Coach” who had also been witness to that same practice, retold the story of that morning to his companion, saying “It was the best practice racing I ever saw. Lynore never gave up, she just coming back, pulling even, pulling ahead, and coming back.”

Do not give up. Sometimes we all need help with this. Is it time to out-source a difficult task? Or one that’s not getting done?
– I hired a personal trainer so I could not “allow myself to feel the luxury of pain”
– I found and deployed a new computer back-up system
– I asked everyone I knew for an IT support person referral
– I asked everyone I knew for an accountant referral
– We have a new and improved first floor after renovations

Work hard. In rowing we do what’s called a Power 10. 10 hard strokes. It helps pull focus into the boat; it gets everyone in sync; it gets the swing back to keep working hard.
– I eliminated the bad foods from the house
– I stock and prep good foods to make it easier to eat right
– I enabled the Fitbit feature that tells me to go to bed
– I enlisted my son to help me stay the course

What can you do for yourself or your team that would be your metaphoric Power 10?

It rains on everyone. Today, our ski area has had only 8 inches of natural snow. All of the Colorado and New Mexico ski areas have had paltry snow this year. If the ski areas give up, they go out of business. They are playing to their strengths (bike & ski with the same lift ticket!) — as should the rest of us.

Complaining about the snow is not going to improve the snow, help my skiing, or improve my mood. I am personally using this ski season as my time to get stronger, get better at telemarking, and improve my turns.

Play to your strength or shore up a weakness. Pick one. Right size your glass.

Category: Measurement

Opposite Day