These are some of his post at FB and we can learn a thing or two from him. The theme is just being unusual, thinking out of the box, or a purple cow.
It is the focus of most strategist. Do nothing exotic about your business model. Just make an outstanding unique product or ad, to be the most preferred and saleable
product in the market place
And profiting from you mistakes
1. THE BAD PEN (a recurring theme in his writings)
A bad pen in the batch can be your best teacher. It teaches you to make a better product. It can be your free consultant to improve your product and hence your company
2. The MISSING KEY
One day, Andrew Carnegie the steel business magnate found out that they could not start the factory because they could not find the KEY to the warehouse Then Andrew c ordered the
unthinkable - destroy and stop having a lock from thereon. What was the lock and key for - to prevent the 1% possibility of theft. What then was the solution: better system, better
process to stop the theft . The key could not be a bottleneck for running a multimillion project. There has to be a better way. How many times do we find bottlenecks in the business
that should not be there and stop the business. Find and remove them
3. The spotlight switch
This is about the concert of Bayonce that experienced a brown out. The team of Bayonce was prepared and anticipated this. And the concert was a success. And a PR was created:
to highlight the team of Bayonce - " Bayonce concert proceeded despite brown out" A great team, a great singer Turn a misfortune a disadvantage into a uniqueness, a shining moment, a
stand out
4. The empty table
The story is about Steve Jobs returning to Apple. Apple was on verge of collapse and bankruptcy after he was fired and other CEOs took over including Sculley, whom he recruited from
Pepsi Cola but fired him Steve looked at the list of the plethora of products And initially Steve Jobs said nothing. But he cleared the table - removed the other non performing products and
left just four. More products line: 1. Create confusion and chaos 2 Dissipate resources and management thinking and energy. 3. Destroys focus.
Application in marketing; the first 5 seconds is important. If it cant be explained in 5 seconds, then you cant sell it. If the ad cant stop the eye of the scroller in 5 seconds it cant sell.
Empty table enables focus, focus, focus
The successful billionaires are those who focus on one industry or product. Or activity. Conglomerates
are long gone So who are most successful: Warren Buffett Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg for staying focussed. Most successful ads are 7 words, some say it is 15 words. Too many tend to confuse
Again same thing: from nothing to nothing. (Pay Pal - Peter Thiel)
5. Inside out
This is reverse thinking, this is about stand out. This is about clothing
Abercombie fitch Other clothing focussed on things that are visible - outside. Fitch focussed on logos and
graphics in the inside. They built identity inside and out. The bigger the logos sign the bigger the sales. Sales fettered out when they changed the strategy.
So the product must be presented what it does inside - the body, the label, not what it does outside It is one approach.
