Voice overs
There is nothing worse than an advertising voice over. (yes advertisers, we recognize it)
Here’s what it says to the audience:
We don’t care who you are
We don’t care where you’re from
We don’t respect your culture
We think we can stooge you
We think you won’t know the difference
We think all our customers are the same
We talk to you, not with you
To me it makes no sense to be stingy on making a TVC worth $500k when you’re spending over $5m on media. It’s a false economy, especially when the media doesn’t work and it turns off the potential audience you’re trying to persuade.
Tomorrow’s hero brands
I’m not about to define a brand, I’d be wasting your time as there are plenty of marketing books to do that. I am about to talk about some qualities that many brands used to have, and more importantly the features that tomorrow’s hero brands do have.
function first
reliable consistency
thin product range
you’ll travel to buy it
limited distribution
you found out about it by recommendation
limited if any advertising expenditure
no external branding
you don’t care if people don’t know your using it
often founder defined
An example for me personally is Herringbone shirts. A Sydney based shirt company. Their specialty is shirts. 
They’re expensive, but the quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten. Only those who have one would know you’re wearing it. We know the cut, the feel, the fabric and they just sit like quality garments should.
A lot of global brands once fit the above description. Then due to the brand’s own success they simply became ‘corporations’. Once this happens, the rot sets in. They go public, product ranges get expanded, the founder loses control or sells out (as they deserve to), production is outsourced, quality is compromised, distribution is expanded, branding becomes overt and crass, sales targets must be met, prices get cut, customer basses expand, the product adapts to the larger vanilla consumer…. – rinse and repeat. Until their core consumer moves on.
Outrageous commercial success often predicates a brand’s inevitable decline because it is hard to retain the focus that drove the success in the first instance.
What is your – yesterday’s hero brand?
What is your - tomorrow’s hero brand?
Sampling
Sampling is the best thing a start up can spend money on when you know consumers will dig what you have.
There is one thing companies often get wrong when sampling a new product. They decide in their infinite wisdom to only give a portion of the actual consumption experience. That way they can sample more people, have wider reach – get the product or experience in the hands of more people.
How frustrating is it to get a little pouch of shampoo that will barely produce a lather on your hair? In this case, all consumers will do is tell their friends about how bad the product is.
If budget is an issue we’re better off sampling less people with the full product experience.
Unnecessary Costs
Business advice often given to entrepreneurs is how to protect themselves and their business. Think company formations, insurances, trademarks, partnership deals, business names et al.
These are all very costly for a start up. It’s often better to leave these things to the last minute. It’s easy to get excited and just register everything possible so you own all the relevant IP. That way your best friend and business partner Joe can’t steal all your personal assets….
Do it later. Any money spent which isn’t directly going to generate revenue can wait. There is nothing worse than wasting valuable cash on protecting business that never got to revenue.
Once we’re up and running it’s a great investment. But not in the early days, or during the pre-revenue period.
Attitude
We are modern day entrepreneurs. We cut new ground and bring change. We need to act a little bit like rockstars – rockstars of a new genre. Like rockstars we need self belief which borders upon arrogance.
We need attitude. We can’t fake it.
We can’t act like employees
Employees are conformists
Conformists never change the world
We’re bringing change
We are not conformists
Secrets
I used to think that it’s better to keep your business idea a secret. Then I read that “secrets kill you” in the Bootstrappers Bible by Seth Godin. It’s very true. You can get a copy here.
Firstly – no one is going to steal your idea. The idea is the easy bit. The execution is the hard part. Truth be told it is more likely that someone else will start doing what you are if they don’t know it’s already being done.
Proof – how many times have you had a great new business idea only to find out it has already been done. Then you simply move on.
By keeping it a secret – it not only chips away at your confidence, you remove the potential for your circle to help you nurture it and bring it to life.
