The Sandwich Man
Maybe you’re a great web designer
Maybe you’re a great coder
Maybe you’re a financial wizard
Maybe you’ve got a flair for industrial design
Maybe you’re a craftsman with unique skills
Maybe you’re great at managing and building a supply chain.
Maybe selling isn’t something you enjoy, like or even care about. Maybe making presentations is the part of business that really isn’t your thing.
Problem is this: There’s plenty of great ideas, businesses and people who never reached their full potential because the selling bit was missing.
Step forward the ‘Sandwich man’
Startup blog definition: Sandwich Man – a gun presenter and public communicator who presents the ideas and sells the dream on behalf of the business.
A sandwich man is called such, because he holds together all the good things like the bread does on a yummy sandwich. Without him all the ingredients, nutrition, ‘reason for being’ could all fall away.
A good sandwich man would start and close any business presentation to people like venture capitalists, suppliers, key accounts, customers and the media.
Quite often successful businesses are run by a team where one of the members is the tech genius and the other is the Sandwich Man. Who then communicates the ideas and vision to get people on board. Rarely people are lucky enough to have both skill sets. Regardless of which skill set we have, we always need a sandwich man. We can even bring one into the team on a needs basis.
But without one, we may end up with a great product or business which never gets the traction it deserves.
The Wingman & advertising awards
The following is a true story as told by Ender Baskin:
A few mates went out for some beers at a local bar. They were young, vibrant guys who where looking to meet some girls. Fine. One of the guys had a very cool t-shirt which said the following:
”Don’t get too excited I’m just the wingman.”
The group of boys all loved it. They thought it was very cool, awesome in fact. They were certain it could only enhance his changes of meeting a girl on said night.
As expected people ‘did’ love it. They all came up and remarked on how funny, cool and smart the t-shirt was. Only problem was, it was all the blokes who happened to remark upon it.
This parable is a a little bit like the type of advertising that wins awards. The producers and colleagues in the industry love it. Yet award winning advertisements don’t always sell the product. Cool and funny is great, often a nice bonus when communicating with our people. But if the basic objective isn’t met, we’re better off with something less cool that actually works.
Beer is the new wine
I recently had some beers and a meal at a place called Little Creatures dinning hall in Melbourne Australia.
For the uninitiated, Little Creatures is a craft beer which has it’s origins in Australia and has recently opened a flagship ‘dinning hall’ – seen below.
They’ve simply taken this to a new level. I’m not taking about the fact that they have weird and groovy beer flavours, all naturally brewed. I’m talking about the way they take you on a personal journey with their service.
My favourtie was the beer education programme. They have a ‘pony show’ – I don’t think it’s called that, but it is what I’ll call it for this post.
You get a taste in little groovy pony glasses of all their different beers, then choose one you like. One of their ‘Little Creatures Beer Experts’ comes and sits down on your table with you and they explain all the different types of beers. A real sit down for 10 minutes. A rare treat when the usual sitiation is waiting 10 minutes for crappy service in bars and restuarants. They teach you how to taste each beer and the slight nuances of each. They even provide an idea what type of people generally like the different types.
It’s really nice and fun. I even heard the word “sessionable” to describe a beer – They invent some nice jargon to make you feel part of a tribe. Cool.
No need to advertise this little venture. We’ll do that for them….
And this is what cool startups are doing in retail.
2nd worst shop front of all time
I took this pic of this shop front / side in my local neighbourhood. It’s easy to see when you drive past.
Startup blog prize (free book) for anyone who can tell me what they do without calling the number (or knowing someone who works there / digging around).
I’m all for single minded simplicity, but if we are going to go to the effort to paint the brand and phone number, it’s also handy to have a tag line which tells people what we do.
Steve – rentoid.com
A short history of Youtube
This screen dump from a presentation on Youtube says a lot. It’s the content loaded up on youtube everyday…
And mainstream media said it would never work. You can click here to see the enitre presentation. A bit long at 55 minutes – worth watching.
Radvertising – Harley Davidson
While driving I saw a billboard advertisment for Harley Davidson. I didn’t get a photo… but we don’t really need one. I can explain it instead.
It had a big picture of a Harley with this copy line underneath it:
331 screws included
Now that is radvertising simply because these three words say so much.
Craftsmanship, Detail, Big, Hand made, Care, Tailored, Complete, Traditional, Customised... I’m sure you can add a few superlatives as well.
It’s a pretty damn good follow up to a recent campaign they ran which I do have the visuals of below.
Steve – founder rentoid.com
Frequency vs Depth
In advertising parlance we talk about depth and frequency. Depth being how many people we reach on each occasion. Frequency being how often we reach them.
It’s great to let zillions of people know about our start up as quickly as we can. We may even be lucky enough to get some kind of viral campaign working for our startup, we may be featured in the newspaper, on techcrunch or we might even be lucky enough get a TV spot.
After the event here’s what happens: People cook dinner, pick up the kids from school, pay the bills, kick the dog and get on with life. They have a life to live and they get on with it. Our start up doesn’t really matter to them… straight away.
Consumer awareness goes something like this:
Exposure 1: “That’s a cool idea / product / concept”
Exposure 2: “Oh, yeh, I must remember to check that out”
Exposure 3: “There it is again, might be worth having a look”
Exposure 4: “hmm, Ok – I’ll look when I’m shopping next / on line next”
Exposure 5: ….They finally act, and go look at, investigate, touch, feel, try….”
After many exposures we have “a chance’ of selling to them.
Sure some people check it out first time, some buy straight away, but the large majority need reminded, over and over again. It doesn’t mean – go out and spam them or do terrible interruption marketing. It means this; “have frequent and relevant marketing communications to the people who might care”.
It’s a lot like never noticing a car advertisement until we are in the market to buy one. They’re always there, we just have selective perception.
This is why Advertising frequency is king. No point having a big launch campaign if our prospective new customers aren’t looking on that occasion. For entrepreneurs, the big launch concept is a hoax – It’s unsustainable. Like an exercise regime- it’s far better to do an hour workout everyday, than to do a 5 hour gym session on a Saturday.
The good news is we don’t need the superbowl budget of a large conglomerate to have the frequency we need. We just need to start a conversation which continues indefinitely.
Quote for Entrepreneurs
“It has to start somewhere, it has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?”
Pre-empt reality – success requires it
Entrepreneurship and startups are a lot like starting out in your career. People want you to have experience before they will hire you. It’s that ironic circular reference in which it is impossible to get the job, to get the experience required until we’ve got the experience – right? hmmm.
Often startup businesses need a lot of people before the idea, concept or thing simply works. Kind of like email or fax machines. They only become useful when everyone has one…. or at least some form of critical mass in which we can exchange things of value. Aside from the fact this proves that the most powerful element in any business mix is distribution, it also indicates we all have a chasm to cross before success can become a reality.
So how do we cross the chasm? How do we make success a reality?
We must preempt it.
We must preempt our future reality. As though it already exists. We must talk and act as if it has already happened. Not just internally, not just convincing ourselves, but to all of those whose paths we cross day to day in startup land. We have to sell the future, before it arrives, as if it’s already happened.
Sometimes we might have to use ‘creative language’ which somewhat stretches the truth (our current reality). We ought not feel bad – every successful entrepreneur in history has done this. Every successful entrepreneur in the future will do this. It’s just a necessary element in creating the future. It’s not lying, it’s part of the creation process. Screw it – sell the sizzle and make it real. By the time the people catch up to the today’s reality – you’ve already created the future version.
Bill Gates sold MS DOS before he even built it. He said to IBM – “we have what you need.” Despite the fact it was metaphysical at that stage.
Generating media and interest in your start up is one of the areas where this must happen. Whether it’s in traditional media, the blogosphere, or other means, people don’t want to cover us until we’ve had success. What they fail to realise is that their coverage is the thing which often starts the success. Then people who read about our brand, website or widget say, “Wow, I better check that out”. They believe in ‘the people’. If other people are embracing it, it justifies them checking it out. it’s the wisdom of crowds, as far as people are concerned, we only count when other people care.
When people ask about your startup and want the obligitory progress report – paint the most positive picture possible. Use creative language that makes it sound bigger, better and closer. No – use language that says it has already arrived. Make the future your present reality.
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