Creative Cliché Bingo

I had just gotten out of bed in the hotel room when phone rang. Not my mobile, either, but the wired hotel phone. I stumbled to the unfamiliar sound and picked up the receiver, wondering who the heck was calling me.

Food Poisoning Strikes

It was the conference organizer, and it turns out that the speaker who was slated to lead a three-hour pre-conference workshop was violently ill with food poisoning. The event would start in less than an hour, and 220 people had signed up for it. Could I fill in?

Sure, I said, without hesitation. Side note: I love stupid challenges, where there is a very stark difference between victory (getting through it, hopefully with applause at the end?) and defeat (being laughed off the stage?).

(This mirrors a very stupid routine we had on our small group motorcycle adventures. “Hey, [name of particularly cocky rider that morning,] if you had a hair on your ass you’d [go do some stupid thing, like climb a hill that shouldn’t be climbed.]” Said rider, now called out in front of his equally immature peers, would accept defeat before trying…or take up the challenge, and a good laugh (and a few pictures) would be had by all.)

The Emergency Speaking Prep Begins

So I said yes, I’ll do it. This volunteerism is always followed by a deep regret and some virtual forehead slaps. My first instinct was to think of some group exercise that would eat up significant time, teach some sort of lesson, and give me a few more precious minutes to plan the remaining two and one-half hours while they scribbled away at some busy work.

(Their) Busy Work Leads to (My) Insights

Here’s what I asked the assembled to do. “Hey, this room is full of marketers and creatives and coders, and you’re in the business of positioning your clients, right, so that they have a more addressable target? Everybody agree with that?” Heads nod, and so I go on.

“So I want you to do that for yourselves. Take out a slip of paper and write down three things that are uniquely true of your firm. Things that others can’t legitimately claim. It might be your target, what you do for your clients, how you do it, or maybe even some IP you’ve perfected over the years. I’m going to give you [looks at watch] ten minutes to think this through really carefully.”

They all get to work, and I mentally scramble to plan out the rest of the morning. After a few minutes, I look up at the crowd and see most people obviously finished, and likely quite proud of themselves, and I ask the rest of the people to finish up and then we’re going to do something with their work.

A minute later I grab the mic again and explain the next step. “Okay, now, remember what I asked you to do? I wanted you to write down three things that were uniquely true of your firm. Things that others could not rightfully claim.” (Everybody nods.) “Alrighty, then, switch papers with your neighbor and we’re going to see how you did.”

Smiles all around, and a general feeling that they had been scammed.

We Fail, Again

The entire point of the exercise was this: your neighbor, that random person you sat down next to, should not be able to read your positioning statement and claim it as their own.

But here’s what happened. Nearly every person who read their neighbor’s statement was nodding their head and saying, “yep, that’s what sets us apart, too.”

If I can be honest with you for a moment, I’m so tired of fighting this battle. This section of the professional services market—the one that is uniquely devoted to helping their clients craft unique, tailored business strategies—is piss poor at distinguishing themselves from their neighbors.

Don’t believe me? Go to LinkedIn and pick some random websites of your peers and tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that we aren’t playing one big ol’ creative cliché bingo game.

And here’s something else that won’t work. You can’t say, “yeah, everyone says that, but we really mean it.” Because more better is not a strategy.

One last little piece of fun today. I started a file four years ago, and I add a record from time to time. You kind of have to be in a bad mood to keep adding to this file, and you might need to be in a burn it all down mood to enjoy this file, too, but here’s where I play with phrases that I come across in our wonderful field. Please don’t enjoy!

The (Real) Point of All This?

Why even do this, you ask. And I’m glad to answer that question, because there really should be some good reasons to drive you forward through this agonizing challenge of making tough decisions about your positioning:

• You should be tightly positioned because you’ll do much better work, being in a position to see those expert patterns that help you be more effective. Your clients deserve expertise and it’s malpractice, frankly, to deliver anything but that.
• A tight positioning will deliver the chance to have a tight, focused, efficient marketing plan where prospects feel like you have a hidden camera in their office.
• And if you pull it off well, you’ll make a whole lot more money as an expert.

Be different. It’s not as hard as it seems, and the tradeoffs are worth it. If you’re just starting on this journey, an earlier book (“The Business of Expertise”) can help. If you need individual guidance, I’m also glad to help. Just hit reply and we’ll figure it out.