My fruit is the weird one

For a staff meeting once, we were asked, “Explain what fruit you are and why.” I picked the Buddha’s hand. It’s one of the world’s oldest varieties of citrus, used in perfumes and sometimes as zest for fancy restaurant dishes. But I chose it primarily because it was super unusual.

Unusual means that you stand out. In business, this is almost always a good thing.

This principle applies to all four areas of marketing: promotion of course, but also product, place (channel), and pricing. Tackling these four “P’s” of marketing very differently enables you to stand out in the marketplace. Examples of unusual promotion (especially advertising) abound as do classic examples of outstanding product development such as the original, multi-colored Apple iMac. Look a little further afield, however, and you can find great examples of unusual channels and pricing as well.

The entire story of Dell Computer was really a strategy built around the direct-to-customer channel. Dell’s strategy was pretty simple: business (not consumer), direct and highly customized. Michael Dell figured out how to break the compromise that had been in place for more than a decade between low cost and highly customized, and he made a mint doing it. The direct sales channel formed an integral part of this strategy because it enabled the company to know way more about their customers than did the other manufacturers, who all had to get information from their retailers and/or distributors.

My favorite pricing innovation story is the Signet Bank story of capitalizing on the introductory credit card rate. Two McKinsey consultants did a project for Signet Bank to figure out what to do with their credit card portfolio. They discovered that the combination of mass customization of credit cards (different benefits, rates, discounts, payment schedules, etc.) combined with zero percent introductory rates for marketing resulted in massive consumer adoption. It was so successful, in fact, that they eventually spun the credit card division off into a separate company. You know it as Capital One.

Pretty successful.

Making a spectacle of your company, your products, your brand and even yourself helps to break through the clutter and can help to restart growth. It takes guts, especially if you’re worried about alienating your current customers, but it’s usually worth it.