Tim de Jardine | Blog

An observation: When are people the busiest and least receptive? I think that most people have two busy-rush times. The time spent going to Work and Leaving work at the end of the day.

They rush to work in the morning, brisk walking, erratic driving only to get to an office in a hurry and slip into “work mode” at a desk so that they cannot wait to leave work and rush home as soon as possible.

Madness.

So why is it that marketers are running campaigns in their least receptive time? billboards, flyers, handouts, promotions occur at times when people are rushing around.

Its the same old interruption marketing that does not have any permission.

Pops up in many places, take this chair at a restaurant…

It worked though? Of the estimate 6,200 ads i see a day, this one broke through the clutter because it was unexpected.

Entrepreneurship is not a zero sum game.  A zero sum game is like poker where at the end of the hand you have one winner and everyone else loses.  Markets do not work like that.  A popular misconception is that if someone else has already thought about an idea, patented it, or incorporated a company around that idea then you are too late! The market has been taken!

This is false.

There are always more customers, parts of the market your competitors cannot touch.  No product is identical.  If IT IS a zero sum game then explain to me the 150 different types of salad dressings I can buy at the local supermarket?

That should prompt some thinking. 

Today at the bookstore I discovered this book on Lamborghini’s (above).  Great! I thought, lets have a look. No joy. The book was wrapped in cellophane.  Why?  The Authors percieved value of looking at pictures of Lamborghinis is obviously higher enough to only allow the reader to look at a single picture on the front and back cover.  Why is this the only wrapped book in the store?

This type of closed tactic immediately arises two questions in my mind:

• What are you hiding?
• Does your product have any value?

Is your company wrapped in cellophane? Most companies are.  

Transparency builds trust.