Are you being Dramatically Different?

There is an ‘X’ factor when it comes to product and marketing success.  There are those products and ideas that make unprecedented leaps to popularity.

They generate buzz and make people talk about them.  Think about things like the iPhone or the iPod.  How about the Nintendo Wii? 

Those products are Dramatically Different!

Note: this is 2nd in a series about supercharging your marketing message by leveraging some of the ideas in Jump Start Your Business Brain by Doug Hall.   This is an excellent book with some really practical strategies and ideas for enhancing your marketing message.  The other post:  Overt Benefits

Leap from Commodity to Premium

The studies done at the Eureka Ranch have shown that having a high Level of Dramatic Difference will be 3.5 X more effective than not having a Dramatic Difference.

The tough thing about Dramatic Difference is that you inherently have to create something new, something that’s not really competing with the current product set that’s out there.  In addition to that, that something also has to have a compelling overt benefit.

As an example, a Segway is dramatically different than anything else out on the market.  You can’t really compare it to a bicycle, or a wheelchair, or a car – it’s kind of like a motorized scooter of some sort, but not really.

The problem with the Segway is that although they are really cool, they don’t inherently have a clear-cut benefit (at least for most of the population).  Police officers are using them to get around urban areas more quickly and unobtrusively, but beyond that I’m hard pressed to think of why anyone would really have to have a Segway.

I’ve dragged my feet on finishing out this series because I didn’t have what I considered to be a great example of a dramatic difference (other than the obvious references above).

However I just realized I wrote recently about a local company that perfectly defines Dramatic Difference.  Shatto Milk is a local dairy operation that has totally transformed in the last 5 years and is now being pursued by other farms all over the US on how that transformation can be applied to them.  (read the post to learn more about this great story)

My earlier post really goes into what it took to create a remarkable company, but the end result speaks for itself.  This is a common, everyday commodity that no longer competes in the same space.  It’s still milk, for drinking, cereal, etc., but it’s fresher, tastes better, has superior packaging and comes in a huge variety of interesting flavors.

Not only are they able to charge a premium for a premium product (albeit one that’s inherently the same as other milk), but their dramatic difference has caused them to become a destination product for the stores that sell milk.  People are complaining when Shatto milk is sold out.

So how do you create a dramatic difference with your business?  It’s not easy, but ideally you would start by building on a strength – something you do better than anyone else and see if you can twist that enough to make it something new.

The payoff if you can do that is huge, but it doesn’t happen very often.  What examples of Dramatically Different companies or products can you think of?

Shawn Kinkade  www.aspirekc.com