This I Know: Marketing Lessons from Under the Influence by Terry O’Reilly

Author:Terry O’Reilly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2017-02-28T05:00:00+00:00

ATTENTION CLEAN FREAKS

You are making the world too clean. Your immune system is in danger. We need contact with dirt to build up natural resistance to harmful bacteria. For this reason, the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel is proud to be dirty and carry a wide variety of bacteria. Just one night’s stay will give your immune system the boost it needs to remain effective. Visit before it’s too late.

Here’s the thing: bookings spiked.

Before the campaign started, the hotel had an occupancy rate that drifted around 45 percent. Within five years, it soared to 80 percent. And get this: guests pay a little more to stay at the Brinker than they could pay at the many other budget hotels in the area. They just want to see how bad it really is. The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel is doing a roaring business. And it is accomplishing this in the incredibly competitive landscape of budget hotels. Not only is it doing more business than its competitors, it’s doing it at a higher margin. As its competitors fight it out for a patch of the budget hotel category, the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel is all alone in the worst hotel in the world category. Could there be a more counterintuitive notion? While it’s a strategy I wouldn’t recommend, you have to admire its boldness—and the moat it built around the Hans Brinker brand.

Something else goes without saying here. To benefit from zigs when everyone expects you to zag, companies need to create a culture that is open to counterintuitive thinking. Most counterintuitive ideas sound unstructured and ill-conceived at first. It takes courage to suggest them. Can you imagine the moment someone at Walmart stuck their hand up in a meeting to suggest that customers deliver the packages? That must have taken some guts. But good on Walmart, it clearly wants new ideas. Same with the folks at Volvo. Why help online retailers deliver packages? Answer: They aren’t helping online retailers, they are thinking about Volvo customers and trying to make their lives better.

The biggest gains in business are not found in statistics or facts or big data, but in dreaming what could be. Yes, you have to absorb all the research and the focus groups and the conventional wisdom. But then turn that part of your mind off, and let your intuition get a shot at the steering wheel. Because it is your intuition that is capable of the bigger leaps. Most corporations don’t value intuition. It’s seen as flakey, unquantifiable. As author Sam Sheridan says, intuition has become a banned substance.

But the best organizations know different. Every company needs the smartest number of people per square foot. So the most successful marketers try to create an environment of “systematic serendipity.” Just like when we played What-if games while writing at Pirate. The rule was: at this stage, there are no bad ideas. I wanted to hear everything the writers were thinking, good, bad or terrible. I wanted everyone to feel free enough to yell anything out.

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