Counterintuity

There’s no good synonym for the word “artistic.” Try finding one yourself: “tasteful” isn’t even close, and neither is “aesthetically pleasing,” as suggested by Webster’s. Most often, “artistic” is defined by itself: as being of or related to art.

One indicator of uniqueness is when a thing is defined best by itself. Without some way to define it except by referring to itself, being “artistic” is a unique concept. As Justice Potter Stewart said when struggling to define pornography, “I know it when I see it.”

If what you do is best defined by its own nature, you’ve got something unique. Commodities become low-priced, but unique items are immune to price sensitivity. They’re unique — and if people want them, they’ll have to pay whatever it takes.

What are some unique offerings?

• space tourism. That’s why billionaires are willing to pay millions for it.
• dinner with Bono.
• seemingly all the movies ever made, delivered to you within three days. (This was the Netflix model. But that was always an interim for digital streaming or download — which is where they’re heading.) With this unique model, why did Netflix market such a low price? To spur vast early adoption, and to undermine the price position of Blockbuster and of going out to the movies.
• the early iPhone and iPods. As these Apple products spawned imitators, Apple pursued greater innovation, but also dropped the price. Once the items weren’t strictly unique, their perceived value dropped.

What do you offer that’s unique?

And are you pricing it accordingly?

It’s easy to get stuck, while everything around you changes. Just keep doing what you’ve been doing, and don’t look around.

The major airlines are stuck in the 1970’s. (Or some other previous era.) Don’t believe it? Fly one of them — and then fly Virgin America, as I did last week.

The proof is in the pictures. Here’s your typical cabin on a United Airways flight.

Here’s your typical cabin on a Virgin flight.

It’s not just that United has older tech (such as older planes with bad lighting and limited screening capability). It’s not just that United (and others) have a look/feel that goes with that mustard-colored living room paint of the Carter years. It’s that as a people we have undergone major cultural changes that the major airlines seem oblivious to:

• The major carriers have waiters and waitresses (they call them flight attendants) who come around, eventually, to take your order, and then return, eventually with it. On Virgin, you place your order on your personal screen and it’s brought to you. Rather promptly.
• The majors have Politburo-like programming: You will watch this news feature, then this sitcom, then you will watch this movie, each of our choosing. On Virgin, you have your pick of dozens of different offerings, including video games, music, music videos, free movies, paid movies, free TV, paid TV, and on-screen print. Email and web browsing are soon to follow.

United is regimenting behavior. Virgin understands that today consumers expect more choices, they expect those choices to be attractive, and otherwise they want to be left alone.

Like other fading monopolies, the only advantage that United and the other major carriers have is that they are everywhere. (And no, price is not in their favor — the flight on Virgin cost hundreds of dollars less than comparable flights.) Virgin America and JetBlue fly to only a few markets. So these boutique carriers are eating the best portions — selected profitable and desirable high-traffic lanes — and leaving the gruel to others. It’s easy to see how this happened: Times changed, and the bigger players were slow to respond. (Like IBM once upon a time, and GM, and many long-gone major department stores.)

Is this happening to your own business?

Take a walk around. Have the needs of your customers/patrons changed? Are your competitors adapting faster than you? What’s going on that you’re not (yet) aware of? Are you still rooted in the actions of the past, and how can you get out of there and into a better future?

Apparently over 1,000 people would. Artist Justin Gignac has turned NYC garbage into $100 works of “art” - http://www.nycgarbage.com.

To start, Gignac was selling his cubes of NYC Trash for $10 each as novelty items. Now they are $100 collectibles. Who would have thought you could sell a few pieces of New York’s finest trash for $100? It’s all in the perception — and the packaging.

Gignac’s other project is Wants for Sale, a site where Gignac and his girlfriend sell paintings of things they want and sell them for the amount of the real item.

Paintings sold so far include:
Beer: $7.00
A Wii: $270.92
Rent: $1056.07

What do you want and how are you going about getting it?

What’s bacn?

It’s email that’s not quite spam. In other words, it’s a little more permission-marketing oriented.

So I guess the Marvel Pulse email I get is bacn. That one I don’t mind. While I don’t want to help the lawyer in Nigeria receive the late king’s assets in exchange for a 10% commission, I do want to know what Dr. Strange is up to.

Whenever I do a live presentation I include a bunch of shots of businesses that through their signage display a disconnect between their identity and their messaging. In other words, they aren’t saying who they really are. (And that, as we know, hurts business. If you’re not sure what it is, you aren’t buying it.)

I’m sure I’ll be adding these shots, taken in Cleveland.

Oh, “The Geek Shop.” Cool. What do they sell? Comic books? (I’m there.) Other strange collectibles? Outre films? What?

No, they sell auto parts. Oh.

More than 20 years ago I helped start an auto-parts business. Want to know what we called it? “Parts for Imports.” Guess what we sold.

It’s still around today, in multiple locations, with two warehouses, and doing direct importing. Maybe because people understand what it sells.

Why do we always strive to uncover hard performance numbers for clients?

Because numbers (facts) help determine what actions clients should take, as this analysis of classic “Star Trek” proves.

What’s the takeaway on this story? That if you’re part of the engineering crew, you very much want Kirk to hook up with alien women. Your survival may be at stake.

Renegotiate.

In this case, I just got off the phone with Pitney Bowes, whose monthly fee to us for our postal meter had crept upward from someplace in the twenties to $32.46, and who now sent us a polite letter informing us that they were automatically signing us up for a $15.99 annual fee for the Postal Education Program.

The latter was the final straw. Automatically enrolling customers in programs they don’t ask for (let alone don’t need) is insulting. So, filled with brio and outrage, I called to cancel the entire program, knowing full well what they would do: seek to keep me by renegotiating.

So here was their offer:

1. They would cancel the offending program.
2. They would lower our monthly bill to $19.99.
3. They would waive the last month’s bill.

Tally the results for one year and you’ve got $198 plus change. For a 19 minute call.

Lessons in this:

1. Seemingly little charges and incremental increases add up.
2. Yes, it’s worth the phone call to protest.

In advertising, as in everything else.

Click here to see the rest of the Unfortunately Placed Ads.

On the other hand, perhaps the Microsoft Surface isn’t so cool.

There’s the money, of course. And then there are testimonials like this:

Dear Counterintuity:

Remember me? Just about THIS time last year I was in the middle of a set of changes that were huge. REALLY BIG change is difficult.

Maybe this is no testimonial, but my only ‘jumping off point’ problem was fear, there were plenty of prospects, there for the choosing, and there to go ahead and choose me as well. My fear was keeping me from interacting with all of the myriad choices that have appeared in the breakthrough to having no more fear in a set of career change pathways, one that I’ve now set my sights to is not only the one I CHOSE, but it in turn HAS CHOSEN ME!

Fear is a strange thing, a psychotherapist could work for years, but with a pen, paper and a calculator, seeing that my savings in the changeover was okay - was all that allaying my fears really needed.

All because of ONE chance consultation on the issue of fear. Well like I said, not a big-time or specific testimonial, but Counterintuity, YOU HAVE TREATED ME VERY WELL, and I’m grateful beyond words.

Thanks.