As I mentioned last week, I'm no great fan of New year's resolutions...but I do start every year by cracking open a fresh, blank-paged journal (yup, I still scribble notes by hand on top of all my electronic thought-gathering) and fill the back page with a few words of personal direction, usually for my eyes only.
Last year's included the terms Grow, Change, Learn, Dare and Find Your Real Calling. And while this year's list reflects some similar sentiments from 2010, it is headed by two new words.
CREATE DEMAND
These words are not merely essential for my professional well-being, but I suspect could--make that "should"--be the mantra for everybody who's trying to cut their swath in today's hyper-competitive business landscape.
People say that by running the Just For Laughs Comedy Festival and its TV/digital output, I'm in a creative business. That much is indeed true...but there's nothing more important I'm creating than demand.
Selling is one thing, but it's an increasingly tough task given the double whammy of so much noise out there and no one really wanting to listen to you.
Creating demand is the antithesis of selling. It's more developing the type of product and/or service that people will take note of, and want to buy. Subtle, but important, difference.
And it goes a lot deeper.
Creating Demand also applies to people and places. Creating Demand makes you a meeting that easier to book, a guest more likely to get invited to a party, or a speaker more sought after to deliver a keynote. Creating Demand is what fills your restaurant, your hotel or your event. It's the magnet, not the bulldozer.
So how do you do it?
Ahh...knew you'd ask the hard question.
There's a library's-worth of answers, but as starting point, I'd take a look at "Different: Escaping The Competitive Herd," a superbly-written and joyful read from Harvard Business School professor Youngme Moon. As her book jacket reads: "'DIfferent' shows how to succeed in a world where conformity reigns... but exceptions rule."
I've read way-too-many marketing/business/differentiation tomes, but what makes Ms. Moon's stand out is the mix of mom and mentor, of wisdom and whimsy in her writing. She's obviously brilliant, but equally as humble; you find yourself ripping through the book like a novel in order to discover the next "bon mot" (talk about Creating Demand...). Take a look at her promo video/trailer:
"Different" by Youngme Moon from Youngme Moon on Vimeo.
One of my favorite quotes from the book is this tell-taler:
"You could even boil down the entire function of marketing to this--the process by which businesses try to make us picky about what we consume."
Picky is important. Picky indicates choice. And if consumers are gonna have to make a choice, I want them to choose me...and my output.
In other words, I gotta create...well, you know what.
For 2011, it's my priority #1.
Accomplish it, and things will indeed be, shall we say, "Different."