Andrew Mackie, business catalyst

Belief

A few years ago, Dove started their campaign for real beauty. For Dove it was a point of differentiation but it was more than that - a core belief that a) the cosmetics industry negatively impacts women's (and particularly young women's) self-esteem and b) real beauty exists in all women. It's been enormously successful for Dove, so successful that Nivea has recently started a poor imitation of the campaign.

Here are three examples of Dove's campaign and the latest ad from Nivea. Firstly, Dove's 70 second 'Evolution' film released virally a couple of years ago, showing how fake images of models really are: (email readers click through to view)

Secondly, Dove's 'True Colours' ad - a clear statement of belief without selling any product at all:

Thirdly, an advertisement from Dove on their pro-age range of products, a brilliant counterpoint to the proliferation of anti-aging products on the market:

Finally, here's Nivea's lacklustre me-too campaign which is currently running on Australian commercial TV:

In his book BE Brands, author Simon Hammond explains how brands with core BElief foster a desire for BElonging from consumers. If the brand exhibits BEhaviour consistent with their BElief then they can expect amazing BEhaviour in response from their consumers. Dove has achieved this to a remarkable degree by sharing a clear and original BElief. Nivea will, however, need to come up with the own BELief and share it with much greater clarity than the advertisement above.

As for your business, your BElief can be simple and does not require the investment that Dove has devoted to theirs - it just has to be yours and not faked. Simon Hammond's advice is to be who you are, to "start with your passion ... follow your real spirit, align that with the real lives of consumers and see where you end up".

Being remarkable

In this classic 20 minute TED.com video, Seth Godin explains how to make your idea spread:

The core ideas:

• The TV-Industrial complex (where more advertising -> more sales) is dead.
• People don't care about you, they care about themselves.
• Be remarkable (both being different and worth talking about) to cut through the noise.
• Find a passionate audience - sell to people who are listening & maybe they'll tell their friends.
• Making average (merely very good) products is now risky - no one will notice.
• Be remarkable.

For further reading, check out one or more of Seth's books.

FreeMind & The Completeness Method

I recommend Freemind, mind-mapping freeware, to everyone. I use it for:

• brainstorming – alone, in a team or with clients,
• planning – business, documents, presentations, this blog, and
• completeness – strategy & problem-solving.

Of the three uses – brainstorming, planning and completeness, it’s the latter that's probably most overlooked in a given situation. I use a powerful technique that Dave Hunt of Straterjee taught me a couple of years ago.

The idea is to take a problem and break it down in stages, creating a complete list of possibilities at each level. If, for instance, your problem/challenge is to generate a higher profit, there are typically only two broad possibilities – to increase your revenue or lower your costs - so you enter this in Freemind:

Then you look at all the ways to increase revenue – more sales, higher price, etc. Following that you look at all the ways to generate more sales - more customers, more sales per customer, etc.: 

As a non-linear thinker I jump between levels without necessarily completing any one level first, with FreeMind allowing me to move or regroup ideas as necessary. I don't stop mapping until I have a complete view of the problem, down to the Nth degree - as far as it needs to be taken to assess my problem. I finish with a review discussion with one or more peers to see what I've missed.

If you do all of the above, you'll have a complete view of your problem - the good news is that the answers to your problem are definitely on the page. Then you can assess which solutions are the most powerful or suitable and prioritise to determine your tactics and strategy going forward.

Why Freemind? It allows me to type thoughts as quickly as I think them, then easily reorder, highlight, change or regroup them once they’re written down. You can then export your files to PDF, various web formats or as an image. You can even copy and paste the nodes into MS Word to make headings for your document. Even better, it’s free and being Java it works on both PC and Mac.

To get the most of the software and work quickly when brainstorming you’ll need to learn some shortcuts, particularly:

[insert] to add a child node
[enter] to enter a sibling node (below)
[shift+enter] for a previous sibling node (above)
[F5] for a bright red node
[F1] for the default node style
[Alt]+[PgUp] to collapse a node
[Alt]+[PgDn] to expand a node

Try it – you’ll love it (or your money back).

Sell what can't be copied

The internet copies everything, so how does one make money selling free copies? Kevin Kelly has a great article on this topic. His simple answer is:

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

And he discusses eight things that can't be copied:

1. Immediacy,
2. Personalisation,
3. Interpretation,
4. Authenticity,
5. Accessibilty,
6. Embodiment,
7. Patronage, and
8. Findability.

Thanks to überblogger Seth Godin for finding the article for us.